What Dickinson was seeking was assurance as well as advice, and Higginson apparently gave it without knowing it, through the letters they sent to each other the rest of her life. He helped her not at all with what mattered most to her—establishing her own private poetic method—but he was a friendly ear and mentor during the most troubled years of her life.
Out of her inner troubles came rare poems in a form that Higginson never really understood. Between and Dickinson wrote more than eleven hundred poems, full of off-rhymes and odd grammar.
Few poems are more than sixteen lines long. The major subjects are love and separation, death, nature, and God—but especially love. When she writes "My life closed twice before its close," one can only guess who her real or imagined lovers might have been. Higginson was not one of them.
It is more than likely that her first "dear friend" was Benjamin Newton, a young man too poor to marry who had worked for a few years in her father's law office. Sixteen years older than her, a brilliant preacher, and already married, he was hardly more than a mental image of a lover. There is no doubt she made him this, but nothing more.
He visited her once in When he moved to San Francisco, California, in May , she was in despair. Only a month before, Samuel Bowles had sailed for Europe for health reasons. She needed love, but she had to satisfy this need through her poems, perhaps because she felt she could deal with it no other way. When Bowles returned to Amherst in November, the emotion Dickinson felt was so great that she remained in her bedroom and sent down a note: "That you return to us alive is better than a summer, and more to hear your voice below than news of any bird.
Higginson had not saved her life; her life was never in danger. What had been in danger was her emotional balance and her control over her intense talent. In the last two decades of Dickinson's life, she wrote fewer than fifty poems a year, perhaps because of continuing eye trouble, but more probably because she had to take more responsibility in running the household.
Her father died in , and a year later her mother suffered a stroke that left her disabled until her death in Dickinson's health failed noticeably after a nervous collapse in , and on May 15, , she died. It is clear that Dickinson could not have written to please publishers, who were not ready to risk her striking style and originality. Had she published during her lifetime, negative public criticism might have driven her to an even more solitary state of existence, even to silence.
Habegger, Alfred. New York: Random House, Olsen, Victoria. Sadly, her nephew Gib died of typhoid when he was eight years old, after only a few days of sickness. Dickinson sat by his bedside on the night of his death, and grieved deeply for him until she died less than three years later.
Her mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, suffered frequent bouts of depression and was sometimes emotionally distant from her children. Mother Emily was an avid gardener who found some freedom and peace in her flowers and meandering paths. Dickinson and her younger sister, Lavinia, were close, and they also found comfort in the family gardens. Dickinson studied botany in her one year at the female seminary that later became Mount Holyoke College.
Throughout all of this, Dickinson was carefully observing and writing about both motherhood and the garden. In her poetry, Dickinson equated motherhood with the bounty and fertility of nature. It is an interesting paradox: the reclusive woman who wrote extensively about the world outside her window. The metaphors and symbols of the garden pervade her poetry. On some occasions, she viewed motherhood through the lens of earth and its munificence. If Nature smiles—the Mother must This is a stark statement that Dickinson and Lavinia were bereft of parental emotional support.
Yet, the bonds between mothers and daughters are strong, deep, and multi-faceted. When her mother died in , Dickinson found a new appreciation for her, coming out of her loss and grief. After the death, she wrote to her friend:. The love shines through these letters, and Dickinson tells us that this mother-daughter relationship was profound and meaningful. Throughout her writing, Dickinson wrote about the beauty and refuge of home and family, particularly the garden that represented the life of her mother.
In one such poem, she reflected:. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance.
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