Being an Emily Dickinson: reclusive Muppet Baby?

When Dickinson loses her housekeeper, who quit to get married, she writes that she really misses the maid—a common enough statement—but then writes, “To all except anguish, the mind soon adjusts.” This merging of the minor and the vast is a key trait of Dickinson in the poems and in the letters. The leaps of imagination are stunning. One needs privacy and silence, and flourishing genius, to live in such a realm. Otherwise, one stops at, “Gee, I miss Maggie the maid so much.” - Emily Fragos

In this post from the website THE MUSE DAILY this quote by Emily Fragos proposes that Emily Dickinson conflates the minor and the vast together in her poems.

However, isn’t it useful to remember that she was a recluse that wasn’t leaving her house, in this specific instance?

Yes, let me concede that household tragedies can be just as devastating as war, our perspective swells to its containers. But, this quote seems less like a masterful insight and more like a childish exaggeration on Dickinson’s part.

The girl who never leaves her house is sad that her maid (paid mother) is leaving her to get married (start a new family.) Of course this would be considered a tragedy from a person in the midst of their self imposed permanent childhood.

She sees kingdoms loved and lost in the confines of her home. It’s a distilled form of poetic inquiry, but I don’t give it half as much credit as the world’s of Jane Austen.

In Alexandra Lange’s blog entry for the DESIGN OBSERVER, “Jane Austen, Architect?” she recognizes real worlds.

Austen populates her stories with real places, with contextual references to money and power based on place and structure. These are not the shadows of furniture masquerading as mountains. In PRIDE AND PREJUDICE Anne Elliot leaves her house, visits a cottage, goes to real place called Bath; Pemberely is a real, beautiful place it doesn’t have to be a vision of heaven.

In this case of these two writers. Dickinson is little Kermit imagining boulders of the balls in his Nursery, while Austen is Indiana Jones exploring the buildings made by human hands but still epic.

Dickinson is content to see a view outside her window, while Austen sees the window from both sides and both elevations.

REFERENCED LINKS:

http://www.themusedaily.com/2011/09/emily-dickinson-merging-minor-and-vast.html

http://observersroom.designobserver.com/alexandralange/post/jane-austen-architect/28278/