Chelsea Swan

Dickenson’s poems are acts of self-actualisation, of identity and becoming the self. When she used the term ‘I’ it was often not a personal voice but, to me, a voice of the collective womanhood. When she says “I dwell in possibility…” and “I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you — Nobody — too?”, you can feel the division of self, the interior life stepping out. She had to exist outside of her mind, to make a mark on the page. Many of Emily Dickinson’s poems reflect a profound curiosity about the concept of the self, its limits, and its relationship to the body. Dickinson repeatedly returns to questions about the physical location of the self, and the connection between self, mind, and body. I feel that this is because she felt herself divided, split, broken, and wanted to understand the individual parts as she saw them in the hope that they could be put together and felt to be whole. When she says “I am afraid to own a Body—I am afraid to own a Soul—” I believe she is speaking about the fact that women do not own themselves, they are owned by men, without choice or free will and that in choosing her own path she has to also take on the responsibility for her body and her soul and that this is a huge burden. She is also speaking about the divide she feels in the two selves, that she has a double responsibility to the interior and the exterior selves. Her poem the body grows without explores the dichotomy between the physical and spiritual realms. The body, representing the external and tangible, is described as “convenient,” suggesting its ease of perception and manipulation. In contrast, the spirit, representing the internal and intangible, is portrayed as seeking concealment, suggesting its elusive and often hidden nature.