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Emily DickinsonBecause I Could Not Stop for Death
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1890A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Background
Literary Context
Emily Dickinson’s body of poetry contains elements of both Romanticism, which took hold in the United States in the early part of the 1820s, and Transcendentalism, an American literary and philosophical movement of the 1830s to 1850s. Dickinson lived from 1830 to 1886, so she would have had exposure to thinkers and writers representing both schools of thought.
Many of Dickinson’s poems reflect many different ideals that grew out of the artistic movement of Romanticism that originated in Europe. Thanks to Dickinson’s tendency to write about her own inner world, full of emotion, idealism, and independent thought, many literary scholars describe her work as Romantic. Additionally, the facts of her biography and her isolation later in life demonstrate her reluctance to conform to the norms of society and her wish to live according to her own terms, both of which are ideals that characterize the philosophy of Romanticism. In “Because I could not stop for death,” Dickinson addresses the relationship between a human’s spirit and its body as the speaker of the poem approaches death, another frequent theme in Romantic literature.
Literary scholars also note the influence of Transcendentalism on Dickinson. Some commonalities exist between Romanticism and Transcendentalism, and much of Dickinson’s life and work demonstrates this overlap. The nonconformist, self-reliant idealism of Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and their emphasis on non-rational thought and intuition echo Romantic beliefs about how to live and understand the world. As well, Dickinson’s work is highly individualistic, as her unique use of dashes and capitalization as well as her subject matter attest; this individualism means that her work evades easy categorization, and this adherence to her own personal style, ironically, may be the aspect of her poetry that connects her most closely to both literary movements.
Historical Context
Emily Dickinson lived during a period of American history, marked for its religious fervor, called the Great Revival or the Second Great Awakening. From the 1820s to the 1850s, large congregations of Christian believers gathered in tents for days, and sometimes weeks, at a time to listen to messages of repentance. These meetings often took place in New England, and Dickinson’s home state of Massachusetts hosted revivals at many points in time. In response to these messages, believers committed publicly to a life in service and imitation of Jesus. This religious awakening was different from the first Great Awakening of the 1700s because it did not emphasize the need for churches and church memberships; rather, anyone who believed in Jesus was considered able to enter into a spiritual relationship and commit their lives to God. The religious atmosphere at this time in history influenced the temperance movement in America, the abolition movement, and other important causes that changed the course of American history.
Though Dickinson lived at this time of heightened faith and grew up in a Calvinist household, her own relationship to organized religion, as evidenced by her poetry, appears ambivalent. A First Congregationalist Church established itself near her home in Amherst in 1868, and by this time, Dickinson had stopped attending religious services. Instead, she wrote poetry that explores the spiritual experience of humans without relying on the religious language that emphasizes faith in a higher power, choosing instead to focus on the very human realms of emotion and imagination. In her poetry, as seen in “Because I could not stop for death”, Dickinson uses concrete imagery, like a horse-drawn carriage, to depict abstract ideas, like death, suggesting a preference for what she can observe over notions like faith and salvation.
Another complicating factor involves the growing prevalence of scientific thought, manifested in Darwinism, that emerged during this period. Though Dickinson herself grew up in a religious household, scientific ideas could have led her to interrogate the religious assumptions and practices of her youth. Dickinson did not abandon the exploration of religious ideas altogether; as many of her poems reveal, themes like suffering, mortality, and doubt were close to her imagination. Her ambivalence towards religion reflects her independence of mind, her non-conformism, and her deep curiosity about the human condition.
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By Emily Dickinson
