18 pages • 36 minutes read
Emily DickinsonWild Nights Wild Nights
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1891A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: The Relationship Between Emily Dickinson and Susan Huntington Dickinson
Susan Huntington Dickinson was born on December 19, 1830—nine days after Emily. Susan and Emily grew up together and remained lifelong friends, with Susan marrying Austin and having three children with him. Scholars and readers debate their friendship and whether it was platonic or sexual. Though they regularly saw each other in person, Susan and Emily exchanged countless letters and poems, and the correspondence implies an erotic attachment.
Ellen Louis Hart and Martha Nell Smith, the editors of Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Wesleyan, 2019), describe Susan as “the beloved friend who was [Emily’s] central source of inspiration, love, and intellectual and poetic discourse” (xi). Susan destroyed the letters and poems that were, in her words, “too personal and adulatory to ever be printed” (xii), yet the surviving poems and letters support Hart’s and Smith’s claim of an intense relationship.
In a poem Emily sent Susan, Emily calls herself, “Susan’s Idolater keeps / A Shrine for Susan” (156). In “Wild nights — Wild nights!,” the speaker arguably idolizes the addressee, turning them into a paradisiacal sea. The fervent tone of the poem matches the passion of the letters and poems Emily sent Susan, suggesting Susan is the addressee and Emily is the speaker. The poem becomes erotic because it’s sexual, but the desire isn’t merely physical—it’s an all-consuming reverence or a metaphysical attraction.
Hart and Smith don’t claim Emily and Susan’s relationship involved physical sex, but other representations make their connection explicitly sexual. In the 2018 humorous biopic Wild Nights with Emily, Emily and Susan have a sexual relationship. In Dickinson (2019-2021), a TV show that turns Dickinson’s life into a teen dramedy, Emily and Susan are physical. In the episode “Wild Nights” (November 1, 2019), Austin reads the poem and catches Sue and Emily kissing, and Sue feels suffocated by Austin and Emily. In “Wild nights - Wild nights!,” the speaker arguably comes across as overwhelming and possessive. In Paul Legault’s English-to-English translations of Dickinson’s poems, The Emily Dickinson Reader (McSweeney’s, 2012), “Wild nights - Wild nights!” becomes a dense block of prose, with Dickinson detailing her deep sexual longing for Susan and her desire to “enter Sue entirely” (46). Such representations are playful, and Dickinson’s poem is arguably playful, toying with the idea of an epic union that possesses the dazzling allure of a high seas adventure.
Literary Context: Epistolary Poems
Epistolary comes from the Latin word epistola and the Greek term epistole. Both terms signify a letter, a message, or other work written by the author to a specific person, figure, or audience. Epistolary poems are a popular genre, allowing the poet to directly communicate with their addressee while letting the reader feel like they’re reading an intimate and private correspondence. While reading “Wild nights - Wild nights!,” the reader might feel like they’re reading something not intended for their eyes or ears.
In “To Imagination” (1846), the Victorian poet and novelist Emily Brontë writes a poem to imagination. Dickinson adored the Brontë sisters (the other two were Charlotte and Anne), and Dickinson also cultivated a keen imagination. In “To Imagination,” Brontë’s speaker forms a powerful bond with imagination that counters reality’s limitations and drawbacks. In “Wild nights, Wild nights!,” the speaker and the addressee form a forceful union that creates a world separate from reality. The addressee’s absence allows the speaker to use their imagination and construct a portrait of the addressee unchecked by reality.
The 20th-century American poet Elizabeth Bishop had close relationships with women, including her Vassar classmate Louise Crane, the presumed addressee in “Letter to N.Y.” (1955). Bishop’s melancholy tone juxtaposes the ebullient tone of Dickinson’s poem, with Bishop’s speaker worried about her addressee and the wild nights she might or might not be having in New York City.
Another 20th-century American poet, Sylvia Plath, uses the epistolary tone to address a father figure in her famous confessional poem “Daddy” (1964). Like Dickinson’s speaker, Plath’s speaker is passionate—though the intense tone in “Daddy” leads to violence and vengeance. In “Daddy” and “Wild nights - Wild nights!,” the speakers are empowered, but they use their force for different ends.
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By Emily Dickinson
