"Religion--'a fine invention' : an exploration of faith and doubt in Emily Dickinson's letters and poems"

Abstract

Emily Dickinson, in her lifetime, wrote approximately 1,800 poems and over a thousand letters. According to R.W. Franklin, a Dickinson biographer, Dickinson's productivity climaxed in the first half of the 1860s. Between 1861 and 1862 Franklin estimated Dickinson wrote 365 poems that she eventually self-published in Fascicles. My argument is that Dickinson used her Fascicles (specifically 12 and part of 13) and letters to justify turning her back on organized religion. It was not a coincidence that with 365 poems to choose from Dickinson selected 29 poems for Fascicle 12 and 19 for Fascicle 13. Dickinson places these poems in a precise order as to make her argument for turning her back on organized religion. She also uses her poetry to construct a religious dialogue that explores her crises of faith, self doubt and how she will obtain salvation. Faith and religion were important to Dickinson, but not the religion of her family (Congregational Calvinism). Dickinson also wrote over a thousand letters to family, friends and people she didn't know. These letters contained hints as to Dickinson's impending religious conflict. In letter 220 written in 1860 and repeated in poem F202, Dickinson refers to faith as a "fine invention." This is an important clue to how Dickinson was beginning to examine her crises of faith. This repeating of words is an important pattern that Dickinson uses in her letters and poems to explore then challenge her family's religion. In order to reach my conclusion, it was important to do an explication of her letters and poems to look for patterns and word usage. Webster's 1845 and 1865 Dictionaries, as well as the Emily Dickinson Lexicon, were important tools. The dictionaries yielded religious definitions of words (definitions which have been lost over the years) that Dickinson uses to dramatize and explore her crises of faith.