A Feminist Literary Criticism of Emily Dickinson’s Poem “I ’m wife; I’ve finished that” (Poem #189)

By

Ardika Rizky Saputri

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the poem of Emily Dickinson, “I ’m wife; I’ve finished that” with feminism literary criticism.

Feminist literary criticism is looking at literature and authors from a feminist point of view. Coming from an understanding that literature is not neutral but reflects political perspectives, feminist literary criticism is linked to feminist politics. It has needed to be strong and angry, at times, to shake up the certainties of male-dominated culture and make a freer atmosphere for women writers and readers (Magezis, 1996: 55 in Elma, 2003: 35)

In the Dickinson’s poem, “I ’m wife; I’ve finished that”, it showed the woman’s difference of freedom when they are married and have not married. It is not amazed if this poem is connected to feminism approach. Feminist scholars have examined Dickinson’s poems and letters in an effort to gain some insight into how the poet responded to the gender-restrictive values of the mid-nineteenth-century patriarchal society. These critics have concluded that while as a person Dickinson succumbed to a life of social marginality and seclusion, as a poet she opened a new frontier of feminine power and assertiveness through her transcendent and imaginative verse.

Feminist scholars have identified a number of Dickinson’s poems which directly comment upon the role and experiences of women within a repressive patriarchal order. In addition, some of these critics have suggested that many more poems can be interpreted as the poet’s opinion of gender issues if one were to assume that the speaker in each verse is a female. For example, Poem 271 (“A solemn thing—it was—I said—”) presents the image of “a woman—white,” which may be a reference to a bride, a novice nun, or a female poet. At the conclusion, the speaker of the poem finds satisfaction in her “‘small’ life,” which some commentators have suggested is a rejection of conventional female roles in favor of pursuing those that she finds more fulfilling. A similar theme of empowerment has been detected in Poem 657 (“I dwell in Possibility—”), which many critics have maintained is a commentary on the ability of the female artist to subvert the oppressive limitations of the patriarchal order through the transcendental power of poetry. Though her poems were not grouped into published collections during her lifetime, Dickinson did sew certain poems into “fascicles,” or small booklets, indicating that she viewed them as related meditations on a central theme. Her fascicle 22, which includes Poem 271, is one example. Scholars have focused on the poems in this fascicle—which reflect on such subjects as domestic life, liberty, human relationships, and spiritual redemption—as verses indicative of Dickinson’s desire to defy the social and gender conventions of her day.

Dickinson’s poetry reflects her loneliness as we know she was seldom left her house and by the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost total physical isolation from the outside world. The speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want, but her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the possibility of happiness. Her work was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town which encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity.

Many of Dickinson’s poems discuss female identity in relation to males and her own identity in accordance to religion, nature, life and love. I think some of her poetry could definitely be grounded in the probability that she might have been thinking of her own identity in a society where first the father dominates and then the husband, but where she has experienced neither. When both don’t exist, the patriarchal system has been undercut.

“In I’m wife I’ve finished that” Emily want to show the difference of to be “woman” and “wife”. The statement was said that this poem is about an uneasy-contradictory feeling of a young woman who is turning into a woman, especially a wife that seems “safer and more comfortable”, but stopping her from becoming a full human being with no self empowerment and self identity anymore (Akun from Indonesia in http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson/10150/comments). There is a different position between “woman” and “wife” that show how both of them take steps. For further analysis of this poem will be discussed in the next section deeply.