Emily Dickinson’s Self-salvation:the Self In Dickinson’s Poetry

This thesis will discuss Emily Dickinson’s different selves from her poems with different themes, exploring her "self-salvation" when she meets despair and contradiction in her living in seclusion. The author tries to understand another woman from a female perspective and to describe the sufficient thought of Dickinson, the female poet.The introduction will introduce the domestic and foreign literatures about Emily Dickinson. The scholars have done research about Dickinson widely and deeply gaining rich achievements. Some do research from the theme of poetries and some from the artistic styles of poetries, and the researchers also use some kinds of criticism theories to analyze Dickinson’s poems. There are also some researchers mainly research the self-salvation of Dickinson, but they think the approach of Dickinson’s self-salvation is poetry creation, and they don not research from mental perspective.Chapter one states the self which is shown in Dickinson’s poems, that is the rebellion and helplessness of the patriarchal society. The color "white" in the poems means "bride" or "nun" which means the god’s wife. Emily’s rebellion to that times shows she does not receive but refuse to act these two roles.Chapter two explains Dickinson’s longing for love and marriage, holding that Dickinson is once more frustrated by her love and dissatisfied with her mother’s role as a wife in the patriarchal society. Her longing for love is smashed and her mother’s experience disappointed her.Chapter three discusses Dickinson’s contradictive views on nature. First, she sensitively learns that nature is often capricious, disinterested or cruel. Moreover, nature shows great indifference to the sufferings of man and other animals, and makes the poet frightened and isolated from the nature. On the other hand, Dickinson sees nature as a true friend, and she admires and appreciates nature.Chapter four discusses Emily Dickinson’s self-salvation. First, frustrated by her own love experience and disappointed with the marriage around her, she choses spiritual marriage to God and poetry. Second, as a way of self-salvation, her decision to live as a recluse does not close her mind, but in many ways allows the flow of new avenues of thought and inner experiences. Third, she always has hopes so as to fight against despair.