How do you keep the memory of deceased loved ones alive after they are gone?
During the bedbug invasion of 2020, I had the painstaking task of sorting through and washing all my clothes.
“It’s either a wash or toss,” was my mantra throughout the two weeks it took to go through everything. I might not have had much to my name, but it was enough to be painstaking work. I had held fast to the mission of bedbug eradication as I threw away garbage bags full of items.
As a college student during the pandemic, it was a disheartening task piling weeks’ worth of grocery money into industrial washers. My then-boyfriend and I were assessing the last of the damage, knee-deep in my fumigated room, donned with rubber gloves and our fashionable face masks. As we moved my bed to throw it away, I noticed a wooden box in the extreme corner of the bed that must have been moved during the extermination. I felt my stomach drop.
Normally, I wouldn’t hesitate to throw this into the wash, but this was different. Inside was my mother’s thick blue snowflake robe that she wore every day for as long as I could remember. While the other clothes that I inherited were put to use, this robe had somehow managed to retain her smell. When I was really depressed, I would hold it close, but I didn’t do that often. I wanted to make sure that I kept that part of her with me as long as I could, so I wrapped it up carefully and hoped for the best.
“Take it”, I told Al as he marched with a heaving bag down to the laundromat. I knew I was sacrificing the physical scent, but I assured myself that I would still remember as long as I had the robe.
It has been two years since the incident, and when I pulled the robe out today and buried my face in it, I was shocked to realize that I don’t remember my mother’s scent.
The Art of Forgetting
We tend to memorize details about those that we love, but it is funny the things people remember: the color sweater you wore to an event, that the zipper to your backpack is broken, what brand of shoes you wear, how you laughed at a particular joke. There are a hundred tiny insignificant things that the average person could hardly care less about, but somehow they seem to matter the most.
Memories of lost loved ones seem to matter the most. All you can cling to is their memory since they are now finite. The dead only live in the past, and you cannot create any new memories with them.
It is not like you want to forget about someone, but the mind can be a cruel master. As time elapses, I increasingly forget more and more. I have a long list of things that I have forgotten: I don’t remember what my mom’s goofy song for me was. I don’t remember some of her catchphrases. I don’t remember what color she used to paint her toenails. I don’t remember if she could whistle or if she could snap both her fingers. I don’t remember if she had any scars.
It may seem insignificant, but I know I had the answers to all those questions not that long ago. I just don’t remember why I forgot, or what other memory I replaced it with. Because I know that I replaced that knowledge with something else. But was it worth it?
The Responsibility of Remembering
“Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace.”
How do you keep the memory of deceased loved ones alive after they are gone?
As long as the dead have someone to remember them, they aren’t truly forgotten, but it isn’t a task for a singular person. Unless you and your loved one lived on a deserted island isolated from the rest of humanity, there is a good chance that someone will have the answer to your questions and aid in the task of remembering.
Friends and family can share different stories about the deceased’s life. Depending on your relationship, there may be a lot you didn’t know about your loved one.
Try to learn one thing your loved one always hoped to do but didn’t make time for. Do it for them.
Write a short story, poem, collection of poems, or novel using your loved one as the main character or inspiration for the plot.
Begin a message board to collect stories about your loved ones.
Carry on their traditions and celebrate their birthdays.
Nothing can bring back the dead, but their memory can live on. It is painful trying to piece together what you remember but it is important to never forget. There will be some things that will be forgotten, but as long as we can hang on to the important things then are they truly forgotten?
Yes, I no longer remember my mother’s smell but it in no way diminishes how much she meant to me. Things like that will never change.
We are failures mired in mediocrity. Then comes Easter.
Out of evil, God creates something beautiful. This is no more apparent in the horrendous mode of execution employed on Good Friday. Films like The Passion of the Christ only grasp the true horror of crucifixion. I can’t watch the film without becoming sick to my stomach- not just because of the torture affliction suffered, but because I know that the victim is totally innocent. God took on all our offenses and paid the ultimate price.
It only makes sense that from the nadir of existence Christ would also achieve its zenith.
Adam’s Happy Fault
Felix Culpa is a Latin expression that roughly translates to “O Happy Fault”. It is derived from the writings of St. Augustine regarding the Fall of Man, and the source of original sin: “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.”
It is the “curse” of humanity to have free will. If we could not choose for ourselves we would be no better than robot slaves who are programmed to do exactly what they are told. While our ability to choose good and evil makes us more than subservient automatons, it also enables us to fail. And we all will fail at some point in time.
While it may seem cruel to have been created to make mistakes, it is a perfect design. There has to be a balance in order for us to understand varying degrees of goodness. Opposites must exist as we can see even at the point of creation: dark and light, the land and sea, birds of the air and fish of the sea, angels and demons. You can’t have one without the other.
The Greatest Expression of Love
There is a long theological debate about why Christ had to die on the cross.
Thomas Aquinas agreed that debt had to be paid for human salvation because of the sin of Adam. But Franciscan John Duns Scotus said that Jesus wasn’t solving any problems by coming to earth and dying. God did not need Jesus to die on the cross to decide to love humanity, His love was infinite from the first moment of creation. The image of the cross was to change humanity, not a necessary transaction to change God.
Humanity sinned and was in need of a redeemer. Christ’s blood paid the price and fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, but it was also the greatest expression of his love for mankind to turn our hardened hearts. Duns Scotus’ message may be confusing to some people, so pope emeritus Benedict XVI clears up some of this confusion:
Although Duns Scotus was aware that in fact, because of original sin, Christ redeemed us with his Passion, Death and Resurrection, he reaffirmed that the Incarnation is the greatest and most beautiful work of the entire history of salvation, that it is not conditioned by any contingent fact but is God’s original idea of ultimately uniting with himself the whole of creation, in the Person and Flesh of the Son.
God did not want Adam to fail
God is not some vindictive judge who waits for us to fail in order to glorify Himself. Nor does He want us to give in to evil just because we can.
Cardinal Giacomo Biffi comments on this truth: “As can be seen, according to Ambrose, God creates the universe for man, and creates man in order to be merciful. It cannot be said that he creates man as a sinner or in order that he should sin, but it must certainly be said that the ultimate rest of Christ in his redemptive death and manifestation of divine mercy represents the ultimate and highest meaning of creation.”
God did not want us to sin, but He balanced the scales of humanity. From our free will he gave us good and evil, from our evil He can create the greatest good.
Saint Thomas Aquinas develops this truth in his Summa: “But there is no reason why human nature should not have been raised to something greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom” (Third Part, Question 1, Article 3, Reply to Objection 3)
We are failures mired in mediocrity. Then comes Easter. His triumph is our triumph because he won the victory for us. Each year Easter is a new beginning for us, not because it tells a story about the past, but because it tells a story about today. Though we are sinners, it is our great privilege to be able to claim a champion Savior. Oh, happy fault indeed!
Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels! Exult, all creation around God’s throne! Jesus Christ, our King, is risen! Sound the trumpet of salvation!
Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor, radiant in the brightness of your King! Christ has conquered! Glory fills you! Darkness vanishes forever!
Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory! The risen Savior shines upon you! Let this place resound with joy, echoing the mighty song of all God’s people!
My dearest friends, standing with me in this holy light, join me in asking God for mercy, that he may give his unworthy minister grace to sing his Easter praises.
It is truly right that with full hearts and minds and voices we should praise the unseen God, the all-powerful Father, and his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
For Christ has ransomed us with his blood, and paid for us the price of Adam’s sin to our eternal Father!
This is our Passover feast, when Christ, the true Lamb, is slain, whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.
This is the night when first you saved our fathers: you freed the people of Israel from their slavery and led them dry-shod through the sea. This is the night when the pillar of fire destroyed the darkness of sin!
This is the night when Christians everywhere, washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement, are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.
This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death and rose triumphant from the grave. What good would life have been to us, had Christ not come as our Redeemer?
Father, how wonderful your care for us! How boundless your merciful love! To ransom a slave you gave away your Son.
O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer! Most blessed of all nights, chosen by God to see Christ rising from the dead!
Of this night scripture says: “The night will be as clear as day: it will become my light, my joy.”
The power of this holy night dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy; it casts out hatred, brings us peace and humbles earthly pride.
Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth and man is reconciled with God! Therefore, heavenly Father, in the joy of this night, receive our evening sacrifice of praise, your Church’s solemn offering.
Accept this Easter candle, a flame divided but undimmed, a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.
Let it mingle with the lights of heaven and continue bravely burning to dispel the darkness of this night!
May the Morning Star which never sets find this flame still burning: Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead, and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, your Son who lives and reigns forever and ever.
Milwaukee is a city is either overshadowed by Chicago to the south or wrongly cast as just another decaying, Midwest town. The only time the city seems to be is mentioned in national news is to highlight how it is the hub of modern crime or yokel suburbia. While no city is perfect, the true version of Milwaukee extends far beyond its caricature.
Milwaukee is a gem along Lake Michigan. Besides the palm trees and saltwater, Milwaukee feels like a coastal city. Once you drive as far east as you can all you can see is blue water as far as the eye can see. Sailboats bob in the harbor and lighthouses stand along golden beaches. You can go swimming, fishing, water-skiing, or surfing depending on your mood or the type of day. The particularly adventurous could even take the ferry to Michigan as you watch one shore disappear and the other appear.
If water isn’t your thing, then you can go to any of the 150 Milwaukee parks scattered throughout the county. Even in the heart of the city, you can surprisingly find yourself lost in nature. What other city can you see the lake, go to the Museum, go for a wooded hike, and then go bar hopping without getting in your car?
Behind my apartment complex just this week we managed to locate 10 deer and a domesticated chicken on our walk home from the voting polls. We passed the local McDonald’s at the corner on our way back.
According to one source, Milwaukee natives will, “tell you that Milwaukee feels surprisingly European, too, with German, Polish, and Italian roots so deep that a myriad of imported traditions has blended to form a singular culture based on some very good things: beer, festivals, and food.”
But the atmosphere isn’t strictly European anymore. St. Josaphat, which has a Polish heritage, is now nestled in a Spanish community that I would argue has the best and most inexpensive desserts in the whole city.
We hold festivals that celebrate all the different cultures that have created the melting pot that is Milwaukee. And how else could we effectively celebrate without food, music, and company? The midwest values run deep in how we communicate with each other and how we perceive ourselves as a city.
Milwaukee does seem to embrace everyone. Its affordability and down-to-earth sensibility has made Milwaukee a place for everyone to live. Where else can you find a industrial hub that is still connected to civilization that is also affordable? It is city without unnecessary frills but manages to encompass all the conveniences of city life.
In 2018, Vouge published an article, “Why Milwaukee Is the Midwest’s Coolest (and Most Underrated) City”. Although the article is a few years old, the sentiment and truth still ring true.
Milwaukee is an underappreciated city with a proud history. If you catch me on a good day I will generally praise Milwaukee but on Milwaukee day, 4/14, you may find that I am just a little more biased.
All photographs in this post were taken by the author. Use of these images without photo credit is strictly prohibited.
For the most part, my husband and I match the standard stereotype of a Midwestern couple. However, on this particular snowy morning on the north side of Milwaukee, we were overwhelmingly out of our element.
This Asian grocery store is silent, dark, and crowded with pallets of goods marked in logographic text. You can buy rice and hot peppers by the pound, and wine is sold in the spice aisle under the cinnamon sticks. When we get to the deli portion of the market, I make direct eye contact with a squid (which has eyes that are too humanlike for my comfort level- but hey, that is just my hot take). A perusal of the poultry portion features duck heads, chicken feet, duck blood, and a whole plucked chicken in a bag. I pondered how durian ice cream tasted in the frozen section before I looked at crawdad chips in the snack aisle.
There is nothing wrong with this. It is fantastic that my perception of “normal food” is subverted. Asia contributes a staggering 60% to the world population, so this urban grocery store is like millions of stores around the world.
Ethnic Food
The United States is supposed to be this melting pot of cultures yet we still have the tendency to “other” or romanticize cultures that are not European. Most culturally different foods are put into limited ethnic food aisles – if they are sold at all. But somehow ethnic food has come to mean non-Western.
In a New York Times article, Chitra Agrawal draws attention to this disparity, “I buy Finnish crackers. Why are they not in the ethnic aisle?” she said. “An Asian rice cracker would be in the ethnic aisle.” Unfortunately, this is also the only way that some consumers seem to get in touch with diverse products.
Several food purveyors of color see the aisle as a necessary evil — a way to introduce their products to shoppers who may be unfamiliar with, say, Indian food — though a barrier to bigger success… The employees’ solution has been to put the same product in a few places, and include signs providing background on items and how they’re used.
These ‘ethnic’ grocery stores are seen as quirky and quaint representations of “other cultures”, but in reality, they are providing access to a limited cultural resource. In fact, these grocery stores could be an important factor in expressing and growing acceptance of other cultures.
Window into Reality
A quote from an article on The Grocer hits the issue right on the head, “Long-established mindsets and ways of doing things mean colonial attitudes seep into the way products are developed, and the perceptions and expectations of the majority customers are prioritized… What good is a magazine feature on diverse chefs if consumers can’t find the ingredients for their published recipes in store?”
Having places that readily supply materials and foods that aren’t commonly found in American grocery stores allows people to expand their scope of knowledge as well as their comfort zones. You do not necessarily have to leave the country to be exposed to another culture.
The monument and sights that make a place famous aren’t necessarily the best way to understand the people who live there. Yeah, Rome’s Colosseum is an important piece of history, but you’re not going to find insight into modern Italian life among the crowds of tour groups. Same for American culture while standing in front of Mount Rushmore. If you really want to learn about a place and its people, skip the tourist attractions and go to the grocery store.
The grocery store is the truest representation of reality. All of humanity ends up in the grocery store for nourishment. They aren’t parading for your benefit or sugar-coating their culture. Have you pondered what other comfort foods exist outside of ice cream and pizza? You may gain that insight by strolling through a grocery store in Manila, Rome, or Tokyo, or you may learn by stopping by your community’s “ethnic grocer”.
There’s no need for grocery store-focused travel influencers, but there is a need for people who are willing to step outside of their skin. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, so why can’t we reach each other’s hearts through the things we have in common? We all eat, we all thrive off of our community, and we all need each other.
But in the meantime, I need to go back, expand my palette, and answer my burning question: What exactly does a pickled lime taste like?
A closer look into the letters of Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert Dickinson
Emily Dickenson
Emily Dickinson is one of several poets who lived a very unobtrusive life. She both lived and died in the small village of Amherst and was a recluse there for the last few years of her life. However, she was not a demure woman, as she intimated later in her life that she “had been anything but a model child” (Habegger 116). Emily was personable and formed strong emotional attachments to those that were closest to her like her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson. Emily Dickinson would not have achieved the notoriety she has today without the aid of Susan Gilbert Dickinson, not only posthumously but also during the author’s lifetime. Susan played a pivotal role in the formation of Emily Dickinson as a writer because of their shared intimacy with each other, as demonstrated by their correspondence, although this was a strong aromantic relationship.
It is easy to perceive Emily as an introverted and antisocial woman, but that is not the case. More recently, the perception of Emily Dickinson as a flamboyant ‘Belle of Amherst’ has become a more accepted image of Emily Dickinson. A recent film from Madeleine Olnek, “Wild Nights With Emily” decided to take this a step further by exploring Dickinson’s sexuality. The film posited that Emily was having an affair in a homosexual relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan. While the film may have strongly explored this relationship, this was not the first time the topic had been broached.
Every biography is incomplete without including some reference to the importance of Susan Gilbert Dickinson. It was Susan’s “entry into the family that would change it forever” (Habegger 269). Susan was only nine days younger than Emily and had had a hard life. Orphaned after the death of her father in 1841, Habegger says that her letters seem to indicate a nature that was “less distinguished for qualities of flight than for polish and self-possession” (266). She met the Dickinson sisters around 1848 and began her correspondence with Emily around that time. Emily wrote her voraciously from 1851 until Susan married Austin in 1856, even sending her some of her first poems. Although her letters grew increasingly shorter throughout the years, Emily remained close to Susan until the time of Emily’s death in 1886. In turn, “[h]er sister Sue recognized her genius from the very start and hoarded every scrap that Emily sent her from the time they were both girls of sixteen. Their love never faltered or waned. (Bianchi 64). Many of these letters express an intimacy that was deeply shared between the two women.
Rebecca Patterson was the first to propose that Emily Dickinson was a lesbian in her book The Riddle of Emily Dickinson, which was published in 1951. Her hypothesis is based on a handful of letters and one poem dedicated to Catherine Mary Scott Turner Anton or “Katie”. This was a time that was generally unfavorable towards lesbianism, especially in a community as small and intimate as Amherst. If Dickinson was a lesbian she would have had to have kept it secret. According to a book review by John Ciardi, “[o]bscurity, however, is Miss Patterson’s preferred clue: she plunges into her detective work like a vigorous and ambitious prosecuting attorney building a case of circumstantial evidence” (Ciardi 94). Although Ciardi is generally impressed with Patterson’s ability to extrapolate information to fit her hypothesis, he does not believe that her hypothesis is founded.
Criticism is generally ambiguous about whether Emily Dickinson was a lesbian or if her feelings could be placed under the category of “romantic friendship” (Comment 167). While her physical desires would always remain unrequited and not acted upon, she may have been hiding her sexual orientation. The nineteenth century was not accepting of homosexual relationships nor was it socioeconomically plausible. Even if Emily was a lesbian, there would have been very little benefit to openly expressing her sexuality. Her relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson was emotionally intimate, which led some scholars to believe that she was sexually attracted to her sister-in-law.
Critics have become more accepting of the seemingly subtle homoerotic tone that is found in some of her poems. Dickinson’s Poem 84 has especially come under severe scrutiny due to its supposed homoerotic subtext. Emily had sent the poem to Susan in 1859 in a letter:
Her breast is fit for pearls,
But I was not a “Diver” –
Her brow is fit for thrones
But I have not a crest.
Her heart is fit for home –
I – a Sparrow- build there
Sweet of twigs and twine
My perennial nest
The poem could be maternal imagery, but there is the idea that the speaker is lost in the ‘her’ of the text. Habegger says that this is the “lost sister to who waits for Sue” and that there is a great disparity between Emily and Susan; Emily “diminishes herself so drastically that anything like reciprocity becomes unimaginable” (Habegger 366). This could be merely expressing how Emily found an affinity with a kindred soul. However, it is thought that the original “manuscript thought to be sent to Bowles has ‘Sue’erased from its verso” (Comment 172). The expression to build a nest is an expression of sexual desire and a future with an individual.
There are other insights into the assumed homosexual relationship with Susan Gilbert Dickinson. There was a lull in Emily’s correspondence with Susan from 1855 to 1857 which was around the time of Susan’s marriage to Austin in 1856. There were no letters shared between them in 1856 which could be indicative of a strong emotional turmoil or “it is also possible that correspondence to Susan, along with other work, has been lost or was destroyed” (Hart 256). Bianchi also seems to indirectly acknowledge this hiatus by saying “[Austin’s] marriage to the “Sister Sue” of Emily’s lifelong adoration brought an outside element into the family, which bred some critical hours” (12-13). The marriage of Austin and Susan did put a strain on their relationship, but this could have also been due to the changing of familial roles.
Faderman made the argument that Martha Dickinson Bianchi, the niece of Emily Dickinson and the daughter of Susan Gilbert Dickinson, went to great lengths to “convince us that Dickinson had ‘normal’ girlhood involvements with young men ” (Faderman 202). Faderman says this may be because she wanted to hide the ‘truth’, or that her mother may have told Bianchi that she was not romantically involved with Emily Dickinson to lead her astray (202). In her book called “Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson,” there is a strange omission of the three hundred letters that were exchanged between her aunt and mother.
Picture of Emily and Susan
A few of these more ‘passionate’ letters are referenced in other anthologies of Emily Dickinson’s letters. Emily’s letter to Susan Gilbert Dickinson from June 11, 1852, was omitted in Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s collection of her letters. The letter itself is romantic:
I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider . . . every day you stay away — I miss my biggest heart; my own go wandering round, and calls for Susie […] Susie, forgive me, Darling, for every word I say — my heart is full of you none other than you in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something, not for the world, words fail me. If you were here – and Oh that you were, my dear Susie, we need not talk at all, our eyes would whisper for us […] I shall grow more and more impatient until that dear day comes, for til now, I have only mourned for you; now I begin to hope for you. […] I add a kiss, shyly, lest there is somebody there!”
(Ward and Dickinson 211-212).
There is an undeniable passion that is found within this letter that Emily had a strong attachment to Susan. It is also important to note that this was before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother, Austin. As one critic said, “[t]his was no girlhood crush. Emily was a woman in her twenties. To say that she was ‘in love’ with Sue is to describe her emotional state accurately” (Fadermann 209). The passage speaks of both an emotional and also physical intimacy with each other, which Emily seems reticent to openly express.
Bianchi does not entirely conceal their relationship. Bianchi chose to reference a portion of a letter to Susan at the beginning of the biography, “I know I was naughty to write such things, and I know I could have helped it if I had tried hard enough, but I thought my heart would break and I knew of nobody here that cared anything about it – so I said to myself- we will tell Susie” (Bianchi 20). She tries to demonstrate that this was only a platonically affectionate relationship. She is careful to stress that it was a “perfectly normal young heart responding to natural wondering of impending maturity” and at the “stage [in her life, Emily] sentimentalizes as all young girls do and should” (Bianchi 20). Unfortunately, Bianchi does not include any letters from her mother to her aunt for us to conceptualize this relationship further. At first, it may seem heavy-handed but the correspondence could be otherwise misconstrued.
The language of many of the letters also seems to emphasize a strong romantic connection. In two letters that Emily wrote to Susan, she said “And I do love to run fast -and hide away from them all; here in dear Susie’s bosom, I know is love and rest, and I would never go away” (Ward and Dickinson 84). At first glance, it is plausible that this could be read as a romantic desire to be with her love. This is further emphasized in another letter in which Emily writes, “Why, Susie, it seems to me as if my absent Lover was coming home so soon — and my heart must be so busy, making ready for him” (Ward and Dickinson 215). Here Susan takes on the personification of an absent lover returning to their love. The content of such passages undeniably shows that Emily felt a strong love for her sister-in-law.
In 1854, she sent Sue a series of poems that are despairing and almost desperate (Bianchi 194-198). A common theme through all these poems is solitude, despair, and the condition of the soul. She writes in one of these, “There is another Loneliness/ That many die without, / Not want or friend occasions it, / Or circumstances or a lot” (Bianchi 195). It is not exactly clear what type of loneliness that Emily is referring to, but this letter only seems to demonstrate the intimacy that Emily seems to have felt towards her sister-in-law.
Picture of an excerpt of Emily Dickinson’s letters
Although the language of many of her letters may be sentimental, it does not mean that she held romantic sexual feelings for her sister-in-law. Such passages might seem to indicate a homosexual relationship, but nineteenth-century America was largely homosocial. The majority of society was divided into categories for both men and women to form strong emotional and platonically physical relationships. It was not uncommon and “social configuration encouraged intense emotional attachments which were often acted out by kissing, caressing, fondling, and passionate pronouncements of love” (Faderman 208). Such relationships were not uncommon during that period.
Susan also in many ways represented an extension of the sisterly bond that Emily held in her family. Although Emily was close to her sister Lavinia, ‘Vinnie’, Susan stood as a complementary foil to Vinnie. One scholar posits that “Sue represents for Emily the other pole of womanhood: the antidomestic [sic] woman, tempter, betrayer, narcissist, and visionary, the woman in touch with power, possessed of secret knowledge, dangerous, reviled, and perilously desired” (Morris 325). Susan was able to provide an intellectual and social prowess to their relationship that complimented her relationship with her sister. Susan was her sisterly muse in which Susan stood “as an emblem for the heavenly, [while] Vinnie represents the earthly” (Morris 327). Emily shared a deep connection with Susan that was an extension of the family.
It is because they were intimate friends that Susan was trusted with reading and editing many of Emily’s poems. Bianchi writes that Susan was one of the first to ever read any of Emily’s poems. Emily “never told her family of her writing, and this is the only mention of any secret ambition or having her work known even on a day “a long way off.” The first poem dated, that she sent to Sister Sue, was in 1848” (Bianchi 65). Emily trusted Susan with her poems first among many of her friends and relatives and she would continue to play this role throughout Emily’s life. Susan was “probably more important to Dickinson as a reader, friend, literary collaborator, and editor” since they were “so close that writing was almost a mutual project” (Mitchell 218). Perhaps the two women assimilated each other’s styles. Mitchell quotes a passage of Susan’s writing to demonstrate her “own skill as a writer, partly because many details of her description are circumstantially similar to Emily Dickinson’s” (25). It was because she shared so much in common with Susan and trusted her that she was able to publish some of her poems during her lifetime.
Emily wrote to Sue in one letter, “Except Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than anyone living- To say that sincerely is strange praise-” (qt. in Habegger 614). The note seems to imply that Susan had contributed greatly to Emily’s knowledge and confidence in her writing abilities. Emily allowed Susan to edit many of her poems and “[s]he was always eager to respond to Susan’s criticism” (Bianchi 78). Emily trusted Susan with her writing and subsequently published ten of her poems during her lifetime, some under Susan’s edits and promptings.
Susan was Emily’s editor and trusted collaborator for most of Emily’s life. Susan understood that Emily’s love was “generous, but it was also exacting and uncompromising, the expression of a powerful ego demanding that that friendship live up to a high standard” (Habegger 265). Emily Dickenson has truly been the “woman in white” who has graced the pages of literary history both unobtrusively while simultaneously making a large literary impact. While her poems are what have made her so immensely popular, it is her letters that truly give some insight into the character of Emily Dickinson. Although she appears to be quiet and demure, her letters and poems show a woman who was strong and emotionally passionate.
Although the assertion of Dickinson’s lesbianism may be erroneous, Comment posits a valuable point. In critical readings of conversations between males and females, “with or without proof of physical intimacy, readers tend to assume similar writing addressed to a man automatically signifies ‘heterosexual’ desire” (Comment 168). Even if her claims are incorrect, she at least brings valuable insight into the erroneous reading of the author’s letters. “The history of the emotion is everything. The poems live in their own desperation: the identification tag is nothing” (Ciardi 98). While it is important to view the author’s history in light of the text we must be careful in misreading the source material. Susan remained a pivotal friend, mentor, and intimate companion for Emily. Without Susan Gilbert Dickinson, we would not know Emily as well as we do.
Bianchi, Martha, Dickinson. The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924.
Comment, Kristin M. “Dickinson’s Bawdy: Shakespeare and Sexual Symbolism in Emily Dickinson’s Writing to Susan Dickinson.” Legacy, vol. 18, no. 2, 2001, pp. 167– 181. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25679386.
Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Little, Brown and Company, 1960.
Domhnall, Mitchell. Emily Dickinson: Monarch of Perception. University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.
Faderman, Lillian. “Emily Dickinson’s Letters to Sue Gilbert.” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 18, no. 2, 1977, pp. 197–225. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25088726.
Habegger, Alfred. My Wars are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. Random House, 2001.
Hart, Ellen Louise. “The Encoding of Homoerotic Desire: Emily Dickinson’s Letters and Poems to Susan Dickinson, 1850-1886.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 9, no. 2, 1990, pp. 251-272. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/464224.
Morris, Adalaide K. “Two Sisters Have I: Emily Dickinson’s Vinnie & Susan.” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 22, no. 2, 1981, pp. 323–332. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25089144.
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