Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

Emily has lived a sheltered life in Amherst surrounded by her younger sister Lavinia, older brother Austin, a mother who is a mute invalid and a Washingtonian congressman father. She is a poet. Nature and the natural world are her pets. She has no interest in the larger churchgoing community that makes up Amherst. She has no interest in getting married either it seems on the surface on things. She feels misrepresented, underrepresented, unappreciated at times by the larger than life figures of both her brother and her father who rules the household with an iron fist. The entire family tolerates Emily's outpouring of mock abandon in verse. They tolerate her not attending church with them. She is her mother's primary caregiver. She is ably assisted by her sister Lavinia. Emily's head is up in the clouds when she writes. She is distracted by her pen most days and retires to her bedroom to write where no one disturbs her. What is notably disconcerting for everyone involved is that she is unmarried, for the times she is living in she can neither vote or publish in her lifetime her poetry. Will she fall in love? Who is Master? Will she receive the recognition that she so badly wants?