Courtesy of Emily Dickinson | History of American Women (womenhistoryblog.com)

The New England Mystic

    Emily Dickinson AKA The New England Mystic was a poet who was a recluse whose work was not published until four years after her death in 1886. Emily's poems represented a stand against the expectations of society. She would not conform to the gender roles, marriage, or religious expectations that society tried to oppose on her. Hence why she became a recluse. She found comfort and rebellion through her poems. Her poems are where she found true freedom. Her poems show that the patriarchal society fed into her ideas for poems and the women's rights movement and civil war played a big role in her writing. Alena Smith wrote that Emily "was a true weirdo outsider artist" and that she was.

My Life had stood

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - 
In Corners - till a Day 
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
 
And now We roam in Sovreign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him
The Mountains straight reply -
 
And do I smile, such cordial light
Opon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through -
 
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master’s Head -
’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
 
To foe of His - I’m deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
 
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without - the power to die –
                                    (Emily Dickinson)