Under Construction Journal Issue 6.1 UNDER CONSTRUCTION JOURNAL 6.1 | Page 56

fears they joggle the mind. They are religious, except me, and address an eclipse, every morning,
whom they call their “Father.”
Regionalized religion in society thus became a tool to control and educate women to be man’s perfected
‘angels’ placing men parallel to God, in turn ensuring women’s expectancy to please and obey them. Books
for women became mere compliments to their surroundings, in the same way the female body became a
mere compliment to men. Dickinson, who never married, claimed a poetic body free of restriction through
her private rejection of unequal subjection of women:
Where I am not afraid to go / I may confide my Flower / Who was not Enemy of Me / Will gentle
be, to Her
To ‘confide’ is to ‘entrust someone enough to tell them of a secret or private matter.’ Dickinson’s second
line is reminiscent of pressing flowers. Like her words, they become ambiguous participants in Dickinson’s
imagination, hidden arguments, the flower itself acting as a metaphor for her unrestrained poetic body.
The secrets she could not share with those around her were instead preserved within personified flowers
and other unrestrained forms.
Dickinson often employs the imagery of free, uncontrolled creatures. Winged animals are
prominent throughout her poetry. In “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church -” the speaker instead
claims ‘I – just wear my wings –.’ In a rejection of unity with accepted theology, the speaker’s wings reflect
Heaven as situated exactly where the speaker is. Dickinson’s characters link themselves to a natural yet
spiritual freedom, often unable to be presented publicly but ‘wearing’ their ‘wings’ within the private
sphere of the household. These wings allow them to fly to a different imaginative world uncontrolled by
orthodox ideas.
Dickinson herself imagined and described geographical places she has never visited from her
home, as in “Volcanoes be in Sicily:”
Volcanoes be in Sicily / And South America, / I judge from my Geography / Volcanoes nearer
here, / A Lava step, at any time, / Am I inclined to climb / A Crater I may contemplate, / Vesuvius
at Home.
This becomes a key description which allows endless exploration of Dickinson’s creation of ‘my
Geography.’ Her poem, “I dwell in Possibility –,” a ‘fairer House than Prose –‘ portrays a speaker
comfortable within a house consisting of ‘More numerous of Windows - than the physical world around
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