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knights_say_nih) wrote2006-06-13 12:05 pm
knights_say_nih) wrote2006-06-13 12:05 pm
Emily Dickinson
Character Work
This monologue is spoken by the illustrious Emily Dickinson. Emily is a social recluse and a woman who writes poetry constantly. Although her poems aren’t attributed to her directly, only so far published anonymously, her works are known. She is scornful of the people in the village around her, yet it seems to bother her that a well known literary critic dislikes her poetry, which is one of the first things she mentions.
In this piece of the one act play, Emily has invited the audience for tea, and treats them to cake as her introduction. It’s an interesting stage direction, as she’s been known to shut herself away from most visitors, and gives a certain sense of loneliness to the piece. The only people with whom Emily communicates is the rather imaginary audience who seem to have stepped into her sitting room in 1883 for one reason or another.
Emily has a tendency to ramble about things that concern or interest her. Her conversation is frank and without the social graces that most people develop in 1883. From the very first line we see an ability to brush aside customs. “This is my introduction…” she says, offering up cake, where any well bred woman of her time would say something polite.
As she warns the audience, Emily does indeed tend to ‘wander back and forth through time.’ Her conversations glides through most things that touch on her life, or she imagines are linked to the immediate conversation. Her tone is colloquial, supporting the idea of an almost imaginary audience, as she’s immediately willing to open herself up and reveal rather intimate, if irrelevant, details. This is an immediate contrast to her rather private personality, as she lives as a recluse, alone in her own house, and having retired from the social scene thirty years before the monologue is spoken, at the age of twenty three.
She also plays quite frankly with gender stereotypes and boundaries. Her aunt Libby is the only female male of the family, and is obviously someone Emily thinks about with no little affection. Obviously, she was an influence and probably part of the reason that Emily as a woman was able to try her hand at poetry. Ironically, she has dropped her middle name, erasing the trace of this powerful woman, ever since she became a poet, which was more of a step towards her.
One of the main subjects of the piece is ‘Henrietta Sweetser,’ a woman looking over the fence to try to get a look at Emily. She is subject to the disdain of the poet and mimicked brutally as a busybody and a gossip. It is clear that the reclusive author, despite her almost lonely appearance, finds such nosiness appalling and is particularly amused by their belief that it must be terrible to be locked away from ‘them.’
It’s almost contradictory. Although it appears that there is no nervousness involved, only a desire to spare her dignity, Emily is willing to dash up the staircase two at a time in a long skirt to avoid people calling at the door. This is both demeaning and rather unsafe, and is more the behaviour of a frightened child than an elegant, proud lady. At the same time, it suggests a sort of playfulness of spirit. It is evident she doesn’t quite feel her age- see her honest surprise when she pauses for a moment to add and discovers that she is in fact fifty three. Emily is younger in spirit than in body.
The poetry of this character seems to be at once her pride, her desire, her weakness, goal, contradiction and motivation. Suitable, as this is an author evidently a consummate poet. She betrays a powerful sensitivity to criticism, feeling compelled to remind the audience that though she is very proud that she is published there are in fact critics who don’t like her works. At the same time, she has published seven poems and is a Poet and chooses to introduce herself as one. She has taken the initiative to be published (not an easy venture) and though she doesn’t say she’s going to take the initiative to put out more works, the pleasure in their revealing is obviously there. Historically, we know that Emily Dickinson spent most of her time in her room either reading (she was well spoken on the subjects of John Keats, John Ruskin, and Sir Thomas Browne) or writing her own works.
As a well educated woman who had a good understanding of the current artists of her time, Emily Dickenson would have no doubt been influenced by the works of Henrik Ibsen, the most famous playwright of her times.
Henrik Ibsen had what was considered a radical view on the institution of marriage, specifically the relationship between a man and a woman. In his play A Doll’s House, he uses the character Nora and her duplicitous relationship with her husband Helmer to show the disfunctionality of their society. They have, by all appearances, what was considered a standard husband-wife relationship; Helmer as the care-giver and Nora as an almost childish accessory, Helmer refers to her as his ‘squirrel’ and ‘sky-lark.’ Her apparent submission is revealed to be a farce as we discover the secret of her arrangement with Krogstag, and in a more specific example, the incident of the macaroons. Helmer asks his wife point blank if she’s been eating macaroons (a behavior that he as a husband has a right to control) and she answers ‘no’ in a bold-faced lie. As the play continues, her distress and discontent grows and grows, until finally in a revolutionary move she takes her life into her own hands and walks out of their relationship. Divorce was an unheard of thing at the time, and here Ibsen has his heroine succeed through this leap out into the unknown, a powerful rallying cry for the feminists of the time. Henrik Ibsen’s play was and is a piece of theatre that challenged and helped shape the views of his society.
Emily, as a woman who had her sex working against her and was forced to publish her poetry anonymously, would no doubt have read and been affected by A Doll’s House which was published a few years before this speech is set, well within her lifetime. She was of the belief that drama should be an expression of the society in which it was set, and Ibsen’s play was just that, a rallying cry to the feminists of the time. The play premiered in a theatre in Copenhagen, and although it shocked the conservative element of society, it delighted the more liberal audiences, once the shock of the iconoclastic message had worn off.
Ideologically, it is interesting to apply Ibsen’s beliefs on poetry to the life of Dickinson, as a recluse.
"... And what does it mean, then to be a poet? It was a long time before I realized that to be a poet means essentially to see, but mark well, to see in such a way that whatever is seen is perceived by the audience just as the poet saw it. But only what has been lived through can be seen in that way and accepted in that way. And the secret of modern literature lies precisely in this matter of experiences that are lived through. All that I have written these last ten years, I have lived through spiritually." (Henrik Ibsen, 'Speech to the Norwegian Students, September 10, 1874, from Speeches and New Letters, 1910)
When applying this philosophy of experiencing what one has written one lives through spiritually to Emily and her ability to shut herself off from the outside world, her sensational acts can perhaps become a little more understandable.
As a playwright, Ibsen is known for his intensely political theatre and his political statements. Born into a wealthy family, his life was strongly influenced by their bankruptcy and his apprenticeship to an apothecary in order to aid their financial situation. Another guiding force in his life was his mother, a powerful woman who was an avid painter and actress. After failing entrance examinations into medical school, Ibsen joined the theatre and began writing plays in earnest (though there had been previous, relatively unknown efforts.
"A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view." (from Ibsen's Workshop, 1912)
It was with the play A Doll’s House that Ibsen’s commercial success truly began. The play toured first Norway (of which he was an inhabitant) then the rest of Europe and eventually America. Despite his newfound fame, Ibsen never became particularly wealthy, and was forced to rely on financial aid from his close friend Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, another famous Norwegian writer, whose daughter eventually married Ibsen’s son, cementing the ties between the two writers
Included is one of Dickinson’s own poems, Drama’s Vitallest Expression is the Common Day.
Drama's Vitallest Expression is the Common Day
That arise and set about Us—
Other Tragedy
Perish in the Recitation—
This—the best enact
When the Audience is scattered
And the Boxes shut—
"Hamlet" to Himself were Hamlet—
Had not Shakespeare wrote—
Though the "Romeo" left no Record
Of his Juliet,
It were infinite enacted
In the Human Heart—
Only Theatre recorded
Owner cannot shut—
This monologue is spoken by the illustrious Emily Dickinson. Emily is a social recluse and a woman who writes poetry constantly. Although her poems aren’t attributed to her directly, only so far published anonymously, her works are known. She is scornful of the people in the village around her, yet it seems to bother her that a well known literary critic dislikes her poetry, which is one of the first things she mentions.
In this piece of the one act play, Emily has invited the audience for tea, and treats them to cake as her introduction. It’s an interesting stage direction, as she’s been known to shut herself away from most visitors, and gives a certain sense of loneliness to the piece. The only people with whom Emily communicates is the rather imaginary audience who seem to have stepped into her sitting room in 1883 for one reason or another.
Emily has a tendency to ramble about things that concern or interest her. Her conversation is frank and without the social graces that most people develop in 1883. From the very first line we see an ability to brush aside customs. “This is my introduction…” she says, offering up cake, where any well bred woman of her time would say something polite.
As she warns the audience, Emily does indeed tend to ‘wander back and forth through time.’ Her conversations glides through most things that touch on her life, or she imagines are linked to the immediate conversation. Her tone is colloquial, supporting the idea of an almost imaginary audience, as she’s immediately willing to open herself up and reveal rather intimate, if irrelevant, details. This is an immediate contrast to her rather private personality, as she lives as a recluse, alone in her own house, and having retired from the social scene thirty years before the monologue is spoken, at the age of twenty three.
She also plays quite frankly with gender stereotypes and boundaries. Her aunt Libby is the only female male of the family, and is obviously someone Emily thinks about with no little affection. Obviously, she was an influence and probably part of the reason that Emily as a woman was able to try her hand at poetry. Ironically, she has dropped her middle name, erasing the trace of this powerful woman, ever since she became a poet, which was more of a step towards her.
One of the main subjects of the piece is ‘Henrietta Sweetser,’ a woman looking over the fence to try to get a look at Emily. She is subject to the disdain of the poet and mimicked brutally as a busybody and a gossip. It is clear that the reclusive author, despite her almost lonely appearance, finds such nosiness appalling and is particularly amused by their belief that it must be terrible to be locked away from ‘them.’
It’s almost contradictory. Although it appears that there is no nervousness involved, only a desire to spare her dignity, Emily is willing to dash up the staircase two at a time in a long skirt to avoid people calling at the door. This is both demeaning and rather unsafe, and is more the behaviour of a frightened child than an elegant, proud lady. At the same time, it suggests a sort of playfulness of spirit. It is evident she doesn’t quite feel her age- see her honest surprise when she pauses for a moment to add and discovers that she is in fact fifty three. Emily is younger in spirit than in body.
The poetry of this character seems to be at once her pride, her desire, her weakness, goal, contradiction and motivation. Suitable, as this is an author evidently a consummate poet. She betrays a powerful sensitivity to criticism, feeling compelled to remind the audience that though she is very proud that she is published there are in fact critics who don’t like her works. At the same time, she has published seven poems and is a Poet and chooses to introduce herself as one. She has taken the initiative to be published (not an easy venture) and though she doesn’t say she’s going to take the initiative to put out more works, the pleasure in their revealing is obviously there. Historically, we know that Emily Dickinson spent most of her time in her room either reading (she was well spoken on the subjects of John Keats, John Ruskin, and Sir Thomas Browne) or writing her own works.
As a well educated woman who had a good understanding of the current artists of her time, Emily Dickenson would have no doubt been influenced by the works of Henrik Ibsen, the most famous playwright of her times.
Henrik Ibsen had what was considered a radical view on the institution of marriage, specifically the relationship between a man and a woman. In his play A Doll’s House, he uses the character Nora and her duplicitous relationship with her husband Helmer to show the disfunctionality of their society. They have, by all appearances, what was considered a standard husband-wife relationship; Helmer as the care-giver and Nora as an almost childish accessory, Helmer refers to her as his ‘squirrel’ and ‘sky-lark.’ Her apparent submission is revealed to be a farce as we discover the secret of her arrangement with Krogstag, and in a more specific example, the incident of the macaroons. Helmer asks his wife point blank if she’s been eating macaroons (a behavior that he as a husband has a right to control) and she answers ‘no’ in a bold-faced lie. As the play continues, her distress and discontent grows and grows, until finally in a revolutionary move she takes her life into her own hands and walks out of their relationship. Divorce was an unheard of thing at the time, and here Ibsen has his heroine succeed through this leap out into the unknown, a powerful rallying cry for the feminists of the time. Henrik Ibsen’s play was and is a piece of theatre that challenged and helped shape the views of his society.
Emily, as a woman who had her sex working against her and was forced to publish her poetry anonymously, would no doubt have read and been affected by A Doll’s House which was published a few years before this speech is set, well within her lifetime. She was of the belief that drama should be an expression of the society in which it was set, and Ibsen’s play was just that, a rallying cry to the feminists of the time. The play premiered in a theatre in Copenhagen, and although it shocked the conservative element of society, it delighted the more liberal audiences, once the shock of the iconoclastic message had worn off.
Ideologically, it is interesting to apply Ibsen’s beliefs on poetry to the life of Dickinson, as a recluse.
"... And what does it mean, then to be a poet? It was a long time before I realized that to be a poet means essentially to see, but mark well, to see in such a way that whatever is seen is perceived by the audience just as the poet saw it. But only what has been lived through can be seen in that way and accepted in that way. And the secret of modern literature lies precisely in this matter of experiences that are lived through. All that I have written these last ten years, I have lived through spiritually." (Henrik Ibsen, 'Speech to the Norwegian Students, September 10, 1874, from Speeches and New Letters, 1910)
When applying this philosophy of experiencing what one has written one lives through spiritually to Emily and her ability to shut herself off from the outside world, her sensational acts can perhaps become a little more understandable.
As a playwright, Ibsen is known for his intensely political theatre and his political statements. Born into a wealthy family, his life was strongly influenced by their bankruptcy and his apprenticeship to an apothecary in order to aid their financial situation. Another guiding force in his life was his mother, a powerful woman who was an avid painter and actress. After failing entrance examinations into medical school, Ibsen joined the theatre and began writing plays in earnest (though there had been previous, relatively unknown efforts.
"A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view." (from Ibsen's Workshop, 1912)
It was with the play A Doll’s House that Ibsen’s commercial success truly began. The play toured first Norway (of which he was an inhabitant) then the rest of Europe and eventually America. Despite his newfound fame, Ibsen never became particularly wealthy, and was forced to rely on financial aid from his close friend Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, another famous Norwegian writer, whose daughter eventually married Ibsen’s son, cementing the ties between the two writers
Included is one of Dickinson’s own poems, Drama’s Vitallest Expression is the Common Day.
Drama's Vitallest Expression is the Common Day
That arise and set about Us—
Other Tragedy
Perish in the Recitation—
This—the best enact
When the Audience is scattered
And the Boxes shut—
"Hamlet" to Himself were Hamlet—
Had not Shakespeare wrote—
Though the "Romeo" left no Record
Of his Juliet,
It were infinite enacted
In the Human Heart—
Only Theatre recorded
Owner cannot shut—