ABSTRACT
Thus far the book has traced aspects of the hymn culture in Dickinson’s social milieu and has suggested ways in which the anti-teleological and mystical spaces found in Dickinson’s poetics have been formed dialogically, in relation to this culture. The ‘I-Thou’ model of relation, the connection between individual and community and also the aspect of usefulness and worthy work of the hymn have been taken into account. However, Dickinson’s use of bee imagery serves to bring each of these aspects of hymn culture to the fore, and connects each aspect firmly with poetry and the role of the poet. A re-vision of the traditional bird imagery found in hymns by women to denote spiritual transport, Dickinson’s bees describe the paths to revery. Her bee imagery illustrates the connection in her poetics between this metaphor and the role of the poet, and in doing so makes explicit the imperative connection between two poles of orthodox Puritanism: of ‘industry’ and ‘revery’. By connecting the Puritan work ethic with poetry, Dickinson not only confers the status of spiritual vision on her writing (as did the traditional hymnists such as Watts) but also forges a defence of her own position as a woman poet. Her bee imagery incorporates the Puritan rhetoric on industry and idleness that surrounded mid-nineteenth-century debates on the work ethic in relation to the woman question.1 In this way, Dickinson also challenges ideas about ‘usefulness’ through casting her own vocation and subjectivity as a poet as a metaphorical bee that creates whilst also being ‘idle’. Furthermore, the suspension of opposition in Dickinson’s use of bee imagery allows for community and the individual to coexist and resonate without one being subsumed by the other.
