ABSTRACT
‘How dreary to be somebody!’ Some body, indeed. Interpreting Emily Dickinson’s physical body and instances of materiality in her work have formed fecund interpretive locales for academic criticism. However, commenting upon the facticity of Dickinson’s body has proved far from ‘dreary’ for commentators. Lingering on beyond its original expunged state through the derivation of meagre details from recuperated letters, medical prescriptions, testimonies and even her own poetry, the condition of her body and how it affected her work continues to garner interest from critics. 2 A variety of examinations have been made of Dickinson’s body of work, by producing a complementary examination of her actual body alongside the metaphorical bodies of her speakers. An example of this critical practice which weaves a reading of Dickinson’s bodies together can be found in Elise Davinroy’s 2006 article ‘Tomb and Womb: Reading Contexture in Emily Dickinson’s “Soft Prison”’. Davinroy argues that reading Dickinson’s whole body of work as being constructed through a practice of deliberative contexture allows the possibility of viewing each of her letters, for instance, as implicit collaborations with an ideal reader. Doing so would enable us to understand how Dickinson’s verse might aim to cultivate a reader who is conscious of the intra- and inter-textuality of her letters and poems, and would challenge ‘long-held assumptions about the degree of isolation in Dickinson’s authorial solitude’ (Davinroy 4). Such an ideal reader would fulfil the role of a person who, like her cousin Elizabeth Holland, would be physically distant but emotionally proximate to the weaving of the congruent language and imagery that defines Dickinson’s creative aesthetic. Examining the correspondence between Holland and Dickinson would then provide an insight into how Dickinson sustained ‘deep, and complex patterns of friendship’ with her acquaintances and even a sense of ‘co-creation with her recipients’ (Davinroy 11). Thus, the argument that Davinroy proposes is part of a valuable textual practice that aims to dispel the idea of Dickinson as a figure of sorrowful introspection and intellectual isolation.
