Ourself behind Ourself - concealed : white and reclusion or silence as language in Emily Dickinson

Abstract

In this paper, I will try to show how tightly woven in Dickinson´s poetics are the elements of protection in her writing (meaning here both letters and poems) and seclusion in her life, the latter constituting another text, parallel to the first. These two aspects will be approached as forms of silence, repre-senting a refusal to speak in the language accepted by the literary and social cânon, and therefore informed by the dominant ideology. Yet, protection and seclusion do not mean muteness in Dickinson, constituting, instead, a way of speaking a different language. As a result, Dickinson´s poetics may be defined by a movement of ambiguity between anxiety to speak and a need to keep silence. The notion of ´strategy´, appropriated from the feminist criticism, will be used, and partly refuted, in this discussion.