Emily Dickinson's Letters To Sue Gilbert

The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
Emily Dickinson's Letters to Sue Gilbert

Author(s): Lillian Faderman
Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 1977), pp. 197-225
Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
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Lillian Faderman
Emily Dickinson's Letters

to Sue Gilbert
Approximately
> appear to forty
be love poems in the Emily
lyrics written Dickinson
to or about women.canon
The
generally accepted explanation for these poems takes at face
value her claim to the literary editor, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, "When I state myself as the Representative of the
Verse?it does not mean me?but a supposed person" 51 but
since they usually have no plot and no characterized persona,
and since they often seem to refer to particular incidents which
are not described in the poems and therefore have no dramatic
value for the reader, it is difficult to believe that Dickinson
was attempting to create tales and personae, despite her own
insistence to Higginson as well as many critics' acceptance of
that notion.2 But how else explain a poem such as:
Her breast is fit for pearls,

But I was not a "Diver"?
Her brow is fit for thrones
But I have not a crest.
Her heart is fit for home?
I?a Sparrow?build there
Sweet of twigs and twine
My perennial nest.3
1 The Letters of Emily Dickinson, eds. Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora

Ward (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), letter 268. All sub
sequent letter numbers refer to this edition.
2 See, for example, David T. Porter, The Art of Emily Dickinson's Early
Poetry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966).
3 The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1955), poem 84. All subsequent poem numbers
refer to this edition.
197
The Massachusetts Review
One critic settles on the easiest solution by suggesting that "the

persona is a male sparrow," 4 but most readers will rightly in
sist on the poem's obvious metaphoric quality. What then is
one to make of a poem such as:
Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night

Had scarcely deigned to lie?
When, stirring, for Belief's delight,
My Bride had slipped away?
If 'twas a Dream?made solid?just
The Heaven to confirm?
Or if Myself were dreamed of Her?
The power to presume?
With Him remain?who unto Me
Gave?even as to All?
A Fiction superseding Faith?
By so much?as 'twas real? [518]
John Walsh states that "the poem 'Her sweet Weight on
my Heart' is another elegy for Mrs. Browning,"5 whose
Aurora Leigh was one of Dickinson's favorite poetic works.
But the problem with Walsh's interpretation is that it takes
too literally the notion of curling up in bed with a good book.
Poems such as these are best understood as being homo
erotic.6 The first biographer to consider Dickinson's homo
4 John Emerson Todd, Emily Dickinson's Use of the Persona (The Hague:
Mouton, 1973), p. 32.
5 John Evangelist Walsh, The Hidden Lije of Emily Dickinson (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p. 225.
6 For other examples of Dickinson's ostensibly homoerotic poetry see John
son 346 "Not probable?The barest Chance"; 458 "Like Eyes that looked
on Wastes"; 494 "Going?to?Her!" in the second version given by John
son; 631 "Ourselves were wed one summer?dear?"; 727 "Precious to Me
?She still shall be?"; 1219 "Now I knew I lost her?"; 1249 "The Stars
are old, that stood for me?" in the first version given by Johnson ; 1318
"Frigid and sweet Her parting Face?"; 1414 "Unworthy of her Breast";
1568 "To see her is a picture" in the third variant given by Johnson.
198
eroticism was Rebecca Patterson/ who received such excoriat
ing reviews8 that biographers of a whole generation were effec
tively silenced if they saw any truth in Patterson's suggestions.9
Twenty years after the publication of Patterson's book, the
psychiatrist John Cody also concluded that Dickinson's poems
and letters indicate that she probably had strong emotional
attachments to women.10 Outside of these works, however, few
critics attempt to deal with what is an apparent homoerotic
strain not only in her poetry but also in her letters.
Jay Leyda very sensibly warns the modern explicator of
Emily Dickinson's works that there is a real danger in ap
proaching Dickinson from our mid-twentieth-century perspec
tive, and that danger is the temptation "to use her device as
your device to make the letters and poems mean what you
want them to mean." 1X The very nature of Dickinson's style
?her collapsed syntax, her economic omissions, her use of
7 The Riddle of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,

1951).
8 For example, the venerable George Whicher, author of This Was a Poet}
the first major critical study of Dickinson, commented that the "absurdity"
of Mrs. Patterson's efforts "will be at once apparent, except to like-minded
investigators." New York Herald Tribune Rook Review, 4 November 1951,
p. 21. His opinion was shared by Thomas Johnson, Richard Chase, R. P.
Blackmur, John Ciardi and Grace Sherrer, among others. Only two critics
of note were willing to give Patterson's thesis any credence: Laurence Perrine
in The Southwest Review, xxxvii (1952), 81?83 and John Frederick Nims
in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, Nov. 11, 1951, part 4, p. 3.
9 The one notable exception is Christian Murciaux in Cahiers du Sud, LI
(1961), 276-289.
10 After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1971). As a Freudian, Cody explains these attach
ments as being the result of an inadequate mother, a Roman-General of a
father, and a perpetual search for a mother-substitute. Carroll Smith-Rosen
berg's thesis that the homosocial style of nineteenth century American so
ciety created a whole spectrum of "normal" psychosexual responses, including
the homosexual, is much more acceptable to the non-Freudian. See "The
Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth
Century America," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, I
(Autumn 1975), 1-29.
11 The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson (New Haven: Yale Univer
sity Press, 1960), I, xxii.
199
vague symbols?encourages subjective interpretations of the

wildest kinds, and it is vital to avoid any explanation of her
life that must be supported by such interpretive evidence alone.
But many of her letters to women are quite clear about the
nature of her affection and are as explicit as it was possible to
be in the nineteenth century, lacking a modern vocabulary and
a modern perspective of psychosexuality. These letters, par
ticularly her early correspondence with Sue Gilbert, who be
came her sister-in-law in 1856, give a clue to the reading of
many of her poems. Those less abstruse poems and letters
taken together provide powerful evidence that Emily Dickin
son loved women and that throughout much of her life her
important emotional attachments were to women.
It iswas
nothomosexual
my intention to prove
in the sense in thisshe
that paper that in
engaged Dickinson
genital
contact with a woman. In fact, I do not believe she did (nor
do I believe she ever engaged in genital contact with a man),
but that is outside of my concerns. I believe that Emily Dick
inson's love for women, and particularly for Sue Gilbert, was
homosexual in the same sense that Dante's love for Beatrice
is generally considered heterosexual.12 I believe further that
only by understanding the homosexual nature of her involve
ments can we fully understand Dickinson's love poems which
are specifically addressed to women, as well as many of her
12 A virgin who has amorous interests in a man is considered heterosexual

despite her lack of genital experience; by the same token, a woman who is
amorously interested in other women must be considered homosexual even if
she has had no genital contact with other women. A lack of such genital
experience is to be expected especially of Victorian women who were usually
taught that genital contact was primarily for the purpose of having offspring.
Middle class heterosexual women who were not married, and therefore not
in a position to have children, probably had sexual relationships very rarely
as compared to contemporary women; similarly, it is probable that homo
sexual women, having only heterosexual models and the heterosexual equation
of sex and reproduction available to them, learned that sexual relationships
were less important than sentimental, emotional relationships. Since lesbian
history has been buried even more deeply than women's history it is impos
sible finally to determine the truth of this hypothesis.
200
other love poems in which no gender is specified but which
may well be addressed to women.
The existing correspondence hints that in her thirties, and
later, Dickinson may have had a heterosexual relationship
(although unconsummated) with Samuel Bowles13 and (much
more probable) with Judge Otis Lord (also unconsum
mated).14 There is no evidence in her extant letters to indicate
that the other frequently named candidates for Dickinson's
affections have any concrete claims,15 and without the proof
of her letters, to link Dickinson to any other man is mere con
jecture based on hearsay (unless one of the men can be shown
to be the "Master" addressed in letters 233 and 248. No one
has yet offered satisfactory proof to that effect.).
But it must be recognized that the heterosexual relationships
of which we can be fairly certain did not occur until Dickin
son was in her thirties. Her niece and biographer, Martha
Dickinson Bianchi, has gone to great lengths not only to con
vince us that Dickinson had "normal" girlhood involvements
with young men,16 but also that in her early twenties she met
the man with whom she "fell in love" during a visit to Phila
delphia17 and that "Emily was overtaken?doomed once and
forever by her own heart. It was instantaneous, overwhelm
ing, impossible. There is no doubt that two predestined souls
were kept apart only by her high sense of duty, and the neces
sity for preserving love untarnished by the inevitable destruc
tion of another woman's life." 18 Other biographers have al
13 See, for example, letters 247, 249, 252.

14See, for example, letters 559, 560, 561, 562, 563, 645, 750, 843.
15 The other favorite candidates are Reverend Charles Wadsworth, Ben
Newton, George Gould, and Major Edward Hunt.
16 The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1924), p. 70. Bianchi insists that her aunt had "quite a spicy
affair with a young law student in her father's office, an habitu? of the house
who was bewitched with her," and she generally stresses young Emily's
heterosocial life.
17 Emily Dickinson Face to Face (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1932), pp. 51-53.
18 The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson, p. 47.
201
ready suggested that Sue (Martha Dickinson Bianchi's mother)

concocted the blighted romance theory for her own purposes19
and communicated the legend to her daughter. I hope to dem
onstrate in this paper what those purposes were \ but it is suffi
cient to point out here that Bianchi (at the very least) exag
gerated in telling us that her aunt was "doomed once and
forever by her own heart." Dickinson no doubt recognized, as
poem 887 suggests, that only in bad romantic novels do peo
ple love "once and forever":
We outgrow love, like other things

And put it in the Drawer?
Till it an Antique fashion shows?
Like Costumes Grandsires wore.
During her late teens and throughout most of her twenties,

her relationships with men appear to be quite insignificant when
compared to those with women. It is true that her letters indi
cate that she saw perhaps half-a-dozen young men with some
regularity but generally on a very casual basis. If her emotions
were ever engaged by men at this time, it was never in depth
nor for any duration. The young men mentioned most fre
quently in her early correspondence are her cousins Willie
Dickinson and John Graves, James Kimball, Elbridge Bow
doin, and Henry Emmons. Biographers have attempted to blow
almost every one of these friendships into full-fledged ro
mances,20 but concrete evidence is totally lacking.
19 See, for example, Richard Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson (New
York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974), p. 228.
20 Richard Sewall believes that Dickinson sent Elbridge Bowdoin a valen
tine out of genuine romantic interest and concludes, "Bowdoin was unmoved;
he remained a bachelor to the last." (The Life of Emily Dickinson, p. 416).
But Dickinson's published valentine of 1850 (The Indicator [Amherst Col
lege], II, 7, Feb. 1850) shows how lightly she took the custom; and a com
parison of the Bowdoin valentine [letter 41] with the clearly romantic valen
tine that Sue sent to Austin that same year, 1851 (see Jay Leyda, The Years
and Hours of Emily Dickinson, p. 193), suggests that Emily meant not very
much by the valentine she sent to Bowdoin.
202
Judging not only from the volume of extant letters that
Emily Dickinson sent Henry Emmons, but also from the fre
quency with which he is mentioned in direct relation to herself
throughout her letters to her brother Austin while he was away
at school (this collection seems to be complete), it is fairly safe
to assume that Emmons was her closest young male friend.
But an examination of her letters to Emmons (even allowing
for a Victorian woman's reserve toward men) demonstrates
that, as Johnson suggests, "Emily Dickinson's friendship with
Emmons stemmed from their interest in books." 21 While she
seemed to enjoy his company often, she was aware of his suc
cessive involvements with two other women (Eliza Judkins
and Susan Phelps), and she encouraged those involvements.
She cordially tells him with regard to his imminent meeting
with Eliza Judkins, "I trust you will find much happiness in
an interview with your friend, and will be very happy to see
you, when you return" [letter 121]. Shortly after this Emily
herself became friends with Eliza and wrote Emmons, "I send
a note for your friend?Please remember me to her, with a
sincere affection?I am happy that she is with you" [letter
136], And while it is true that Dickinson presented Emmons
with a valentine on 17 February 1854, its significance is
dimmed in the light of a note she sent him several weeks ear
lier: "Will you please receive these blossoms?I would love
to make two garlands for certain friends of mine, if the sum
The case is made for the importance of Willie Dickinson by Bianchi, who
says in The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson, p. 30, that young Emily
created quite a scandal by running off with her cousin for a romantic ride
right after a funeral. This legend is corrected by Jay Leyda in Years and
Hours, p. 1 : "In contradiction to a family tradition, Lavinia's diary ( 15
Aug. 51) shows that it was she, and not ED, who sped home with Willie
after a family funeral."
Henry Emmons is one of the more recent nominees for the cause of
Emily Dickinson's later peculiarities. Anna Mary Wells offers that "It is sur
prising that none of the poet's biographers has chosen him as the great love
of her life." ("Was Emily Dickinson Psychotic?" American Imago, 19
[Winter 1962], 314.) And John Walsh observes: "Emily almost certainly
had been in love with him and very probably had expected to become his
wife" {The Hidden Life of Emily Dickinson, p. 76).
21 The Letters of Emily Dickinson, p. 267.
203
mer were here, and till she comes, perhaps one little cluster
will express the wish to both" [letter 151]. That her friend
ship with Eliza Judkins was warm and ongoing is indicated by
a still further letter [162]. And when Emmons later became
engaged to Sue Phelps, Dickinson was also accepting of this
new woman [letter 168]. Her letter congratulating Emmons
on his engagement contains all the kindest wishes of a good
friend [letter 169].
August 1854
My heart is full of joyy Friend?Were not my farlor
fully Pd bid you come this morningy but the hour
must be stiller in which we speak of her. . . / thank
the Father who's given her to you. . .
Truly and warmly y
Emily
In view of such graciousness, it is difficult to believe that Dick
inson ever cared for Emmons in any other way than as a friend
with whom she could share books. However, biographers who
insist that she loved Emmons are fond of quoting letter 163:
Friend? May 1854

I said I should send some flowers this week. I had
rather not until next week?My Vale Lily asked me to
wait for her. I told her if you were willing?Please
say by little Johnnie if next week is acceptable?
Your friendy
Emilie?
It is possible that the letter is a code message of some kind, but

one must doubt that the intention is amorous after reading
Dickinson's letter to Sue Gilbert a short while later [172]:
August 1854
I do not miss you Susie?of course I do not miss you
?I only sit and stare at nothing from my windowy and
know that all is gone?Dont feel it?no?any more
than the stone feelsy that it is very coldy or the block}
204
that it is silent where once 'twas warm and green, and
birds danced in it's branches.
I rise, because the sun shines, and sleef has done
with me, and I brush my hair, and dress me, and
wonder what I am and who has made me so. . .
Her overwhelming involvement with Sue Gilbert at this time

must certainly have dimmed any affection she felt for her male
friends.
Biographers and critics

sioned expression who
from oneare bemused
woman by such
to another haveimpas
tried
to explain Dickinson's letters to Sue Gilbert and other women
as simply being in the style that "came out of the sentimental
extravagance of the Romantic and Gothic novel." 22 But even
a casual reading of Dickinson's letters makes it apparent that
there is a significant difference between the sentiments that she
expressed to the women she loved and those she expressed to
good friends. A comparison of three letters (all written early
in 1855?these are the first three letters in Johnson, volume
II) will illustrate the point. Each of them complains of miss
ing the recipient [letters 179, 178, 177]:
[to Elizabeth Holland] 18 March 1855

... 7 wonder if you have all forgotten us, we have
stayed away so long. I hofe you havenyt?I tried to
write so hard before I went from home, but the
moments were so busy, and then they flew so. I was
sure when days did come in which I was less busy, I
22John Ciardi, "Review of The Riddle of Emily Dickinson" New En

gland Quarterly, XXV (1952), 93-98. See, also, Grace B. Sherrer, "Review
of The Riddle of Emily Dickinson," American Literature, XXIV (1952),
255?58: "We need to remember that Emily breathed the air of Victorian
sentimentality. Even though she rebelled against doctrine, her vocabulary was
formed by her heritage and her time. The passionate intensity of the poems
equally pervades the letters. It is a character of writing not derived from any
one experience in the writer's life."
205
should seek your forgiveness, and it did not occur to

me that you might not forgive me. Am I too late
today? Even if you are angry, I shall keep fraying
you, till from very weariness, you will take me in. It
seems to me many a day since we were in Springfield,
and Minnie and the dumb-bells seem as vague?as
vague; and sometimes I wonder if I ever dreamed
?then if I'm dreaming now, then if I always
dreamed, and there is not a world, and not these
darling friends, for whom I would not count nvy life
too great a sacrifice. Thank God there is a world, and
that the friends we love dwell forever and ever in a
house above. I fear I grow incongruous, but to meet my
friends does delight me so that I quite forget time
and sense and so forth.
[to susan and martha gilbert] 28 February 1855

. . . Dear Children?Mattie?Sue?for one look at
you, for your gentle voices, Pd exchange it all. The
pomp?the court?the etiquette?they are of the
earth?will not enter Heaven.
Will you write to me?why harfnt you before? I
feel so tired looking for you, and still you do not come.
And you love me, come soon?this is not forever, you
know, this mortal life of our*s. Which had you rather I
wrote you?what I am doing here, or who I am
loving there?
Perhaps I'll tell you both, but the Hast shall be first,
and the first last.' I'm loving you at home?Pm
coming every hour to your chamber door. I'm thinking
when awake, how sweet if you were with me, and to
talk with you as I fall asleep, would be sweeter still.
I think I cannot wait, when I remember you, and
that is always, Children. I shall love you more for this
sacrifice.
[to susan gilbert] late January 1855

. . . I miss you, mourn for you, and walk the Streets
206
alone?often at nighty besidey I fall asleep in tearsy
for your dear facey yet not one word comes back to me
from that silent West. If it is finishedy tell mey and
I will raise the lid to my box of Phcmtomsy and lay one
more love in; but if it lives and beats stilly still lives
and beats for me, then say me so, and I will strike
the strings to one more strain of happiness before I die.
While all three of these letters employ the embarrassingly

extravagant rhetoric of the nineteenth century, surely there are
perceivable differences in the voice that she uses for Mrs. Hol
land, who is at this point only a good friend, in her voice for
Sue when she knows that Martha will also be listening, and
in her voice for Sue alone.
Faced with this perplexing realization, several biographers
have suggested that young Emily's relationship with Sue Gil
bert was nothing more than one of those intense girlhood at
tachments in which Victorian females, brought up in a pri
marily homosocial environment, typically engaged. They often
point to the relationship between Cecilia Vaughan and Alice
Archer in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Kavanaghy one of
Dickinson's favorite novels, as an example of the kind of affec
tion that Dickinson had for Sue Gilbert and other young
women.23 Longfellow says of his heroines:
They were nearly of the same age. . . . They sat together

in school -y they walked together after school ; they told
each other manifold secrets ; they wrote long and impas
sioned letters to each other in the evening: in a word, they
were in love with each other. It was, so to speak, a re
23 See, for example, John Walsh, The Hidden Life of Emily Dickinson,
p. 74. Walsh observes that when Sue left to teach in Baltimore in 1851,
"Dickinson sent her frequent lengthy letters that overflowed with her ac
customed affection, but couched in unusually extravagant terms. To modern
ears the incessant declarations of love and dependence sound almost unhealthy
?until it is realized that this time both girls are indulging in fantasy. Before
Sue's departure the two had pored lovingly together over the pages of Long
fellow's Kavanagh, a sentimental story of girlhood devotion and village life in
which two young women are 'drawn together by the mysterious power that
mystically selects friends in youth.' "
207
hearsal in girlhood of the great drama of woman's life.24
After this introduction, Longfellow presents the real emo

tional center of the novel, Kavanagh, who has captured the
hearts of both Cecilia and Alice. And since both women love
this young man, it becomes necessary for one of them to prove
the sincerity of her friendship by sacrificing herself to death
so that the other may have him.
Most of the novel naturally taxes the credulity of the twen
tieth-century reader, but what seems to be realistic is the notion
of a deeply felt same-sex friendship which was casually ac
cepted in nineteenth-century society.25
Nineteenth-century America was largely homosocial. Fe
males banded together for almost every significant intimate
ritual, from the birthing of a baby to the laying out of a body,
in contrast to the rarer contacts with males which generally
were characterized by a stiff formality. Such a social configura
tion encouraged intense emotional attachments which were
often acted out by kissing, caressing, fondling, and passionate
pronouncements of love. In many cases such a relationship was
not "a rehearsal in girlhood of the great drama of woman's
life," but rather the most meaningful relationship of that par
ticular woman's life.26 However, unless she had a considerable
amount of money which would permit her to be independent,
like the Llangollen Ladies of the early nineteenth century or
the lesbian circle of expatriates in Paris during the early twen
tieth century, the impossibility of finding a job by which she
could support herself demanded that she either marry or stay
2? Kavanagh: A Romance (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, n.d.),

p. 41.
25 See Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual:
Relations between Women in Nineteenth Century America."
26 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg points out with regard to these attachments,
"The essential question is not whether these women had genital contact and
can therefore be defined as heterosexual or homosexual. The twentieth-century
tendency to view human love and sexuality within a dichotomized universe
of deviance and normality, genitality and platonic love, is alien to the emo
tions and attitudes of the nineteenth century and fundamentally distorts the
nature of these women's emotional interactions," Ibid., p. 8.
208
in her parents' home.27 The fairly common type of situation
which we label "lesbian" 28 today (two women living together
in an affectional relationship over a long period of time and
sharing all aspects of their lives) was probably extremely rare
in the nineteenth century for economic reasons alone.
A close reading of Emily Dickinson's letters from 1850 to
1855 (one year before Sue married Austin Dickinson) must
convince the reader that for five years Sue Gilbert was the
most important person in Emily's life. This was no girlhood
crush. Emily was a woman in her twenties. To say that she was
"in love" with Sue is to describe her emotional state accurately.
However, while Sue was probably Dickinson's most impor
tant female love relationship (and perhaps the greatest influ
ence in her decision to become a poet, as the letters and the
number of poems sent to Sue for criticism indicate),29 she was
not the only one. According to Dickinson's youthful letters,
she enjoyed the usual number of crushes on women teachers
?an experience which is often so meaningful, compelling, and
all-encompassing for a young girl, although our culture attri
butes far less significance to it than to her purchase of her first
pair of high heels. In 1847 Dickinson described her preceptress
thus [letter 15]:
27 Teaching was one of the few professions that was opening up to middle
class women at this time; but jobs were scarce and, as Sue Gilbert learned in
1851, both low-paying and demanding beyond ordinary patience.
28 William Taylor and Christopher Lasch suggest in an article which ex
plores ground similar to that in the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg study that to
label such attachments "lesbian" does violence to their complexity, "if only
because such labels?at least as they are ordinarily used?carry with them the
suggestion of perversity and abnormality, the suggestion that when one uses
them one is describing a ccase\" " 'Two Kindred Spirits': Sorority and Family
in New England, 1839-1846," New England Quarterly, XXXVI: 1 (March
1963), 23?41. In the decade or so since the Taylor and Lasch article was
written "lesbian" has become less of a clinical word or even a "snarl-word."
The gay-pride movement has permitted many women to use that term fac
tually to describe themselves, and it is used in such a way in this paper.
29 Dickinson sent her sister-in-law hundreds of poems, frequently request
ing and apparently receiving Sue's critical comments. The Single Hound:
Poems of a Lifetime, edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi, is a collection
of some of those poems (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1914).
209
She is tall ?* rather slender, but finely proportioned,

has a most witching pair of blue eyes?rich brown hair
?delicate complexion?cheeks which vie with the
opening rosebud?teeth like pearls?dimples which
come ?s? go like the ripples in yonder little merry
brook?& then she is so affectionate ?? lovely. Forgive
my glowing description, for you know I am always in
love with my teachers.
Dickinson also maintained girlhood friendships with a group

of young women whom she called "the five." 30 If her letters
to Abiah Root are representative of the nature of her involve
ment with the others, it appears that these friendships were
close but not impassioned. This point can be appreciated by
comparing a letter written to Abiah Root in January 1850 with
one written at almost the same time to Emily Fowler, a young
woman with whom Dickinson was apparently in love. The
letter to Abiah includes a long, delightfully-humorous, often
quoted description of having a cold. Dickinson includes, in
passing, a statement of her affection toward Abiah [letter 31]:
29 January 1850
I miss you very much indeed, think of you at night
when the worldys nodding, <nidnid nodding??think of
you in the daytime when the cares of the world, and it's
toils, and itys continual vexations choke up the love for
friends in some of our hearts. . .
In contrast, the letter to Emily Fowler is short, serious, and

intense [letter 32]:
[Early 1850]
I cannot wait to be with you?Oh ugly time, and space,
and uglier snow-storm than all I Were you happy in
Northampton? I was very lonely without you, and
80 The group included Abiah Root, Abby Wood, Harriet Merrill, and
Sarah Tracy, in addition to Dickinson. The only letters extant from this
circle of friends are those that Dickinson wrote to Abiah Root.
210
wanted to write you a letter many time sy but Kate
[Hitchcock] was there tooy and I was afraid you would
both laugh. I should be stronger if I could see you
of tener?I am very puny alone.
You make me so happy, and glad, life seems worth
living for y no matter for all the trials. . .
Dickinson's relationship with Emily Fowler became less in

tense as she grew closer to Sue, yet even in the early part of
1851, she was still writing Emily Fowler what she herself
described as "billet doux," and complaining, "I know I cant
have you always?someday a 'brave dragoon' will be stealing
you away. . ." [letter 40].
AfterEmily's
sue married Austin
relationship Dickinson,
with the character
her necessarily of
changed. But
Dickinson's letters throughout her life indicate that she occa
sionally turned to other women to bestow her love. Rebecca
Patterson has already explored at great length Dickinson's re
lationship with Kate Anthon.31 While much of Patterson's
thesis is conjectural and her conclusions are perhaps extreme,
surely one must agree that Dickinson meant something by
writing to Kate Anthon [letter 222\ :
Summer 1860
. . . Katey Distinctly sweet your face stands in its
phantom niche?I touch your hand?my cheek your
cheek?I stroke your vanished hairy Why did you
enter y sistery since you must depart? Had not its heart
been torn enough but you must send your shred?
Even allowing for the conventions of Victorian language,

women who were simply friends in our conventional meaning
of the term did not write to each other in such a manner, and
Dickinson's letters to her "friends" attest to this fact.
A most impressive proof of this point rests in what Martha
The Riddle of Emily Dickinson.

211
Dickinson Bianchi, a post-Freudian, apparently understanding

the relationship between her mother and her aunt, felt com
pelled to hide. Bianchi published both The Life and Letters
of Emily Dickinson (1924) and Emily Dickinson Face to Face
(1932) during the height of the popularization of Sigmund
Freud. It is likely that she would have been familiar with
Freud's theories as articulated in "Three Essays on the Theory
of Sexuality" (1905) regarding homosexuality as a manifesta
tion of arrested development. She would probably also have
been familiar with earlier reactionary views toward homosexu
ality (especially in males) which emerged as a result of the
scandalous Oscar Wilde trials in the 1890's. Whether she was
or not, both The Life and Letters and Face to Face promulgate
what can only be described as "expurgated" views of Emily
Dickinson's relationship with Martha's mother.
On 6 February 1852 (Johnson date) Emily wrote Sue
[letter 73]:
. . . sometimes I shut my eyes, and shut my heart

towards you, and try hard to forget you because you
grieve me so, but you'll never go away, Oh you never
will?say, Susie, promise me again, and I will smile
faintly?and take up my little cross of sad?sad
separation. How vain it seems to write, when one
knows how to feel?how much more near and dear to
sit beside you, talk with you, hear the tones of your
voice; so hard to deny thyself, and take up thy cross,
and follow mey?give me strength, Susie, write me of
hope and love, and of hearts that endured, and
great was their reward of 'Our Father who art in
Heaven.' I dont know how I shall bear it, when the
gentle spring comes; if she should come and see me
and talk to me of you, Oh it would surely kill me I
While the frost clings to the windows, and the World
is stern and drear; this absence is easier; the Earth
mourns too, for all her little birds; but when they all
come back again, and she sings and is so merry?pray,
212
what will become of me? Susie, forgive mey forget all
what I say. . .
Bianchi reproduced only these lines of the passage:
. . . Sometimes I shut my eyes and shut my heart

towards you and try hard to forget you} but you'll
never go away. Susie} forgive me} forget all that I say.*2
In the letter of 11 June 1852 (Johnson date) Bianchi tells

us that Emily wrote to Sue:
.. . Susie, forgive me Darlingy for every word I say} my
heart is full of youy yet when I seek to say to you
something not for the worldy words fail me. I try to
bring you nearer, I chase the weeks away till they are
quite departed?three weeks?they can't last alwaysy
for surely they must go with their little brothers and
sisters to their long home in the West!33
But by checking the complete letter in the Johnson edition, we

find that Emily wrote [letter 94]:
. . . Susie} forgive me Darlingy for every word I say?
my heart is full of youy none other than you in my
thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something not
for the worldy words fail me. If you were here?and
Oh that you werey my Susie} we need not talk at all}
our eyes would whisper for us} and your hand fast in
mine y we would not ask for language?I try to bring
you nearer y I chase the weeks away till they are quite
departedy and fancy you have comey and I am on my
way through the green lane to meet youy and my heart
goes scampering soy that I have much ado to bring it
back againy and learn it to be patient, till that dear
Susie comes. Three weeks?they can't last always, for
surely they must go with their little brothers and sisters
to their long home in the West I
82 Face to Face, p. 184.

83 Ibid., p. 216.
213
As anxious as Martha Dickinson Bianchi was to prove that

Emily was dependent on Sue and they were the closest of
friends, she was even more anxious to prove that Emily and
Sue were only friends. Thus she includes in Face to Face an
affectionate note that Emily sent Sue on 27 June 1852 (John
son date) :
. . . Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday?

Shall I indeed behold you, not "darkly, but face to
face"?or am I fancying so and dreaming blessed
dreams from which the day will wake me? I hope for
you so much and feel so eager for you?feel I cannot
wait. Sometimes I must have Saturday before
tomorrow comes?*
But what Emily really said in that note places their relation
ship in quite a different light [letter 96]:
. . . Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday,

and be my own again, and kiss me as you used to? Shall
I indeed behold you, not "darkly, but face to face" or
am I fancying so, and dreaming blessed dreams from
which the day will wake me? I hope for you so much,
and feel so eager for you, feel that I cannot wait, feel
that now I must have you?that the expectation once
more to see your face again, makes me feel hot and
feverish, and my heart beats so fast?I go to sleep at
night, and the first thing I know, I am sitting there
wide awake, and clasping my hands tightly, and
thinking of next Saturday, and "never a bit" of you.
Sometimes I must have Saturday before tomorrow
comes.
Why did Bianchi make such omissions if it were not for the
purpose of hiding the true nature of the relationship between
her mother and her aunt? Clearly it was not for considerations
of length, since many of these cuts consist of only a short
84 Ibid., p. 218.
214
phrase. For example, in letter 8 8 Emily writes to Sue regard
ing Sue's journal: "I want you to get it bound?at my expense
?Susie?so when he takes you from me, to live in his new
home, I may have some of you." Bianchi renders the sentence
this way: "I want you to get it bound at my expense, Susie, so
when he takes you to live in his new home I may have some
of you." 35 Surely it was not a consideration of length that
caused Bianchi to omit six letters and one space, which in fact
changed the whole meaning of the sentence.
Nor does she omit passages because they are dull or badly
written. For example, the famous Church passage, the least
prosaic part of letter 88 (Johnson number) is left out of Face
to Face altogether, although much of the rest of the letter is
quoted.36 Bianchi omits:
. . . when he said "Our Heavenly Father'' I said "Oh

Darling Sue'}; when he read the 100th Psalmy I kept
saying your precious letter all over to myselfy and
Susiey when they sang?it would have made you laugh
to hear one little voicey piping to the departed. I made
up words and kept singing how I loved youy and you
had gone y while all the rest of the choir were singing
Hallelujahs. I presume nobody heard mey because I
sang so small, but it was a kind of comfort to think I
might put them out, singing of you. I a'nt there this
afternoony thoyy because I am herey writing a little
letter to my dear Suey and I am very happy. I think
of ten weeks?Dear Oney and I think of love} and
youy and my heart grows full and warmy and my
breath stands still.
This is not simply an example of Bianchi's inept editing or her

bad ear for interesting writing. When she is not hedging, her
cuts are generally quite good?she omits lengthy discussions
of people that are incidental to the principals' lives, repetitive
35 Ibid., p, 214.
S6lbid. pp. 213 215.
215
daily details, menus, etc.37 The inclusion of such material would

give us little insight into Dickinson's character or attitudes or
style. The "Oh Darling Sue" passage gives us a great deal
of insight.
When critics have been faced with making sense of such
cuts, their response has generally been something to the effect
of "[Martha Dickinson Bianchi] simply did not understand
much of what she edited," 38 but an examination of those very
explicit, cut passages shows the utter absurdity of such con
descension.39
Rebecca Patterson points out that Bianchi's awareness was
also acute enough for her to misdate the most passionate of
Emily's letters to Sue, expurgated as they were, so that it would
appear that they were written in 1854-55, when Austin and
Sue were already engaged. The real nature of the letters was
thus disguised: "Puzzling as the letters were, they would still
have to be disposed of as the overflow of sisterly affection." 40
Bianchi tried to insure this impression even further by consis
tently referring to Sue Gilbert as "Sister Sue," as though that
were Emily's affectionate name for her throughout a very
sisterly friendship, while in reality Emily almost never ad
dressed Sue in that manner until several years after Sue's mar
riage to Austin.
It seems that Austin was also bothered by the relationship
between his sister and the woman who became his wife. One
would be hard put to find any other reason for his deleting
references to Sue in most of his letters from Emily when he
gave them to Mabel Todd for publication and for his ordering
Mabel never to mention Sue or include references to her in the
1894 edition of Letters of Emily Dickinson. Mabel Todd was
37Compare, for example, letter 176 and Face to Face, pp. 213-215.
38 John Ciardi, p. 96.
39 Space does not permit a thorough discussion of all Bianchi's omissions,
but an interested reader will find by comparing her edition of the letters
with Johnson's complete edition that almost every passage which clearly goes
beyond the believable bounds of sentimental Victorian friendship has been
expurgated.
40 Patterson, p. 100.
216
so impressed by this order that she asked her daughter Milli

cent Todd Bingham to do likewise in Millicent's book on Dick
inson's literary debut, Ancestors' Brocades (1945).41 In Emily
Dickinson's Home: Letters of Edward Dickinson and His
Family y Bingham reports:
Mr. Dickinson stipulated that if Emily's letters to him

were to be usedy the name of one of her girlhood
friends must be left out?that of Sue Gilbert, his wife.
But omitting her name was not enough. Before turning
over the letters he went through themy eliminating
Sue Gilbert's name and in some instances making
alterations to disguise a reference to her. He asked my
mother to make sure he had overlooked nothing.*2
It is obvious that he wished to hide what appeared to him to

be Emily's obsessive interest in Sue.
It is also fairly clear that Sue was not simply an innocent
recipient of Emily Dickinson's protestations of love 3 she seems
to have answered in her turn. In a letter of February 1852
Dickinson is apparently quoting an assurance that she received
from Sue Gilbert [letter 74]:
. . . Thank you for loving mey darlingy and will you

"love me more if ever you come home"??it is
enoughy dear Susiey I know I shall be satisfied. But
what can I do towards you??dearer you cannot bey for
I love you so alreadyy that it almost breaks my heart
?perhaps I can love you anew, every day of my life,
every morning and evening?Oh if you will let mey
how happy I shall bel
The precious billet, Susie, I am wearing the paper
out y reading it over and o'er y but the dear thoughts cant
wear out if they try} Thanks to Our Father, Susie!
Vmnie and I talked of you all last evening longy and
41 See preface to Ancestors* Brocades: The Literary Debut of Emily Dick

inson (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1945), p. viii.
42 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955), p. 54.
217
went to sleep mourning for you, and pretty soon I

waked up saying, "Precious treasure, thou art mine"
and there you were all right, my Susie, and I hardly
dared to sleep lest someone steal you away. . .
The extant letters from Emily Dickinson to Sue Gilbert are

revealing enough to leave little doubt about the nature of their
relationship, but there are also considerable gaps in the corre
spondence ; and since Sue apparently saved any piece of writ
ing that she received from Emily, those gaps become suspi
cious. For example, there are no letters to Sue between 9 Octo
ber 1851 and 21 January 1852, and yet in Emily's letters to
Austin during this period she mentions several times having
heard from Sue. Since Emily was a dependable correspondent
as far as Sue was concerned, we can assume that she answered
Sue's letters. It is very likely that those responses were among
the letters that Martha Dickinson Bianchi is speaking of in
Face to Face when she tells us that "In accordance with Aunt
Emily's request, my mother before her own death destroyed
such letters as she considered confidential." 43 Since no biog
rapher has placed Emily in the throes of an illicit heterosexual
passion from the period 9 October 1851 to 21 January 1852,
and since she had not yet manifested any of the symptoms of
her putative mental breakdown, if she wrote to Sue at that
time (as surely she must have), it is likely that the letters were
destroyed, and for only one reason?that they were even more
explicit with regard to Emily's devotion (and perhaps with
regard to Sue's encouragement of that devotion).44

44 This is not to say that Sue ever envisioned a future with Emily (although
Emily wrote Sue of her hope that they "would try to make a little destiny to
have for our own"?[letter 56]). Sue clearly felt that she must find respecta
bility and a way out of her orphaned, genteel poverty. On 18 January 1851
she wrote to her brother Dwight: "I am out of my minority and like all
heiresses I am looking about for my dowry?I shall have to adopt some of
Mat's sagacity and examine into the matter?however, I have a secret con
viction that any investigation on the subject would rather mortify than en
rich me" (Years and Hours, p. 191). She saw Austin as the man who was
218
There is one other period that marks a great hiatus in Emily
Dickinson's correspondence: from February 1855 to September
1858 there are no extant letters or notes to Sue. In fact, there
is very little evidence of correspondence of any kind from the
year-and-a-half preceding Sue's marriage to approximately two
years following it. Johnson places in that three-and-a-half-year
period four letters to the Hollands, one letter to Jane Hum
phrey, one letter to Mary Warner, two to John Graves, one
to the unknown "Master" ("about 1858"), and another to her
Aunt Elizabeth ("about 1858"). There are no letters that can
be placed in the year after Sue's marriage, 1857. If letters or
notes were written to Sue during those three-and-a-half years,
they were destroyed at Sue's death because they were too "con
fidential" 5 but it is just as likely that no letters were written.
In any case, it is peculiar that we have no trace of any com
munication between the two over such a crucial period. Again,
Bianchi is no help here: she merely obfuscates the matter by
implying that the relationship between the two women was un
changed by the marriage and that Emily sent Sue notes and
poems even immediately after the marriage.45
While most biographers have commented on the gap in
Dickinson's correspondence, even some of the most astute of
them have failed to make a connection between her loss of Sue
and her ostensible silence. Sewall, for example, tells us that
"Emily seemed delighted . . . with the growing intimacy be
tween Susan and Austin, who became engaged the next spring
(1853)." 46 An examination of the letters that Dickinson wrote
at that time suggests that she was something less than de
lighted. First of all, her letter of congratulation to Austin is
capable of delivering her from this mortification, as she explained in a later

letter to her brother Francis: ". . . he is strong, manly, resolute?understands
human nature and will take care of me?He has not decided yet where to
settle in business, so the where and when of our future home is uncertain
but we shall have a cozy place some-where, where the long-cherished wish
of my heart to have a home where my brothers and sisters can come will be
realized" (Years and Hours, pp. 293-294).
46 The Life of Emily Dickinson, p. 102.
219
extremely strained, in a style quite unlike any of her previous

letters, and filled with a barely-hidden hostility [letter 110]:
27 March 1853
. . . Sue's very sober yet, she thinks it's pretty desolate
without old Mr. Brown.
She seems to be absent, sometimes, on account of
the "old un" and I think you're a villainous rascal to
entrap a young woman's "phelinks" in such an awful
way.
You deserve, let me see; you deserve hot irons, and
Chinese Tartary; and if I were Mary Jane, I would
give you one such "mitten" Sir. as you never had
before! I declare, I have half a mind to throw a stone
as it is, and kill five barn door fowls, but I wont, I'll
be considerate!
The letters to Austin following this one often speak of her

depression [letters 123, 128] :
16 May 1853
. . . Somehow I am lonely lately?I feel very old every
day, and when morning comes and the birds sing, they
dont make me so happy as they used to. I guess it's
because you're gone, and there are not so many of us
as God gave for each other. . . . You rmtst'nt mind
what I say about feeling lonely lately. It is'nt any
matter, but I thought I would tell you, so you'd know
why I did'nt write more.
19 June 1853
. . . I dont know why exactly, but things look blue,
today, and I hardly know what to do, everything looks
so strangely, but if you want to hear from me, I
shall love very much to write. . .
Such notes are especially striking when compared to the tone

she took toward her brother in letters of the past: those of pre
vious years had been almost invariably cheerful and always
220
solicitous of him rather than concerned with herself. It is as
though she is saying here in a passive-aggressive manner:
"Look what you have done to me."
But the most interesting of these post-engagement letters to
Austin is the one written on 12 April 1853. Emily speaks in
this letter of having spent Saturday evening with Sue. She tells
Austin "I have taken your place (italics in Johnson edition)
Saturday evening, since you have been away, but I will give
it back to you as soon as you gtt home." Then without much
relevance to the preceding statements of the letter, she remem
bers their childhood happiness [letter 115]:
. . . Those times seem far off nowy a great wayy as

things we did when children. I wish we were children
now. I wish we were always childreny how to grow up
I dont know.
Without wishing to belabor the point, I would like to suggest

that Emily suddenly desired a return to childhood because it
marked a period when no males would take her girlfriends
away from her to provide for them in an adult world, as she
could not.
It is also clear from the letters that once Emily suspected
Austin's interest in Sue, she tried very hard to steer him to
wards other women, especially Sue's sister, Martha. While
Austin was away at school, she sent him hints such as [letters
62y 76y 82y 90] :
11 November 1851
. . . Mattie sends you her love?she thinks a great deal
of you?I enjoy seeing her so much, because we are
both bereavedy and can sorrow on togethery and Martha
loves yoUy and we both love Susiey and the hours fly
so fast when we are talking of you.
18 February 1852
. . . I think it would make Mat very happy to have a
letter from you should you find a leisure houry
although she did not tell me to say so. . .
221
24 March 1852
. . . [Mat] inquired all about you, and is delighted
enough, that you are coming home. I think Mat's got
the notion that you dont care much for home or old
friends, but have found their better substitutes in
Boston, tho' I do my very best to undelude her. But
you will be here soon, and you, of all others, know best
how to convince her.
13 May 1852
. . . Mat said she had a beautiful letter from you last
night. She was going to send you some flowers in a box,
the other day, but you hadn't then answered her letter,
and Mat is very shy, so you see why you did'nt get
them.*1
But as much as she seemed to want to plead Martha's case, she

also steered Austin in other directions which led away from
Sue and which she hoped, perhaps, would provide her with an
additional margin of safety.48
Once the engagement was officially announced, however,
Dickinson apparently realized that there was nothing she could
do to stop the seemingly inevitable, and thus she offered her
self up as a go-between?although she made sure that Sue
could not misunderstand her pathetic situation. In her letter to
Sue of 12 March 1853, for example, she speaks of her happi
ness at being able to serve Sue and Austin as a go-between, but
she also likens herself to Miss Julia Mills, the spinster in David
Copperfield, who, as Sue would surely remember, is described
as "interested in others' loves, herself withdrawn." In this
same letter [107] she complains to Sue:
Dear Susie, you are gone?One would hardly think I
47Sewall suggests that "Emily would have welcomed either girl as sister
in-law," i.e., Martha or Sue {The Life of Emily Dickinson, p. 104) ; but in
these early years Emily seems much more determined to convince Austin of
Martha's charms.
48 See, for example, her encouragement of Austin's relationship with Miss
Nichols: letters 65 and 80.
222
had lost you to hear this revelry, but your absence
insanes me so?I do not feel so peacefuly when you are
gone from me?All life looks differently, and the
faces of my fellows are not the same they wear when
you are with me. . .
However, even with the release that such expressions of self

pity may have provided, this go-between role was often too
much to maintain, and in several of the post-engagement let
ters, Emily dropped her pretense of cooperation and allowed
her anger to show. The estrangement between the two became
particularly strong in 1854, and for a long period of time
there seems to have been no correspondence on either side.
Emily broke the silence in late August 1854. She refers to
having been vexed at Sue and also indicates that she has heard
news of her only through Austin, although "nobody in this
world except Vinnie and Austin, know that in all the while,
I have not heard from you" [letter 172]. The letter which
follows in the Johnson edition [173], dated "about 1854," is
particularly self-pitying, but Emily's anger is totally undis
guised: "Sue?you can go or stay?There is but one alterna
tive?We differ often lately, and this must be the last." The
nature of the incidents that triggered these outbursts of anger
is less significant than the fact that she was angry.
A number of biographers have observed that the marriage
of Sue and Austin "seems to have jarred the intimacy tempo
rarily between Emily and Sue." 49 But with the exception of
John Cody's exploration of this alienation in After Great Pain}
no other Dickinson biographer has considered at length the
reasons for the "jarred intimacy" -, and they have in fact spe
cifically rejected Cody's "theory ... of Emily's being crushed
when she lost Sue to Austin." 50
It is difficult to understand such tenacity in refusing to see
what should be obvious through an examination of the letters,
the best source that we have to trace Emily Dickinson's life:
49 See, for example, Years and Hours, p. xi.

50Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson, p. 107n.
223
Emily Dickinson loved Sue Gilbert 5 she attempted to steer

Austin away from Sue until she realized it was fruitless, and
then she lapsed into self-pity, anger, and finally silence?there
are no letters to anyone that can be definitely dated from the
summer of 1856 to the summer of 1858 (and in view of the
volume of her surviving correspondence of the other years, it
is hard to believe that just by coincidence all the letters of the
two years following the marriage were lost). It is especially
odd that while Sue went to Geneva, New York, to prepare for
the marriage, we have absolutely no trace of Emily's having
written her5 and it is certainly out of character that Emily
apparently wrote no congratulatory note to the two people who
were so close to her when they honeymooned in Niagara Falls
the first part of July.61
John Cody suggests that it was at this point in her life that
Emily Dickinson had a nervous breakdown.52 There is, of
course, no way to determine the truth of Cody's assertion,
which is based on circumstantial evidence. But it is most curi
ous that while we have a fairly good idea of her life from the
time she was sixteen years old, we know absolutely nothing
definite about her during this two-year period, except that she
entered and won a breadbaking contest at the 1856 Annual
Cattle Show (Cody explains this activity as being her family's
notion of recreational therapy), she was asked to serve on the
judging committee for the contest for the following year (but
we do not know that she served), and on 12 December 1856
she cut out and saved from the newspaper The Express an
advertisement for tombstones.
A perusal of Edward T. James and Janet Wilson James'
biographical dictionary Notable American Women: 1607
1950,53 points up the fact that most women writers of achieve
ment turned to their art after some great, traumatic loss. Emily
51 We know that Austin was writing letters to others at that time. A note
to Gordon Ford dated 6 July 1856 is extant {Years and Hours, p. 343).
Therefore, it is apparent that the couple was not incommunicado.
02 After Great Pain, p. 346.
53 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
224
Dickinson began writing poetry seriously in 1858, two years

after she lost Sue to Austin. Her reconciliation with Sue came
at about the same time (the first extant letter is 26 September
1858), and those early poems were invariably sent to Sue for
criticism. It is as though Emily found a way to be after a dark
period: if she could not share her life with Sue, she would
share her art.
225

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The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

Emily Dickinson's Letters to Sue Gilbert

Emily Dickinson's Letters

Her breast is fit for pearls,

1 The Letters of Emily Dickinson, eds. Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora

One critic settles on the easiest solution by suggesting that "the

Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night

7 The Riddle of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,

vague symbols?encourages subjective interpretations of the

12 A virgin who has amorous interests in a man is considered heterosexual

13 See, for example, letters 247, 249, 252.

ready suggested that Sue (Martha Dickinson Bianchi's mother)

We outgrow love, like other things

During her late teens and throughout most of her twenties,

Friend? May 1854

It is possible that the letter is a code message of some kind, but

Her overwhelming involvement with Sue Gilbert at this time

Biographers and critics

[to Elizabeth Holland] 18 March 1855

22John Ciardi, "Review of The Riddle of Emily Dickinson" New En

should seek your forgiveness, and it did not occur to

[to susan and martha gilbert] 28 February 1855

[to susan gilbert] late January 1855

While all three of these letters employ the embarrassingly

They were nearly of the same age. . . . They sat together

hearsal in girlhood of the great drama of woman's life.24

After this introduction, Longfellow presents the real emo

2? Kavanagh: A Romance (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, n.d.),

She is tall ?* rather slender, but finely proportioned,

Dickinson also maintained girlhood friendships with a group

In contrast, the letter to Emily Fowler is short, serious, and

Dickinson's relationship with Emily Fowler became less in

Even allowing for the conventions of Victorian language,

The Riddle of Emily Dickinson.

Dickinson Bianchi, a post-Freudian, apparently understanding

. . . sometimes I shut my eyes, and shut my heart

. . . Sometimes I shut my eyes and shut my heart

In the letter of 11 June 1852 (Johnson date) Bianchi tells

But by checking the complete letter in the Johnson edition, we

82 Face to Face, p. 184.

As anxious as Martha Dickinson Bianchi was to prove that

. . . Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday?

. . . Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday,

. . . when he said "Our Heavenly Father'' I said "Oh

This is not simply an example of Bianchi's inept editing or her

daily details, menus, etc.37 The inclusion of such material would

so impressed by this order that she asked her daughter Milli

Mr. Dickinson stipulated that if Emily's letters to him

It is obvious that he wished to hide what appeared to him to

. . . Thank you for loving mey darlingy and will you

41 See preface to Ancestors* Brocades: The Literary Debut of Emily Dick

went to sleep mourning for you, and pretty soon I

The extant letters from Emily Dickinson to Sue Gilbert are

43 Face to Face, p. 176.

capable of delivering her from this mortification, as she explained in a later

extremely strained, in a style quite unlike any of her previous

The letters to Austin following this one often speak of her

Such notes are especially striking when compared to the tone

. . . Those times seem far off nowy a great wayy as