Eyes Speak Lies ...

Emily D.

POEM 1

I had been hungry all the years-
My noon had come, to dine-
I, trembling, drew the table near
And touched the curious wine.

'T was this on tables I had seen
When turning, hungry, lone,
I looked in windows, for the wealth
I could not hope to own.

I did not know the ample bread,
'T was so unlike the crumb
The birds and I had often shared
In Nature's dining-room.

The plenty hurt me, 't was so new,--
Myself felt ill and odd,
As berry of a mountain bush
Transplanted to the road.

Nor was I hungry; so I found
That hunger was a way
Of persons outside windows,
The entering takes away.

POEM 2

God gave a loaf to every bird,
But just a crumb to me;
I dare not eat it, though I starve,--
My poignant luxury
To own it, touch it, prove the feat
That made the pellet mine,--
Too happy in my sparrow chance
For ampler coveting.

It might be famine all around,
I could not miss an ear,
Such plenty smiles upon my board,
My garner shows so fair.
I wonder how the rich may feel,--
An Indiaman--an Earl?
I deem that I with but a crumb
Am sovereign of them all.

POEM 3

I meant to have but modest needs,
Such as content, and heaven;
Within my income these could lie,
And life and I keep even.

But since the last included both,
It would suffice my prayer
But just for one to stipulate,
And grace would grant the pair.

And so, upon this wise I prayed,—
Great Spirit, give to me
A heaven not so large as yours,
But large enough for me.

A smile suffused Jehovah’s face;
The cherubim withdrew;
Grave saints stole out to look at me,
And showed their dimples, too.

I left the place with all my might,—
My prayer away I threw;
The quiet ages picked it up,
And Judgment twinkled, too,

That one so honest be extant
As take the tale for true
That “Whatsoever you shall ask,
Itself be given you.”

But I, grown shrewder, scan the skies
With a suspicious air,—
As children, swindled for the first,
All swindlers be, infer.

Feminists have long contested over the issues of gender and economics (or economic control) and how these determine or are determined by the patriarchial setup. The three poems by Emily Dickinson that I shall consider over here, pretty much state what the feminists have been trying to fight for, for the past century and a half. The major image she invokes in all the three poems is of lack in the socio-economic context (through hunger). Freud formulated the concept of imaginary body where a woman’s body is given meaning, according to him, by the absence of the phallus in the pre-Oedipal stages or a lack, rather than in autonomous terms. So, in a way, the image of lack that Freud proposed in the earlier stages of development of the female body, propagates itself in the social and economic context in the patriarchial setup, although the system existed long before Freud first voiced his opinions. Freud’s idea of lack is necessarily essentialist, but it can be extended in the current context to the socio-economic realm.

In the following analysis of the poems, I shall consider the ‘I’ to be a female, given that a first person narrative by a poetess would in all probability involve a female narrator. Also, it is interesting to note that Dickinson uses hunger to denote the lack of something, since hunger in itself can represent need (essentialist element of human survival), desire and the satiation of hunger, a metaphorical, and to an extent, literal representation of economic power.

In Poem 1, a long, perpetuating hunger was all that the narrator had witnessed, accompanied by a knowledge of what lay on the other side of the windows, before she got access to the wealth she’d never had. Does the narrator see the windows as an opening to economic control and a larger access to what is valued in society, or is it simply a desire for what is denied or restricted to herself? She says that she had no hopes of owning the wealth (whether we look at it in materialistic terms, or in term of power relations, with wealth being associated with the wielder of power) that she had seen through the windows. Again, in Poem 2, she talks of the scant availability of bread to her, just a crumb as compared to others who get a loaf, and of starving, a condition that remains unchanged (though her perspective of the situation changes) in her case even as famine strikes and others go from ample supply to nothing. In the changed circumstances, she is deemed as, or at least sees herself as the “sovereign of them all.” The insufficiency again relegates the narrator to a situation of lack, and her act of preserving the sole crumb of bread she had, reminds me of the arguments given in favour of the poor, lower class women who are tagged as efficient managers for persevering through poverty in want of a better solution for their deplorable condition.

In all the three poems, the narrator does not possess power in the socio-economic context. She is the one asking for what she desires or needs, rather than being in a position to be able to give something, or in the very least, get what she wants for herself. The sense that we get, is of her being excluded from a certain society and her endeavour to get within that circle of the important, the valuable, whether it be the windows that demarcate the boundaries of the wealthy and the hungry, or the heaven that only Gods can bestow, that is reserved for the very elite who are privileged to enjoy its comforts and contentment. This again can be seen as a parallel to the quest of women to make inroads into the public sphere, to prove themselves equal in all respects, yet do it within a patriarchial setup where men still call the shots and have the power to decide the outcome. In the first poem, the narrator feels out of place, in the second, she feels privileged, in the third, she’s hurt, various emotions that one will go through depending on the context and the circumstances, but she has no control over what brings about those circumstances. She can only react according to what others decide.

In Poem 1, she feels hungry no more, once she gets to have the plenty she desired. Even in the second poem, there is a sense of glee in her possession of the crumb that she only wished to touch and was happy as long as she owned it.

“Too happy in my sparrow chance
For ampler coveting.”

In socio-economic terms, Dickinson portrays the narrator as wanting, as being economically weaker, who finds it hard to grapple with new found resources and access to the bountiful, maybe because it has become a part of her identity to be so, or maybe because she decides to shun what is valued in patriarchy.

Is this happiness in being hungry and this inability to satiate her hunger, a result of being hungry for extended durations of time? Has she been hungry for so long that her identity has come to be based on being hungry? If so, then access to resources aplenty would be a threat to her identity or psychological survival. The internalization of hunger has probably become a psychological barrier to its fulfillment rather than a condition imposed by the outer world. Or could it be that the cost at which plenty is achieved is what is unacceptable to the narrator?

If such be the case, does that change how we perceive the non-participation of women in the public sphere in equal numbers and at equal status in substantive terms? With laws in place to ensure formal equality, their actual implementation in substance is hindered by a variety of factors. The patriarchial setup in itself poses a lot of restrictions on women and their active participation in what is considered to be the public political sphere. Moreover, having been denied access to the public sphere for ages, does formulation of certain laws ensure that there shall be no more exclusion from the same? It might be ingrained in a lot of women that the private sphere is their domain, and though they technically have an option of moving to the public, but then having never done so, or having been deprived of the same for such a long time, it forms a psychological impediment to be a part of the unknown.

Another reason for her not feeling hungry anymore once she is on the other side of the windows is that what looked so alluring from the outside is not worth the effort or the hue and the cry. Her hunger is no more sustained, or in other words, she rejects what the patriarchy has to offer to her in terms of power or wealth. Thus, even in Poem 2, she is happy with the little she has, and that can be understood more easily if we realize that having power as a source of happiness is a concept of the patriarchy.

In Poem 1, she remarks that she was hungry and lonely as she looked through the windows. Later, when she is on the other side of the windows, she says that she feels like a berry of the wild transplanted to a roadside. If we consider that her initial loneliness is a result of her being excluded from certain aspects of life, her access to those very aspects later on and her disillusionment even then, probably speaks volumes about the true nature of wealth that entices from afar. Her comparison to the berry is again telling of the fact that enjoyment and satisfaction are not related to material wealth, and that even though she finally had them at her will, she still felt out of place, maybe because she was the only one of her kind in there, in the larger patriarchial setup. Her compatriots, friends of the ‘wild’ were not with her, and that is when she realizes that

“That hunger was a way
Of persons outside windows,
The entering takes away.”

Nature and its components appear again and again in the narrator’s description of her state. This would link up with the separatist notions already apparent in the poems, since ecofeminism too advocates a bifurcation of paths. The narrator feels more comfortable in the company of nature rather than culture, and when displaced, sorely misses her companions. The theme and content of the poems, thus, seem to be in harmony with each other.

Need, desire and the socio-economic power, and how they function in relation with gender, have been and still are issues of major discussion amongst feminists world over. Although herself a recluse and pretty removed from the outside world, Dickinson writes at a time when feminism as a movement and an ideology was beginning to come up in a more structured fashion. Her writings, in a feminist light, might throw open more obscure avenues for discussion than authors who wrote with the constraints of acceptance of their works, and hence went through stages of censorship (self or otherwise).

Having looked at the content, let’s have a look at the poetics. In all the three poems being considered, Dickinson follows a very strict and rigorous structure, with four, eight and four lines stanzas respectively. The lines consist of eight and six syllables alternately. In an area dominated by men, Dickinson’s presence and mastering of the structure that evolved through men’s writing, is a statement that women being a part of the same society can do anything as well as men can, and restricting their access to different spheres is not justified. It is saying that they are capable of being a part of those things that patriarchy has historically prevented them from doing. She proves that women can do and be better at what the men have conventionally done. Through this, she would subscribe more to the liberal feminist approach, where separatism is shunned in favor of substantive equality. Even though she perfects the art of sticking to a standard structure for her poems, at the same time, not using the standard rhyme scheme, she also tries to subvert the norms, leaving her own stamp. Her lines, at best, are very loosely rhyming (e.g. Earl/all, air/infer etc.)

All the poems have end-stopped lines barring a few which have a caesura (or an in-line break) that hinders the flow of the poem and makes one think. The caesuras in Poem 1 occur when she talks of the availability of food in plenty to the narrator, the laid table and the recession of hunger. In Poem 2, the caesuras occur when she talks of the crumb of bread and its importance to her. She probably wants the readers to stop and think about those issues. Why is the availability of plenty for a woman worth a second thought? Or is it that this is such a rare scenario (like her having a crumb of bread) that she wants us to stop and think it over, the reasons and the consequences for the same. In Poem 3, the caesuras occur when she asks for ‘content’ and ‘heaven’ for herself, and later when she realizes her folly after being laughed at, at her naïveté. This again raises questions about the right to and the amount of happiness that women are allowed, and whether a certain kind of policing and control over them amounts to oppression, and of what sort. Here again, through style, she reiterates the content of the poems and succeeds in creating a text that can be seen as subscribing to a definite theme and ideology.

posted by Swetank Gupta @ 11:28 pm 2 Comments