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"I dwell in Possibility—" (Poem 657)

A. JAMES WOHLPART (ESSAY DATE WINTER 2001)

SOURCE: Wohlpart, A. James. "A New Redemption: Emily Dickinson's Poetic in Fascicle 22 and 'I dwell in Possibility.'" South Atlantic Review 66, no. 1 (winter 2001): 50-83.

In the following essay, Wohlpart argues that the poems that make up fascicle 22, particularly "I dwell in Possibility—," illustrate the gender constraints implicit in a patriarchal culture and Dickinson's attempt to undermine the foundations of that culture.

It was a life deliberately organized on her terms. The terms she had been handed by society—Calvinist Protestantism, Romanticism, the nineteenth-century corseting of women's bodies, choices, and sexuality—could spell insanity to a woman genius. What this one had to do was retranslate her own unorthodox,...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Emily Dickinson (Poem Date 1861?)
   2. Emily Dickinson (Poem Date 1862?)
   3. Emily Dickinson (Poem Date 1862?)
   4. Emily Dickinson (Poem Date 1863?)
4. General Commentary
   1. Adrienne Rich (Essay Date 1976)
5. Title Commentary
   1. "A solemn thing—it was—I said" (Poem 271)
   2. "I dwell in Possibility—" (Poem 657)
   3. "Because I could not stop for Death—" (Poem 712)
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Emily Dickinson
2. Feminism