One of the connections I found in Emily Dickinsons, "My Life had stood - A Loaded Gun" really resonated with me, and I thought I'd blog about it to see if anyone else had any similar thoughts:
Throughout the poem I connected the woods as a Patriarchal society (I don't think I need to go into detail on how I found that.?), and the Mountains were men because of their big and strong appearance as well as their high position in the Patriarchal society. So when I got to the third stanza where Dickinson compares the firing of the gun to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, I thought Vesuvius had to be a man as well if it was a mountain. I took the pleasure filled explosion of a man (Mount Vesuvius) to mean the male orgasm. And for many reasons I took the firing of the gun to be the voicing or publishing of the thoughts of the female writer.
I found it interesting, if my assumptions about the symbols are correct, that Dickinson would say that a woman's voiced opinion is as satisfying as a man's orgasm: "It is as a Vesuvian face Had let its pleasure through - ". Men and women need eachother to procreate in order to continue the human race. Men need women to bear them children to carry on the male name and legacy in a Patriarchal society; to conceive a child a male orgasm (Vesuvius' eruption), or sperm is needed to fertilize the female egg (I'm sure you all know by now that babies don't come from storks, so sorry for the complete break down, I just wanted to go through this step by step so I don't miss anything).
IF Dickinson is saying that the writer or woman's thought is as powerful as a man's orgasm, then the woman has found a substitute and no longer needs the man. As the last stanza to the poem describes the gun, or writer's works as "Without - the power to die -" she implies that the writer's (female) works are immortal. If the writer's thoughts are immortal then this enforces the woman no longer needing the man because her works will carry on her legacy for her and they will be creations entirely of her own, as opposed to bearing children to carry the legacy. In saying that women can survive through time without men to aid them, women are shedding their need of Patriarchal societies.
Woww! Loved that interpretation!!! Its weird, because everyone has their own way of putting a spin on a piece of literatre. Yours was very interesting, and definatly plausable! :)
ReplyDeleteI never thought of that. That is such an awesome interpretation!!! It's very insightful:). I think it was great that you connected it to what Dr. Pond seemed to be leaning too (gun=female writer) but also found something new.
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