Name: エミリー・ディキンソンはゲイ？[CC] (Was Emily Dickinson Gay? [CC])
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:17:37.000Z
Duration: 14 min 6 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

様態の副詞

So… You probably learned about Emily Dickinson’s poetry during your schooling and even if you

didn’t you’ve probably heard of her. She’s thought of as pretty mope-y, antisocial, afraid

of being published and obsessed with mysterious men but never brave enough to do anything

about it. The 2016 film, A Quiet Passion, leaned heavily in to this idea: portraying

her as a lonely woman, wracked with vulnerability and in love with a married reverend.

But today we’re going to be considering whether you were possibly lied to in school

and Emily Dickenson was really gay, gay, gay!

- Spoiler but I’d just like to point out that in researching this video I learnt the

word clitorocentrism so… make of that what you will.

If you would like to discover other rainbows that were overlooked in your history classes

then I suggest you subscribe to my channel and check out my historical profile playlist,

which you’ll find in a card above and in the description below.

I too had no idea that she was a rainbow sibling until I read a review of the 2018 film ‘Wild

Nights With Emily’ that delved into her lady love.

- yes, it came out in 2018 and I’m only just talking about it now.

So who was Emily Dickinson…? According to those school history books anyway!

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10th 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts on the

West Coast of the United States of America. Her family were prominent in the local community

but not wealthy as her father was a local lawyer and trustee of Amherst College, of

which his father had been a founder. They lived in the family mansion-

- Yes, I know I just said they weren’t wealthy and then followed that up with ‘they lived

in a mansion’ but wealth is unfortunately relative and what seems a lot when you’re

- Oh no, that’s the whole joke, just...

Emily was a well behaved child with a pleasant life and an education that was ambitiously

broad for a Victorian girl. Her father was very invested in having well educated children

and followed their school progress whilst away from home. In letters Emily describes

her father in warm terms but her mother is thought to have been cold and aloof. Emily

wrote that she “always ran home to her brother Austin when a child, if anything

started together at Amherst Academy, a former boys’

school that had opened to female students just two years earlier. She spent seven years

at the Academy, taking classes in English, classical literature, Latin, botany, history,

philosophy and arithmetic. The school’s principal at the time later recalled that

Emily was both “very bright” and “an excellent scholar, of exemplary deportment,

From a young age Emily was troubled by thoughts of death and the deaths of those close to

her. She was traumatised when her cousin and close friend, Sophia Holland, grew ill and

then died from typhus in April 1844 when Emily was just 14 years old. She later wrote: “it

seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even look

at her face.” Indeed she became so melancholic that her parents sent her away to stay with

family friends and recover. She soon returned and made many friends during her time at the

Academy… including Susan Huntington Gilbert.

Remember Susan, she’ll be very important later

After finishing at the Academy she began attending the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (which later

became Mount Holyoke College) about ten miles from her home but only lasted ten months before

returning home where she “occupied her time with household activities” like baking for

the family and getting involved in the local community.

And, thankfully for the literary world, she also took up writing. Her early influences

were William Wordsworth, Lydia Maria Child, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Shakespeare.

- “That’s lovely, Jessica, but where is the gay stuff?”

During Emily’s adult life, her strongest and most affectionate relationship was with

her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert. yes, that Susan- she married Emily’s brother. And

that’s not the only reason she’s important… it's a whole thing.

Emily sent more than 300 hundred letters to Susan, more than any other correspondent and

it’s worth noting that they actually lived really quite close together! And by ‘close

together’ I mean “literally right next door”.

- So… I’m just saying… Seems interesting, no?

Susan was very supportive of Emily’s poetry, inspiring her and helping her to edit.

But here, friends, is where we meet our antagonist! For Emily’s poems were barely published

during her lifetime: only 10 of them actually saw the light of day. Posthumously her work

and many letters fell into the hands of Mabel Loomis Todd, the wife of a faculty member

She was also the mistress of Emily’s brother Austin!

And what did Mabel do? Well she edited out any positive mention of Susan… which was

Mabel promoted the idea that poor Susan had actually been ‘cruel’ and cold to Emily-

which was a notion very much rejected by Emily’s surviving nephews and nieces.

Let me just read you a section of a letter from Emily to Susan and then you can make

up your own mind about how cold she was: “Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday, and

be my own again, and kiss 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 ... my darling,

so near I seem to you, that I disdain this pen, and wait for a warmer language."

Not that we can say Emily was 100% gay because we don’t know… maybe Emily was bisexual.

Because bisexuals exist, people! And bi-erasure is a thing.

Not that her poetry is prudish- there is little question that Dickinson’s love poetry is

erotically charged. The exact nature of that sexually being, as I mentioned, less clear.

In numerous poems it is impossible to determine the genders and sexual identities of Dickinson’s

But can’t we argue that playing the pronoun game is pretty gay in itself…? Don’t get

me wrong but whenever someone says ‘my partner’ I get a very excited ‘ooh this is going

- Not all gays know each other grandma, calm down

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エミリー・ディキンソンはゲイ？[CC] (Was Emily Dickinson Gay? [CC])

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