Background
Emily Dickinson was a recluse and lived mainly alone throughout her life, particularly at the end. She was educated at Amherst Academy and was a very good student, despite missing school due to illnesses and depression often. It is believed that her weak emotional stability was what caused her to finally leave the academy in 1848. Her family lived in The Homestead of Amherst. Emily stayed there until her death, originally isolated there to take care of her mother. People think she also may have become secluded at The Homestead because she wasn't entirely stable. She suffered from a phobia of places/situations that might cause stress or embarrassment, depression, and anxiety. Most of her poems came out of her solitary time at Amherst.
Though she had little outside influences (aside from letters she wrote to friends) to affect her writing due to her isolation, the isolation itself affected her writing. More than having the time to become her most productive self as a writer, Amherst and her condition could have been what made her poetry dark. She wrote of death with ease, and in Because I could not stop for Death she displays it in a good light- civil and kind. Also perhaps because she was a Christian, she believed in an afterlife. Which may have made her opinion of death to be less harsh and more welcomed.
More Info: http://www.biography.com/people/emily-dickinson-9274190#writing-and-influences
Summary
There are 3 characters in this poem: the narrator, Death, and Immortality. Because the narrator could not stop everything happening in her life for Death, he “kindly” stopped for her. He picks her up in a Carriage, and with Immortality they go for a drive. They pass a school of children where recess is taking place, grain fields, and finally the setting sun. Then Death passes the narrator and leaves her with Immortality. She finds that Life is fragile and her dress and tippet are small things that hardly matter in life and certainly don’t matter when Death comes. The carriage ride pauses before a house in the ground that you can infer is a grave. Then the poem flashes forward to present time, which the narrator says is centuries later. She says that she originally assumed that “the Horse’s Heads” of the carriage were “toward Eternity”; meaning now she realizes the carriage ride was headed for something different.
My Analysis
I thought that she was saying she was living her life without enough time for things, and she couldn’t stop because she didn’t have time for stopping. So when “Death kindly stopped” for her, she was relieved. On their carriage ride, Death introduces her to Immortality and shows her life from beginning to end. The school represents the start of life because of the careless, happy, free children playing at recess. Then come the fields where I assume the narrator was introduced to work and strife and difficulty. Finally there is the setting sun, which represents the end of life along with end to the day, to show beauty in endings.
The carriage ride is her beginning of immortality, which is why she meets Immortality there and is left with Him when Death passes them by. In the lines “For only Gossamer, my Gown/ My Tippet- only Tulle-”, Emily is using fabric materials to demonstrate material things. Gossamer and Tulle are fragile materials, and Emily picked them to show that material things are weak and do not stand up to Death. The house the carriage pauses before is a grave. I thought that the carriage stopped there to show that the narrator, being immortal, never goes to the grave but will be left forever on the edge of death. In the final lines Dickinson talks about realizing the carriage was headed for something different. I thought that this part was saying that she now realizes “Eternity” isn’t all that it is cut out to be. And in the lines “‘tis Centuries – and yet/ Feels shorter than the Day”, Emily is trying to get the message across that centuries of limitless days are not worth as much as a day that is numbered.
Other Points of View on Because I could not stop for Death
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Dickinson.html
Connections to Dark Romanticism
Emily Dickinson’s ease in which she speaks of death, and the way she turns it into something that is not to be feared but rather accepted; reflects the darker parts of this literary period. Dark Romanticism is an obvious genre type for this poem because of its dark theme and creepier symbols. Graves to represent homes, Death as a character, etc. are pretty creepy symbols that Emily Dickinson used. And her theme talks about death, essentially saying that death isn’t bad and must be accepted.
Study Questions
- How long ago did the narrator go on the carriage ride?
- Centuries ago
- Who was on the carriage ride?
- Death, Immortality, and the narrator
- What was the “house” symbolizing in the 4th stanza?
- a grave
- What was the “Horses Heads” referring to in the final stanza?
- where the carriage was heading to
- What was Emily Dickinson’s perception of death?
- She did not fear it, but rather accepted it. In this poem she even portrays Death as kind and civil.
Video Summary
https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/du3j5PSv7y2/emily-dickinson-479/#/
Works Cited/ External Links
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/because-i-could-not-stop-death-479
Johnson, Thomas H., ed. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. N.p.: Little, Brown and Company,
1960. N. pag. Web. 3 Dec. 2015.
http://www.biography.com/people/emily-dickinson-9274190#writing-and-influences
http://www.shmoop.com/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death/summary.html
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Dickinson.html
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+dark+romantics+in+american+literature