Lunacy of Light: Emily Dickinson and the Experience of Metaphor (Ad Feminam)

234 Pages·1987·0.79 MB·English

by  Wendy Barker

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title: Lunacy of Light : Emily Dickinson and the Experience of
Metaphor Ad Feminam
author: Barker, Wendy.
publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0809317079
print isbn13: 9780809317073
ebook isbn13: 9780585106212
language: English
subject Dickinson, Emily,--1830-1886--Criticism and interpretation,
Feminism and literature--New England--History--19th century,
Women and literature--New England--History--19th century,
Light and darkness in literature, Metaphor.
publication date: 1991
lcc: PS1541.Z5B28 1987eb
ddc: 811/.4
subject: Dickinson, Emily,--1830-1886--Criticism and interpretation,
Feminism and literature--New England--History--19th century,
Women and literature--New England--History--19th century,
Light and darkness in literature, Metaphor.
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Page ii
Ad Feminam: Women and Literature
Edited by Sandra M. Gilbert
Christina Rosetti
The Poetry of Endurance
By Dolores Rosenblum
The Literary Existence of Germaine de Staël
By Charlotte Hogsett
Margaret Atwood
Vision and Forms
Edited by Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro
He Knew She Was Right
The Independent Woman in the Novels of Anthony Trollope
By Jane Nardin
The Woman and the Lyre
Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome
By Jane McIntosh Snyder
Refiguring the Father
New Feminist Readings of Patriarchy
Edited by Patricia Yaeger and Beth Kowaleski-Wallace
Writing in the Feminine
Feminism and Experimental Writing in Quebec
By Karen Gould

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Page iii
Lunacy of Light
Emily Dickinson and the Experience of Metaphor
Wendy Barker
Southern Illinois University Press
Carbondale and Edwardsville

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Page iv
To Larry
Copyright © 1987 by the Board of Trustees,
Southern Illinois University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United Sram of America
Edited by Teresa White
Designed by Joyce Kachergis
Production supervised by Natalia Nadraga
Paperback edition, 1991
94 93 92 91 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barker, Wendy.
Lunacy of light: Emily Dickinson and the experience of metaphor /
Wendy Barker.
p. cm.(Ad feminam)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. Dickinson, Emily. 18301886Criticism and interpretation.
2. Feminism and literatureUnited StatesHistory19th century.
3. Light and darkness in literature. 4. Metaphor. I. Title.
II. Series.
PS1541.Z5B28 1991
811'.4dc20 90-40929
CIP
ISBN 0-8093-1707-9 (pbk.)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information
SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

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Page v
Contents
Ad Feminam: Women and Literature
Sandra M. Gilbert vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
Gender, Hierarchy, and the Great Principle of Light 1
1 Broad Daylight, Cooking Stoves, and the Eye of God
The Formation of a Common Metaphor 31
2 Dowering and Depriving
The Mighty Sun and His Yellow Whip 51
3 Races Nurtured in the Dark 74
4 Dwelling in Possibility
A Light of One's Own 102
5 Enacting the Difference
A Whole New Metaphor Beginning Here 134
Notes 189
Index to Dickinson Poems Cited 207
Index 211

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Page vii
Ad Feminam: Women and Literature
Ad Hominem: to the man; appealing to personal interests, prejudices, or emotions rather than to reason; an argument ad
hominem.
American Heritage Dictionary
Until quite recently, much literary criticism, like most humanistic studies, has been in some sense constituted out of arguments
ad hominem. Not only have examinations of literary history tended to address themselves "to the man"that is, to the identity of
what was presumed to be the man of letters who created our culture's monuments of unaging intellectbut many aesthetic
analyses and evaluations have consciously or unconsciously appealed to the "personal interests, prejudices, or emotions" of male
critics and readers. As the title of this series is meant to indicate, the intellectual project called "feminist criticism" has sought to
counter the limitations of ad hominem thinking about literature by asking a series of questions addressed ad feminam: to the
woman as both writer and reader of texts.
First, and most crucially, feminist critics ask, what is the relationship between gender and genre, between sexuality and
textuality? But in mediating on these issues they raise a number of more specific questions. Does a woman of letters have a
literaturea language, a history, a traditionof her own? Have conventional methods of canon-formation tended to exclude or
marginalize female achievements? More generally, do men and women have different modes of literary representation, different
definitions of literary production? Do such differences mean that distinctive male- (or female-)

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Page viii
authored images of women (or men), as well as distinctly male and female genres, are part of our intellectual heritage? Perhaps
most important, are literary differences between men and women essential or accidental, biologically determined or culturally
constructed?
Feminist critics have addressed themselves to these problems with increasing sophistication during the last two decades, as they
sought to revise, or at times replace, ad hominem arguments with ad feminam speculations. Whether explicating individual texts,
studying the oeuvre of a single author, examining the permutations of a major theme, or charting the contours of a tradition,
these theorists and scholars have consistently sought to define literary manifestations of difference and to understand the
dynamics that have shaped the accomplishments of literary women.
As a consequence of such work, feminist critics, often employing new modes of analysis, have begun to uncover a neglected
female tradition along with a heretofore hidden history of the literary dialogue between men and women. This series is dedicated
to publishing books that will use innovative as well as traditional interpretive methods in order to help readers of both sexes
achieve a clearer consciousness of that neglected but powerful tradition and a better understanding of that hidden history.
Reason tells us, after all, that if, transcending prejudice and special pleading, we speak to, and focus on, the woman as well as
the manif we think ad feminam as well as ad hominemwe will have a better chance of understanding what constitutes the
human.
SANDRA M. GILBERT

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Page ix
Acknowledgments
Ten years ago I discovered the body of Emily Dickinson's poetry to be radically different from the isolated poems of Emily
Dickinson I had previously read, and energized by the burgeoning number of excellent feminist critical studies, I began to build
this book.
Since that time many people have aided in the growth and completion of this manuscript. I am grateful to James Woodress for
his kind, sustained encouragement and to Joanne Feit Delhi for her thoughtful, pertinent suggestions. I also wish to thank
Nicolas J. Perella for his interest in the project at a crucial point in the early planning stages and Susan Gubar for her clear
insights and wise advice. Others have provided helpful references and suggestions: among them, Elyse Blankley, Alan E.
Craven, Nancy Gutierrez, Andrea Hammer, Theresa M. Kelley, Arthur Orman, and Denise Rankin. In particular, I owe thanks to
Barbara Clarke Mossberg, for offering not only warm encouragement but also incisive criticism in the last stages of revision. I
am grateful, in addition, to the University of Texas at San Antonio for a Faculty Research Grant to help with manuscript
preparation. And to Teresa White at Southern Illinois University Press I am especially grateful; she has been an ideal editor.
Others have helped in more intangible, and yet invaluable, ways: Mark Allen, Helen Aristar-Dry, Margaret Bedrosian, Judy
Fisher, Elliot Gilbert, and Martha Smith have offered the best sort of "Society" for the stoniest "Soul." Finally, the energy,
expertise, wit, patience, and understanding that Sandra M. Gilbert has unstintingly provided can never be adequately
acknowledged. Similarly, my debt to family members will be difficult to repay; I am keenly

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