Would you label Dickinson as Transcendental? Why or why not?
Emily Dickenson is not transcendental. While she employs a majority of transcendental beliefs, her poetry is dark, dry and almost pessimistic. The main belief that she isn't in accord with is all people are inherently good. Through out the poems that we read tonight she spoke of human nature being greedy. In her poem "In Shadow," she says, "I could not bear the bees should come/ I wished they'd stay away/ In those dim countries where they go:/ What word had they for me?" She is pretending to be society in saying that she wishes the bad would simply go somewhere different than where she is at that time. This brings pain and suffering to others and "contentment" to her. She also says, "I dared not meet the daffodils/ For fear their yellow gown/ Would pierce me with a fashion/ So foreign to my own." This quote is also anti- society. She is saying that people arn't self reliant and that they are scared of new ideas. The yellow gown of the daffodils could be shockingly good or extremely bad in success, but society is not willing to take the risk and find out like nature does. I suppose whether it was successful or not doesn't have any signifigance to anything other than proving that society is not self reliant and that they are caught up in what is thought of them.
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