Emily Dickinson’s Critique of Women’s Role in Society

Emily Dickinson wrote My Life Had Stood- a Loaded Gun in the early 1860s. The poem details the thoughts of a woman whose job in life is to be the wife of her husband. The narrator describes her life as one devoted to the master’s protection. This led Raymond P. Tripp Jr., an English Professor at the University of Denver, to conclude that this poem detailed the poet’s spiritual awakening when he declared the poem:

…does not support currently popular sexual, aesthetic, or political profiles of the poem.

The poet’s language, the body of her poems, and the larger cultural tradition behind them all point to Emily Dickson’s spiritual awakening (303).

But is Dickinson conveying her own journey of spirituality? Or does the poet critique something bigger than herself? Is she criticizing the roles women are forced into in society? Readers can interpret the narrator’s relation to a loaded gun by evaluating its structure. Dickinson challenges society at the time for assigning value to women based on their relation to men, therefore causing women to lose feelings of personal importance when they are truly powerful.

Dickinson compares men to masters and women to guns. The lines, My Life had stood-a Loaded Gun-/ In Corners- till Day/ The Owner passed-identified-/ And carried Me away (1-4), suggest that the women of the time were objects, like a gun. They were expected to wait around at their family home until they were married off. The narrator calling her new husband an owner critiques how marriages were not done out of love but out of a man’s need to possess a woman. Women are seen once again as belonging to their husbands when the narrator says, And every time I speak for Him/ The Mountains straight reply (7-8). These lines from the poem showcase how a narrator is an object whose purpose is to do as the master wants. She fires for him; she operates at the pull of his finger as if pleasing him and obeying him is automatic at this point for her. The comparison that Dickinson makes with the master and the gun highlights the ownership mentality of men as they stand to oppress women.

Dickinson associates men with being hunters and women with being hunted. We roam in Sovereign Woods- and now We hunt the Doe (5-6). The master goes out to hunt, gun in hand. What the master is hunting for is a doe, the female of the deer species. This is odd because most hunters would be looking to hunt male deer for their larger size, which offers more meat and praise from others. Portraying the victim as a female when the master is male hints at the societal victimization of women.

Dickinson associates the husband with needing to be protected and the wife with being able to protect. She writes, And when at Night-Our good Day done–/I guard My Master’s Head– (13-14). The implication that the husband needs to be guarded, or protected, demonstrates that he is incapable of protecting himself. This is not meant to be taken as him being literally unable to defend himself but more so as him figuratively not having power. The husband is portrayed as someone who lacks revolutionary ideas and the drive to express those ideas. This is contrasted with the wife, who, like a gun, carries the ability to protect. This life is once again not to be taken literally. Life is supposed to represent that she has power, just as someone meant to protect her has to have power. The woman has these powerful ideas and powerful words to spread, and therefore, she is forced to be reckoned with.

In the poem, Dickinson associates the husband with someone who is to die and the wife with someone who is to live longer and forever.Though I than He-may longer live/ He longer must-than I-(21-22). The narrator recognizes that her husband is supposed to live longer than her. But she notes that this is not the case. She will be able to live longer than him, and this theme carries out in the next lines, For I have but the power to kill, Without-the power to die- (23-24). Dickinson addresses that women have powerful thoughts that can promote change in the world. She addresses that her writings cannot die. They live on forever. So, while her husband is able to live his life longer, doing his everyday work, the woman can work on her poetry and her writings, and those will have an impact forever.

The opposition binaries in Dickinson’s My Life Had Stood- a Loaded Gun help Dickinson argue that women have power even in a patriarchal society that oppresses women. Contrasting the hunter to the hunted and master to gun allows Dickinson to criticize the system in place. While contrasting protected to protector and mortal to immortal, lets Dickinson praises women’s innate power. Studying the poem’s structure is important to understanding the meaning behind the poem. However, these cannot be the only evidence that points to the moral Dickinson is trying to offer us. Paying attention to her literary figures and form, as well as her historical background and other important aspects of the work, can offer the reader further insight into the message of Dickinson’s poem.

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