Mourner Among the Children

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 to a middle-class family deeply rooted in New England where she had access to a good education. She was considered a star pupil among her teachers but left school suddenly as a teenager for unknown reasons. Theories say that her fragile emotional state may have played a role and that her father decided to pull her from the school to protect her and his own image.

After leaving school Emily was confined to her home for most of her adult life for what is believed to become the guardian of her sick mother. Scholars have thought that she suffered from conditions such as agoraphobia, depression, and anxiety as well as having painful ailment of her eyes. During this time it seems she wrote the most of her work.

Emily´s works weren´t published/discovered until after her lifetime by her sister. After her death, hundreds of poems were discovered assembled into booklets all with uncommon and new annotations throughout. Emily had a style of writing that was considered new and odd compared to the normal style of writing for that time period, so her poems were edited and altered to adhere to conventional standards of the time. Her poems weren´t restored to the original until much later.

The idea here is that even though she was considered different and was riddled with mental illness it didn´t change the fact that she had a brilliant mind that is still admired to this day.

Throughout her poetry she gives hints into her own mind, having it that she writes highly of summer and has the winters be described through death. She went through a time period between a few years that she describes as ¨The Terror¨ in which she produced a flood of poems.

Many describe this time as an emotional crisis during her life, which can be the cause of a surge of a mental illness episode. It goes to show that even during her worst time she produced the most beautiful works of writing.

Let us watch this youtube video to better understand the works of Emily Dickinson and have a better outlook into her mind.

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you know any of Emily Dickinson´s poems?
2. Try and analyze the poem show on page 4, what are your thoughts on it (What do you think it´s about)?
3. Can you name any other famous artists/writers who weren´t recognized until after their deaths?
4. Do you believe that creativity can be found in anyone?

Follow Up Activities:

Everyone will receive multiple strips of paper where you will write a sentence on each slip and put them together to make a poem of your choosing. Once you´ve finished mix up the pieces of paper and pass it to the person to your right and they will have to put it together to what they think is correct. Once done with that pass is back and discuss how each of you arranged the poems and why.

Sources for images:

https://society6.com/product/last-wordsemily-dickinson_print

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Hope-is-a-thing-of-feathers-Emily-Dickinson-paintingpoetry/1123519/4451360/view

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/730146158312252915/

Sources for information:

https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.158.5.686#:~:text=Emily%20Dickinson’s%20%E2%80%9CNervous%20Prostration%E2%80%9D%20might,indeed%20be%20a%20bipolar%20marker.