Dickinson's attitude towards life and love from your study of her poems
Answer: Attitude to life is a very comprehensive term which encompasses a great many aspects of life. Life consists of not a few elements, but almost an infinite variety of things. However, a poet usually does have some attitude towards life which in his/her case may mean he/she highlights some particular aspects of life-not too many, of course. In the case of Emily Dickinson we find that she has highlighted some important aspects of life-friendship, society, pain and suffering and growth in life, and the most potent factor of life, that is love.
In some of Dickinson's poems she talks about dear people who seem to be regarded more as beloved friends than as objects of romantic ardour. Later in life Dickinson wrote to Samuel Bowles. "My friends are my estate", and still later she declared that letters feel to her like immortality because they contain the mind "Without corporeal friend" From her statements it seems that sometimes she treasured friendship held at a distance more than the actual presence of friends.
Dickinson has distinctive views on pain, suffering, and growth as an integral part of life. Suffering plays a major role in her poems about death and immortality, just as death appears in her poems on suffering. Her poems on the themes of suffering and growth belong to three groups:
(1) deprivation as a cause of suffering,
(2) suffering leading to disintegration, and
(3) suffering as bringing compensatory rewards of spiritual growth.
Some of her poems reflect her belief that suffering is necessary for creativity. Poems on love and on nature suggest that suffering will lead to a fulfilment of love or that the fatality which one feels in nature elevates one and sharpens his sensibility "Death-blow is a life blow to some" implies that every apparent evil has a corresponding good, and good is never brought to birth without evil.
Dickinson considered the subject of love from a philosophical point of view, although her love-poetry had its source in her own experience of passion. She glorified love to such a degree that it was almost equated with God. Love, in her eyes, triumphs over both life and death, and achieves an almost divine status.
The poems of her early period contain her most sentimental passion of life. Poems dealing with brides and marriages are her most artistic love poems. The human love remains shadowy, and the vision of the lover's heavenly marriage changes to an actual celestial union with God. The blending of spiritual love and human passion occurs in some other group of poems. "Title Divine is Mine," blends spiritual love and human passion, developing the ritual of an actual marriage without the human bridegroom.
Dickinson's attitude to life and love forms important aspects of her poetry. Her attitude towards these gripping aspects of life is very distinctive, and distinguishes her from other poets of the world.
