Emily Dickinson Unto My Book Comparison

Two of Emily Dickinson’s poems, “Unto My Books So Good To Turn” and “Contrast”, show different sides of her unusual personality. Ironically, both works choose encounters with people as opportunities to provide glimpses into a lonely, reclusive life. Dickinson was an educated woman, having attended Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, as well as the daughter of a prominent attorney. Although she was outgoing in her youth, she disliked being away from home and increasingly preferred isolation as she grew older. It is rumored that once a year, during the holidays, she was forced by her father to help play hostess to guests of the household. Allegedly, those who attended the gatherings never would have guessed that her social behavior during those occasions was anything out of the ordinary.
Perhaps “Unto My
How strange that when inside a scenario very similar to the one she mourns for in “Contrasts”, Dickinson seems just as miserable. Therefore, one might conclude that her reclusive lifestyle was both her own private heaven and hell. She seems to crave joy and yet chooses to be melancholy. The choice of the word “abstinence” in the first poem seems to imply that she somewhat consciously denies herself the guilty pleasure of happiness, perhaps feeling it sinful to enjoy life when others, like the soldiers she mentions, are suffering. The words “stimulate” and “spices” contrast with her favor of the bland. This is similar to the juxtaposition of the warmth of the scene inside the open door to her lost plight outside in the second poem. Within the two descriptions of diametrically different experiences, both of which are encounters with others, one can simultaneously feel the heartache of Dickinson’s loneliness as well as her overwhelming desire to seek comfort in