By admin<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

Upon reading Adam Frank’s \u201cEmily Dickinson and Photography,\u201d I was interested to find Dickinson and Whitman put into contrast. Though both poets, these two writers couldn’t be more different. In Whitman’s work, we see a man throwing himself into the public eye, particularly in his 52-page long \u201cSong of Myself.\u201d He does not shy away from making himself the subject of his work. Adam Frank provides similar evidence to speak to this point: Whitman used an image of himself rather than a signature to mark Leaves of Grass <\/em>as his work. In contrast, Dickinson’s short, modest poems hint at the personality of the writer herself, whom we now consider to be a recluse.<\/p>\n

Frank argues that Dickinson’s writing system was an \u201cattempt to control the emergent social value of the publicity of the private.\u201d One would infer that Whitman, being Dickinson’s opposite, embraced the chaos of the private being made public. I tried to answer the question that arises from this contrast\u2014Why did one writer spurn the public eye, and attempt to control the exposure of their creative work, while the other so joyfully embraced it?<\/p>\n

First, I thought that the qualities of extreme introversion or extreme extroversion could explain these actions. Dickinson, in refusing to send T.W. Higginson her photograph, was perhaps acting out of modesty. Her refusal to publish her multitude of poetry was perhaps a defense against unwanted attention. And Whitman’s vivacious writing, in which he proclaims himself to be everything on earth and that everything on earth is Whitman, is perhaps evidence of extroversion.<\/p>\n

However, then I brought gender inequality into the conversation. It was perhaps accepted, if not encouraged, for men like Whitman to actively praise themselves; were a woman to have so enthusiastically thrust herself into the limelight, she might have been received to be unladylike. I see evidence for this in Frank’s article, in which he references Karen Hulttunen’s research on Antebellum America. Hulttunen writes that a proper lady was expected to express herself through her body. In \u201cthe woman of sensibility, \u2026 the blush of honesty and purity, the sudden glow of love, the hues of sorrow and despair\u201d all spoke through her skin.\u201d Therefore, though I cannot by any means conclude that Dickinson’s attempt to control the publicity of the private was a direct result of women’s gender expectations, this certainly may have played a part.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a>  <\/a>  <\/a>  <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By admin Upon reading Adam Frank’s \u201cEmily Dickinson and Photography,\u201d I was interested to find Dickinson and Whitman put into contrast. Though both poets, these two writers couldn’t be more different. In Whitman’s work, we see a man throwing himself into the public eye, particularly in his 52-page long \u201cSong of Myself.\u201d He does not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-private","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}