The Luxury of Doubt: A Study of the Relationship Between Imagery and Theme in Emily Dickinson\u27s Poetry

Emily Dickinson\u27s protagonists, when they are most moving and have the greatest complex reality, are caught between the agony of death and the agony of life. Analogous terms are non-being and being, renunciation and experience, unreality and reality, sterility and fruition, extinction and redemption. Renunciation is a major pattern, but in the act of renunciation the Dickinson protagonist may be discerned grasping for fulfillment. Similarly, when she strains toward fulfillment, she can simultaneously yearn for negation. Her reaching two ways at once is manifest in her qualifications. When the subject is life, her talk is tinged with death; and when she is speaking of death, her words have the savor of life. This hovering is part of her luxury