Girl Regained : Emily Dickinson's Eleusis

This paper consists of eight sections. In the first section, different views of Nature between Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson are discussed, which results in the discovery that it is her self that is Dickinson's nature to be experienced. The second section raises the question who is this "Nobody" that can relentlessly explore her world of "Me" as Emerson does his world in relation to Nature. The answer is Girl. The third section introduces the difficult situations where girls have to develop themselves in patriarchal culture, with Neumann as our guide. The fourth and fifth sections deal with Dickinson's discovery of Girl and her development, using her "wife poems." The sixth section explores Dickinson's girl/woman sexuality which is not always passive, as many might conclude, but has her own sphere to be cultivated and cherished, as it were, in her "Father's ground." The seventh is supporting evidence from Myth, Demeter and Persephone, which is carefully exemplified by Kerenyi as a single entity. Finally, the eighth section searches Dickinson's relation with her own mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson. I find here complicated but gradually forming unity between mother and daughter. The overall outcome of this survey is that Dickinson who rescues her self with the invention of, or rather persistent concern of her identity with ever-growing girl, that is, Girl/Woman, she does not only regain herself but also her mother's lost voice as "I'm Nobody!"9KJ00002499946departmental bulletin pape