I know basically nothing about Dickinson, which is embarrassing for me at this point, but from my light snooping since watching the movie, arguments for her abolitionist cred rest mostly on the sheer fact of her acquaintance with Higginson and on what seem to me to be pretty strained readings of her metaphors of bondage, fugitivity, and mastery -- as eg here.
Benjamin Friedlander has a (paywalled) 1998 article "Auctions of the Mind: Emily Dickinson and Abolition" that seems to trace the strands of abolitionist rhetoric in her work; he describes her usage of it as "oblique" and points out "She was, in other words, almost certainly well informed on the subject, but chose consciously (for whatever reasons) to keep close counsel with her beliefs" which I feel like in the contemporary environment is legible as a pretty clear signal of its own.
There's also this manuscript excerpt from Andrea Brady from this year that I think is really good and gives a clear look at racist+Orientalist stuff in her writing, and how it relates to her lyric project around constraint. I also like the counterpoint reading she provides of Philip's Zong! after if you want to check that out.
After all of this I still haven't found any precedent for reading "I died for beauty" as being about slavery -- it's definitely a provocative approach, but I don't know that it's a particularly historically-sensitive one, since I don't see much evidence that there was a rhetoric of using "truth" to mean "justice" or "the truth that slavery is wrong"--Friedlander extensively discusses a Frances E W Harper poem "The Slave Auction" featuring "woman, with her love and truth/For these in sable forms may dwell" but that seems quite distinct to me.
I did feel like the moment with the Union soldiers staring down Higginson was at least *more* effective than the poem, I think because they had a reaction that made sense and gave them the same dignity of wit-as-observers-of-folly that Emily and Sue got. But the two bits together do seem like an awkward sideswipe at avoiding-but-not-avoiding the messiness of taking up abolition and racism overall.
Uh, this kind of got away from me as a response but ... I learned a lot! :o)
no subject
Benjamin Friedlander has a (paywalled) 1998 article "Auctions of the Mind: Emily Dickinson and Abolition" that seems to trace the strands of abolitionist rhetoric in her work; he describes her usage of it as "oblique" and points out "She was, in other words, almost certainly well informed on the subject, but chose consciously (for whatever reasons) to keep close counsel with her beliefs" which I feel like in the contemporary environment is legible as a pretty clear signal of its own.
There's also this manuscript excerpt from Andrea Brady from this year that I think is really good and gives a clear look at racist+Orientalist stuff in her writing, and how it relates to her lyric project around constraint. I also like the counterpoint reading she provides of Philip's Zong! after if you want to check that out.
After all of this I still haven't found any precedent for reading "I died for beauty" as being about slavery -- it's definitely a provocative approach, but I don't know that it's a particularly historically-sensitive one, since I don't see much evidence that there was a rhetoric of using "truth" to mean "justice" or "the truth that slavery is wrong"--Friedlander extensively discusses a Frances E W Harper poem "The Slave Auction" featuring "woman, with her love and truth/For these in sable forms may dwell" but that seems quite distinct to me.
I did feel like the moment with the Union soldiers staring down Higginson was at least *more* effective than the poem, I think because they had a reaction that made sense and gave them the same dignity of wit-as-observers-of-folly that Emily and Sue got. But the two bits together do seem like an awkward sideswipe at avoiding-but-not-avoiding the messiness of taking up abolition and racism overall.
Uh, this kind of got away from me as a response but ... I learned a lot! :o)