The Homestead: Emily Dickinson's Haven of Solitude by Mia Anderson

 

Emily Dickinson's home, commonly referred to as "The Homestead", played a pivotal role in her works throughout the course of her life. Located in Amherst, MA, the house was built for Emily’s grandfather Samuel Fowler Dickinson in 1813 and is located next to Amherst College, of which he was a co-founder. Emily’s parents and her brother moved in in 1830, shortly before Emily was born, and her mother had her younger sister three years later. The Dickinsons sold The Homestead in 1833 after the birth of Lavinia, before eventually returning in 1855 after Emily’s father’s death. Emily and her mother remained in the house until both of their deaths, and Emily’s brother Austin and his wife moved in to The Evergreens, another home on the property.



Throughout her life, Emily gradually became more and more secluded from the outside world. She spent all of her time within The Homestead, writing and caring for her mother. She wrote constantly from the desk in her bedroom. The room acted as a kind of sanctuary for her, as she could close herself off from the rest of the house and feel the quiet around her. All of her 1,800 poems were written within the comfort of her bedroom, and are now displayed throughout the home. Many of her poems, such as I Dwell in Possibility, are written about or in reference to The Homestead, and it is clear that she took great inspiration from her surroundings. When Emily wasn’t writing, she was usually tending to her mother, Emily Norcross. She had suffered a debilitating stroke and was unable to care for herself, leaving her eldest daughter to tend to her constantly. There was even a ‘secret passage’ of sorts that led from Emily’s room directly into her mother’s, demonstrating just how connected the two were. Aside from the rooms inside the house, there was also a greenhouse connected to The Homestead. Emily spent much of her time in the greenhouse, and is said to have taken a great amount of inspiration for her poetry from it. She wrote about the plants and flowers that she and her mother grew there, and her poems express a profound worship of nature that was no doubt fostered by her home.

Emily’s reclusion is one of the reasons for her fame as a poet; she attained a phantom-like reputation because of her life in The Homestead and her wardrobe choices. She almost exclusively wore thin white dresses, which, paired with the fact that she never left her house, caused people to come to think of her as an entity ‘haunting’ The Homestead. This, in my opinion, is similar to Heathcliff’s reputation in Wuthering Heights. He becomes a kind of hermit, sequestering himself, his servants, and his family within the mansion, and is plagued by visions of Catherine. At the end of the story, there are tales of him ‘haunting’ the moors alongside her, having become a real phantom after all. To add to this sort of ghostly atmosphere, Emily died in The Homestead, and her coffin was carried out of the front door, something else that I feel really encapsulates the intense connection she had to her home.

Currently, The Homestead stands where it did when the Dickinson family lived in it, and is owned by Amherst College, which also owns The Evergreens next door. The home is now used as an Emily Dickinson museum, having been refurbished and restored to exactly the way it looked when the family first lived there. Booklets of Emily’s poetry, called fascicles, can be found in every room, reminiscent of how Emily would display them when she lived there. Her bedroom has been kept painstakingly the same as it was when she wrote in it, and has a replica of her writing desk, the original of which is located in the Harvard University Library. There is also one of her famous white dresses displayed in a glass case in order to bring more of Emily’s spirit into the room, which many visitors say it does. The room can be emotional for some, especially those who may feel very connected to Dickinson and find the same meanings within her work that she drew from her home, as it is the sole place where she was truly creative.



Emily Dickinson and her works are inexplicably and completely tied to her house, making it arguably one of the most important houses in the literature world. It is impossible to disentangle Emily’s spirit from that of The Homestead, as she drew inspiration from every part of the home and it is very visible in her poetry. Her phantom-esque reputation comes directly from this almost infatuation and refusal to leave her home, and it has become an essential part of her ‘image’ as a poet. It paints her as a larger-than-life figure, a ghostly white woman trapped within a haven of creativity and solitude.
















References


https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ae-0205-emily-dickinson-house-20170202-column.html


https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/the-museum/our-site/the-homestead/


https://www.achp.gov/news/emily-dickinson-house-birthplace-emily-dickinson-and-her-art


https://literarygitane.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/the-bustle-in-a-house-visiting-the-ghost-of-emily-dickinson/