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Emily Dickinson and Mental Health by Tarisa Reynolds

Here we have an essay written by English major, Tarisa Reynolds. Submit your essays to our tumblr page to be featured!

I chose to do my close reading paper about Emily Dickinson’s poem, “I felt a funeral, in my Brain” (poem #340). It is clear that Dickinson was quite an unconventional woman for her time. She had a lot of magnificent thoughts put down onto paper, but could she have also been plagued by unwelcomed, anxious thoughts? Anxiety and depression; along with other mental health issues; were considered taboo in Dickinson’s day and were not often spoke of. However, due to the vast imagery, repetition of specific words and themes, and use of symbolism I believe Dickinson was indeed alluding to the effects of mental health.

In the very first line Dickinson refers to a “funeral” that is happening in her brain which could allude to the death of her sanity. A funeral is a very somber event in which she, along with her friends and family; whom Dickinson refers to as the “Mourners”; mourn the loss of her sanity. Here, they are mourning the rational and unafflicted person she used to be before her mental health declined. She also uses the repetition of words like “treading” and “beating” to exemplify what having anxious and depressive thoughts can be like. The thoughts keep repeating, keep going on and on. They weigh on your soul and beat you down until you can’t take anymore. However, even though there is only so much you can take, the thoughts do not stop. This can easily cause one to lose their mind and she indicates that she does by writing, “I thought my mind was going numb”. The numbness she is referring to is her mind slowly slipping away. The thoughts have weighed on her so much that she has finally lost it and is becoming numb- not only to the thoughts, but to everything. This is her mental death.

She continues to use imagery of things pressing down on her just as her thoughts do. She writes that the mourners, “creak across [her] soul with those same Boots of Lead”. Imagine someone stepping on you with boots of lead. Lead boots would be very heavy and painful to have pressed on top of you. Now imagine those boots are her anxieties and depression coming down on her soul. They press deeper and deeper, hurting her even more with each thought that presents itself. Her soul is “creaking” and breaking with each step, causing her to sanity to diminish even further.

Now, all she is able to hear is her anxiety and depression. Not only is it weighing down on her soul, but it is all she is able to hear. She writes that “space – began to toll” to indicate that all she has left is this space full of this depression. It continues to “toll”- to ring out constantly and drive her mad. Interestingly enough, she brings the imagery of a bell into the poem in the next stanza to reiterate that idea of a tolling bell. According to the poem, “all the Heavens were a Bell” showing that she has lost hope in a “Heaven”. To her, there is no Heaven anymore. There is only the sound of a tolling Bell driving her mad. The Bell is her insanity and it is all she has left. Just as the Boots of Lead in the third stanza is capitalized, so is the Bell. This further indicates that these objects are not merely simple everyday items, they are much more. They are her mental health (or lack thereof) personified.

Later on in the fourth stanza she expresses her desire for “Silence” or in other words, peace of mind. She describes this peace as being “some strange Race” to her, meaning that it has been so long since she’s known true peace. It is a foreign concept or a stranger to her in that she barely knows it. The fact that she labels it as a “strange Race” shows that she feels so “other” from the feeling and also from those around her. Not only is the peace that she longs for a “strange Race”, but she is a strange race from those mourners who were mentioned in the beginning of the poem. She is so different from them. She has different thoughts, feelings, and demons she has to struggle with. They do not understand her and unfortunately, she can never understand them or their carefree ways. Instead if being on the same page as the mourners, she is “wrecked” and “solitary”. Wrecked is a very powerful word that Dickinson choses. The word provokes thought of a shipwreck, causing us to think of her as being stranded somewhere all alone without the company of others. All she has among the wreckage is her thoughts, which drive her crazy. Then, of course, the word is used to show to the reader that she feels wrecked on the inside. She feels broken and unfixable.

The fifth and final stanza is full of important detail. She begins the stanza by saying, “And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down”. Typically, the plank would be what is holding the coffin up; but here it is capitalized indicating that it is much more. Instead, it is her final strand of sanity breaking and causing her to fall deeper and deeper- “down, and down” into insanity. She ends the poem with, “And Finished knowing – then”, however instead of a period at the end, she replaces it with a dash and stops mid-sentence. Here, she has finally lost her ability to comprehend but it does not stop there. The depression, anxiety, and general madness keep going on without end.

Dickinson’s “I felt a funeral, in my Brain” is full of rich and heavy symbolism that pulls the reader deeper into her world. Her use of imagery and repetition intensifies the terrifying feeling of living with mental illness. She carefully creates a loop of dread that mirrors the thoughts of people with depression and anxiety. In doing so, readers that suffer from mental illness can relate to the story being told; while others that do not can get a glimpse of what its like.

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