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10 - Emily Dickinson and class

from Part 3 - Cultural contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

By
Domhnall Mitchell
Edited by
Wendy Martin
Wendy Martin
Affiliation:
Claremont Graduate School, California
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Summary

In 1881, Emily Dickinson wrote to her friend Elizabeth Luna Chapin Holland, including news of her brother Austin's having hired a day-laborer to help with work around the family property. Since the death of their father, Edward, in 1874, Austin had been responsible for running both the Homestead in Main Street that Emily lived in with her sister Lavinia and their mother, and the Evergreens next door, occupied by himself, his wife, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, and their children:

We have a new Black Man and are looking for a Philanthropist to direct him, because every time he presents himself, I run, and when the Head of the Nation shies, it confuses the Foot -

When you read in the “Massachusetts items” that he has eaten us up, a memorial merriment will invest these preliminaries.

(L 721)
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson , pp. 191 - 214
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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