Literary Treatments of the concept of Domesticity

The home is depicted in Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings, for instance, as the place to which the individual repairs in order to escape from the vicissitudes of the outside world and as a locale where one can indulge in thought and study. Emerson may place high value on communing with nature and with learning from nature, but at the same time he certainly has a strong sense of the importance of home. Emerson expresses his philosophy in essays and poems extolling the virtues of nature, elevating the concept of self-reliance, and showing a dedication to mystical beliefs in the interconnectedness of human life with nature. Self-reliance is an American virtue that Emerson describes at length in his writings, including in an essay titled "Self-Reliance" and a poem with the same name. Emerson was a transcendentalist with a particular view of how human beings could commune with nature and who they were to turn inward to seek strength from themselves. He makes clear in the essay "Self-Reliance" what he means by the term and how he sees this as a major virtue for human life when he cites some verse offering the following advice: "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string" (1046). For Emerson, the outside world of experience is where information is gather

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ely we. If ever man were beloved by wife, then thee (1-2). When her husband is away on business in "A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment," she writes, My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay, more, My joy, my magazine of earthly store, If two be as one, as surely thou and I, How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie? (1-4). A more problematic image of women is presented by the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. Readers of the poetry of Emily Dickinson have had several different images of the poet in mind, with perhaps the primary one being the "New England Nun," a version of her life which sees her as a heroic virgin who lived behind the walls of her father's house and renounced the world in order to nurture in sorrow the higher and purer love of someone who was absent forever. Much of this image is a myth, but the power of her poetry to convey emotions and a special sense of love and loss is not, as can be seen in an examination of her poetry. Dickinson's poetry shows an intensity of sensuality surprising to men who believed the image of women they themselves had created, but admittedly this was all the more surprising given the degree to which Dickinson remained out of public view and in a
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Approximate Word count = 3373
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)