Emily Dickinson's writing style

In the literary criticism that I read about Emily Dickinson, the main focus was on the dash that she makes periodically in her writings.  Although this may not fully explain the writing style of Emily Dickinson, I think it is an important enough--and interesting enough--piece that makes her so different from everyone else.  The reasoning behind these "unutterable words" (Fagan) can probably be linked to the meanings of her poems.  As Deirdre Fagan describes it, these dashes in Emily Dickinson's writings are "physical manifestations of thoughts...a thread between the sayable and the unsayable..." (Fagan).  He believes that Emily Dickinson purposely placed these dashes in her writings to break the thought of the reader, as well as show how her own thoughts might have been broken as she was writing.  If this is true, I think it is very interesting how she would think to literally portray every single little thing that was going on in her head.  It was probably done so that the reader could feel a connection of some sort to the writer, as if they could see their thoughts or think the same thoughts (which sounds a lot creepier than what I wanted it to, and for that I am sorry).  The dashes are used to "disrupt the thought pattern of the reader" (Fagan).  I do not know much about the life of Emily Dickinson--actually, I really know nothing at all--but I feel like if she was intentionally writing the dashes as strategically as they seem, her own thoughts may have been disrupted on a daily basis.  The only think I can come up with is if she had a bad home life or she was so creative that her brain was just too crowded with thoughts.  I think that happens to extremely smart or creative people.  But, in the literary criticism, Judith Farr said that she believed the "dash was the most used and abused punctuation in the Victorian Era" (Fagan).  So maybe these dashes were not as strategic or creative as I thought they were...it was just popular at the time and I am sure she was just going along with what all the other cool writers were doing.  The style of the dashes are also looked at, meaning how they appear on paper.  Because the dashes were not all exactly the same (which seems very impossible to me because no part of the handwritten language is perfect), it is possible that each dash has its own individual meaning or purpose.  To me, that seems quite unlikely.  It is impossible for ninety-nine percent of the world's population to make their letters literally exactly the same every single time they write, let alone simple dashes and marks.  I think the thing that intrigued me the most was reading how the dash was the most used character--including words--in all of her writings (Fagan).  Maybe she was just trying to have a trademark, was following the trends of the time or simply expressing her thoughts in detail, I think Emily Dickinson definitely did a good job at leaving her mark on the world...literally.


Fagan, Deirdre. "Emily Dickinson's Unutterable Word." Emily Dickinson Journal 14, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 70–75. Quoted as "Emily Dickinson's Unutterable Word" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Emily Dickinson, New Edition, Bloom's Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.