May 15th marks the day Emily Dickinson died, and I've been immersing myself in her poetry since last year. 

You didn't sign up for this from a love of verse, I know, but bear with me. 

Because - there is a lot to explore in light of fashion and a "domestic wardrobe", and the fact that her town was part of a region known for its textile industry.  Her letters as well as poems show a keen awareness of the metaphor of dress.



Emily Dickinson's mystique captivated her contemporaries as much as it does us today. When Mabel Loomis Todd first moved to Amherst in 1881, she was immediately intrigued by the reclusive poet, writing to her parents: "I must tell you about the character of Amherst. It is a lady whom the people call the Myth … She dresses wholly in white, & her mind is said to be perfectly wonderful." Todd, who later became the first editor of Dickinson's poems, never actually met the poet face-to-face despite living in Amherst for several years before Dickinson's death in 1886.

What's interesting is that no surviving images of Dickinson have her in white, nor does she write about wearing the color outside of one poem (#271). It seems that the link between her and dressing in the color of purity was more important to those around her.  In the poem, a white garment presents itself as a symbol of the vast unknown.

Poem 271

A solemn thing — it was — I said —
A woman — white — to be —
And wear — if God should count me fit —
Her blameless mystery —

A hallowed thing — to drop a life
Into the purple well —
Too plummetless — that it return —
Eternity — until —

I pondered how the bliss would look —
And would it feel as big —
When I could take it in my hand —
As hovering — seen — through fog —

And then — the size of this "small" life —
The Sages — call it small —
Swelled — like Horizons — in my vest —
And I sneered — softly — "small"!



I urge you to read a short analysis of 271 here. 
 

I am also eager to read the scholarly Emily Dickinson and the Labor of Clothing. as it purportedly challenges the stereotypical image of Dickinson as merely a hermetic figure in a white dress. The author uses fashion as an analytical lens to examine references to clothing in Dickinson's letters and poems, while also studying her fashion choices in her iconic daguerreotype to better understand her social standing, and present her as firmly grounded in the material culture of her time.

The study explores how clothing was central to 19th century life in two dimensions: the domestic labor of making, mending, and laundering garments in the Dickinson household, and the broader context of the expanding textile industry throughout New England during her lifetime. Of particular interest is the book's examination of the Lowell textile mills and the Amherst industry of the Hills Hat Factory, which was located near Dickinson's Homestead.

The research is enhanced by the recent discovery of approximately thirty trunks of clothing found in the attic of the Evergreens house, which formerly belonged to Dickinson's brother and sister-in-law.
One wonders just how this sort of "discovery" is made! Will I come upon a historic treasury trove one day while hunting in the next attic? A midwestern author's ancestral home perhaps? 

You can see an actual White Dress  owned by Dickinson on display at the Amherst Historical Society. As one of her few personal items to have survived to the present day, she reportedly wore it as a work dress at home. We might wonder why anyone would do household chores in all white, but bear in mind that in the mid-19th century, the easiest way to launder anything was to bleach it, making white the most practical choice.

In contrast, Poem 120 has her dying in red
- part of a fiery blaze akin to one, final fantastical display.


If this is "fading"
Oh let me immediately "fade"!
If this is "dying"
Bury me, in such a shroud of red!
If this is "sleep,"
On such a night
How proud to shut the eye!
Good Evening, gentle Fellow men!
Peacock presumes to die!
 

Edwardian era crochet gloves @rarejulevintage


Over a century later, her White Dress inspired a poem by the contemporary American poet Billy Collins (he was our Poet Laureate 2001-2003). I found it excruciatingly intimate and bold for breaking the unspoken rule that America's sacred, historic maidens stand outside any man's desire, however literary.

Yet it is this very transgression that makes this poem thrilling, haunting, and achingly accessible. 

*Vocabulary note - a "tippet" is a scarf-like garment worn around the shoulders.

 

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.
 

***



Let's end with a short poem from Dickinson,  c.1859: 

#903

I hide myself within my flower,

That wearing on your breast,

You, unsuspecting, wear me too—

And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower,

That, fading from your vase,

You, unsuspecting, feel for me

Almost a loneliness.


***

Thank you for reading.


Lindsey in 2023 modeling a white day dress c.1910 @rarejulevintage