Review of “They Shut Me Up in Prose” (1862)
Emily Dickinson (writer).
Read in 2021.
A fantasy of being harmed and oppressed—likely by sexism—yet paradoxically free to fly away. I read into the word “Prose” here that the narrator’s prison is normalcy in everyday life, as opposed to some transcendence she might somehow have achieved if she had never been put in the closet as a child for being rowdy.
References here: “She Dealt Her Pretty Words Like Blades” (1862).