Gender Roles In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

After the death of Emily Dickinson, her many poems were published. Those poems quickly made her one of the most famous American poets of all time. What draws readers in the most by her poems is the mystery involved. Since the poems were published after her death, no one knows what they were truly about. For example, one of her famous poems is “The Moon is distant from the Sea”. This poem is really about the gender roles of a love relationship of her time. The true meaning of the poem is within the extended metaphor that is the poem. However, to the naked eye, the poem is simply about the moon,the sea, and tidal patterns. Throughout “The Moon is distant from the Sea”, many literary devices are used. Emily Dickinson personifies the moon and the sea in her poem. She personifies the moon as a mother walking the boy (the sea) close to the town and then back away from it. But, this reverses in the last stanza as the moon becomes the “Signor” (9) and the sea becomes “me” (12). She describes the moon “with Amber hands” (2) relating to the golden moonlight going across the ocean during the evening. Then, in the last stanzas she refers to the moon as the master of the …show more content…
Because of her Puritan beliefs, gender roles played an important part in her life. In her tradition, men were the leaders and dominant parts of relationships and marriages. The moon takes its place as the tradition leader of the relationship between him and the sea in accordance to the gender roles of Puritan New England in the 19th century. In conclusion, Emily Dickinson’s poem, “The Moon is distant from the Sea”, is about the gender roles of a relationship during her lifetime. This is depicted through the extended metaphor of the relationship between the moon and the sea using personification, meter, and rhyme. The meaning of this poem is affected by Dickinson 19th century Puritan