Historically, human society has portrayed women as weak creatures capable of obtaining only modicum level of power over others. Men have eternally been leaders of civilization since the inception of human kind, while women were subjugated to the shadows and provide assistance to their male masters. Due to the overbearing unfavorable roles in history, can women as a whole honestly not be expected to secretly crave dominion over their masculine overseers? Potentially ignoring any perils that they may undergo and the effect on their feminine identity that will result from the risks involved. Does the inequality between the genders enrage women to such a great extent that their anger begins to fester and slowly consumes characteristics that are
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At the beginning, “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun,” (Ln 1) the primary symbol is presented. The metaphor that first stanza is crucial in that the speaker now believes herself to be a lethal weapon. Dickinson is not like a loaded gun but the actual gun itself. In an excerpt from Rich’s book Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson the split between being an object and an active, willing human person is made evident. The struggle between the two conflicting ideas of femininity and masculinity are mirrored by the split. The gun presents the speaker as the combination of characteristics that are not usually attributed to a “woman”. “Cruel not pleasant, hard not soft, emphatic not weak, one who kills not one who nurtures,” is Bennett’s description of the speaker. Suppression of the female voice is drastic and the only remnants of it lay in the ambivalence toward power. This ambivalence is critical to the main idea of the poem. Rich states that if there is any female conscious then it is “buried deeper than the images’ and must be actively searched for. Dickinson as a loaded gun can only be describe as imperious energy that needs to be channeled in order to serve a purpose. That is why the gun in the poem just laid there until the day “The Owner passed—identified—And carried Me away,” (3, 4) Without a wielder a gun is merely destructive force and that is essentially what the speaker has become. Dickenson takes on an aggressive persona through the active willing of her innermost desires to manifest and take form in the poem. These desires bestow the gun with an owner and allow it the “power to kill.” (24) This union of gun with a master displays the risks involved in a woman taking control of herself by willing defining herself as aggressive, which is an unwomanly
At the beginning, “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun,” (Ln 1) the primary symbol is presented. The metaphor that first stanza is crucial in that the speaker now believes herself to be a lethal weapon. Dickinson is not like a loaded gun but the actual gun itself. In an excerpt from Rich’s book Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson the split between being an object and an active, willing human person is made evident. The struggle between the two conflicting ideas of femininity and masculinity are mirrored by the split. The gun presents the speaker as the combination of characteristics that are not usually attributed to a “woman”. “Cruel not pleasant, hard not soft, emphatic not weak, one who kills not one who nurtures,” is Bennett’s description of the speaker. Suppression of the female voice is drastic and the only remnants of it lay in the ambivalence toward power. This ambivalence is critical to the main idea of the poem. Rich states that if there is any female conscious then it is “buried deeper than the images’ and must be actively searched for. Dickinson as a loaded gun can only be describe as imperious energy that needs to be channeled in order to serve a purpose. That is why the gun in the poem just laid there until the day “The Owner passed—identified—And carried Me away,” (3, 4) Without a wielder a gun is merely destructive force and that is essentially what the speaker has become. Dickenson takes on an aggressive persona through the active willing of her innermost desires to manifest and take form in the poem. These desires bestow the gun with an owner and allow it the “power to kill.” (24) This union of gun with a master displays the risks involved in a woman taking control of herself by willing defining herself as aggressive, which is an unwomanly