How many times these low feet staggered— by Emily Dickinson
"How many times these low feet staggered—" is a poem by Emily Dickinson that explores themes of domestic labor, mortality, and the contrasting perceptions of death. The poem portrays the struggles and burdens faced by a housewife, whose "low feet" symbolize the weight of her daily responsibilities. Through Dickinson's use of alternating rhythms, the poem evokes a heavy, plodding tone that reinforces the weariness associated with these domestic duties. The imagery of a sealed coffin and a mute corpse serves to emphasize the profound hardships endured, suggesting that understanding these laborious experiences is challenging.
Death, as presented in the poem, is depicted as both a release from the burdens of labor and a transition to a state of indolence, where one is free from suffering. The poem juxtaposes the oppressive weight of domesticity with the liberation found in death, illustrating how perspective shapes the interpretation of mortality. Ultimately, Dickinson's work invites readers to reflect on the dual nature of death as both a fearsome and awe-inspiring journey, depending on one's circumstances and societal roles. Through its vivid imagery and emotional depth, the poem resonates with themes of struggle, freedom, and the human experience.
How many times these low feet staggered— by Emily Dickinson
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1890 (as “Requiescat”; also called “Troubled about many things”)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Though this poem was written during the same period as poem 160, the appearance of the housewife figure in poem 187 required an altogether more plodding, heavy tone. Dickinson achieves this through alternating dactyls and trochees. The woman’s “—low feet staggered” so many times that “Only the soldered mouth can tell—.” Sealed coffin and mute corpse challenge anyone who desires to understand the hardship under which she labored to “Try” to “stir the awful rivet” and “lift the hasps of steel!” The corpse’s forehead is “cool” because in death it is free of labor. Dickinson repeatedly shifts the housewife’s burden to the reader through the imperatives “Try” (used twice) and“Lift.” Ironically, the domestic burden of the housewife’s duties becomes the weight of the coffin and the dead weight of handling the corpse itself: “the listless hair” and the “adamantine fingers,” stiffened in death. Their steel-like unyieldingness can no longer wear a tin thimble.
Predatory flies, a death and disease symbol which regularly appears in Dickinson’s poems, batter and speckle the woman’s once-clean chamber window. Both they and the sun are “Brave”; both sun and ceiling cobweb are “Fearless.” Even so, despite this oppressive imagery, the housewife has finally become “Indolent,” lain in a field of daisies. The poem thus resolves itself in a single line through the double implication of “indolent”: lazy, but also free from suffering. There is no contradiction at all in the two views of death Dickinson takes in her poetry. Seen from the aspect of the poet or of a woman whom household burdens do not confine, death becomes an awe-filled adventure contemplated with heroic anticipation. The moment the perspective becomes that of a housewife or a woman bound by domestic duties, death becomes a blessed release from labor.
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