KU UG Sem3 Unit-1: They shut me up in Prose _ by Emily Dickinson (Poem and Summary)

Kakatiya University- UG English - Semester-III

UNIT1: GENDER EQUALITY

They shut me up in Prose _ by Emily Dickinson

POEM:

They shut me up in Prose—

As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet—
Because they liked me “still”—

Still! Could themself have peeped—
And seen my Brain—go round—
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason—in the Pound—

Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Look down upon Captivity—
And laugh—No more have I—

Summary:

Emily Elizabeth Dickenson was an American Feminist Poet. She wrote so many poems. This poem, They Shut me up in Prose” was borrowed from her Unpublished Poems. Through this poem, she comments on the male domination against women.

“They shut me up in Prose –” is a famously rebellious poem. It is a poem about the difficulty of the female artist. The poet was restricted by men writers of that age to stick to the prose writing instead of writing poetry. Sometimes the men writers compared her to a girl child because children act as if they don’t listen to their elders. They also compared her to a bird in the cage. But the writer explains that the bird in the cage can be stopped from moving out of it but the mindset of the bird cannot be stopped. In the same means, the men writers could physically imprison her to stop her from writing poetry but her imaginations were moving around like a star in the sky with greater speed than she could move. She also says that a bird in the cage laughs at her captor and our poet also laughed at the foolishness of male writers who thought of putting her in the prison to stop her from writing Poetry.

 In General, the society, most likely, does not shut the adult speaker up in the cage, but “in Prose.” This is not the only poem in which Dickinson compares prose unfavourably to poetry, specifically because poetry is more open, more free. Perhaps, here, they want Dickinson to write only letters, correspondence, not to try her hand at the male-dominated art of poetry, which she uses to such powerful effect.

 This poem’s tone is scornful—the bird laughs at its captors, Dickinson scoffs at them for thinking they could keep her “Still!”—and the poem itself is a part of that scoff. For the very existence of this poem shows that “They” have failed, and is thus a kind of ironic defiance. They have not shut her up in prose, they have in fact only inflamed and inspired her, by trying to keep her captive, to write this very poem.