The Male Gaze Through Female Eyes: Dickinson's Emotional Subversion of Gender Roles in "I died for beauty - " and Other Poems Jenna Bloomer College

Although society has historically told women that they have no role in literature, generating the notion that they are incapable, women writers, specifically poets, have risen up to defeat this constriction and ultimately changed the literary and social world. The stereotypical gender roles that are prevalent in society prevent the success of women writers, defining their lives and careers. Because women writers started to critique these gender identities that the male society created, feminism began to rise. Emily Dickinson, arguably the first successful woman poet in American history, utilized these gender tropes, keying into the male gaze, in order to identify and portray the issues that lie in gender identification during the 19th century. Although her focus on experience and heartache is criticized, Dickinson uses her personal issues to critique the society that they lie in, establishing her role in the creation of feminism. Emily Dickinson's revolutionary poems used images of depression and heartache as an allegory for the sexism prevalent in society, ultimately impacting romantic literature during the American Renaissance.

During the American romantic period in literature, male poets where dominating the scene, focusing...