Emily Dickinson's Ecovision: the Interrelatedness of Nature and Human Beings

Whereas many Dickinson scholars tend to focus on Emily Dickinson's anthropocentric dimension, her work also reveals an ecocentric aspect. On the one hand, influenced by New England Puritan typology and its offshoot Emersonian Transcendentalist idealism, Dickinson reveals her indebtedness to these two worldviews by emphasizing the invisible over the visible and the spiritual over the physical. At times, she reflects the common thread of the two outlooks-a hierarchical thinking, in which nature is inferior to human beings and does not have its own identity outside of human use. On the other hand, seeing through the downside of the hierarchical Emersonian idealism, Dickinson sometimes suggests an alternative stance on nature in a nonhierarchical way. She often appreciates nature for its own sake, becoming its neighbor and companion. This aligns Dickinson with modern ecocritics and ecofeminists who criticize a hierarchical anthropocentrism and promote an egalitarian ecocentrism in which natural and human beings are fellow citizens of the earth community. And yet, unlike most ecocritics who advocate a complete shift to an egalitarian paradigm, Dickinson embraces both anthropocentrism and ecocentrism in her poetry of "open portfolio." This openness stems from her belief in interrelatedness between God, nature, and human beings. Housing the two opposing perspectives in her poetry, she widely opens the possibility to choose the better way to relate to our sister and brother, nature.