The Passion of Emily Dickinson by Judith Farr (review)

Book Reviews83 the appendix on "The Evolution and Concept of Focalization." Then, with great pleasure, read the chapters consecrated to the four novels, and enjoy the clarity and incisiveness of an enlightening discussion. JEAN F. GOETINCK University ofArizona JUDITH FARR. The Passion of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. 390 p. In this solid piece of conventional scholarship, Judith Farr returns to such standard biographical questions as, whom did Dickinson love and how did her love inform her poetry? Farr insists that such questions are not trivial, that, though Dickinson's central theme was "the idea of eternity" (x), she was passionately involved in temporal, worldly relationships and concerns; when explored through poetry, these relationships and concerns gave her ways of conceptualizing the idea. Farr proposes that Dickinson had two long-lasting passionate relationships , one with Susan Gilbert, the friend of her youth who became her sister -in-law and neighbor, the other with the influential editor of the Springfield Republican, Samuel Bowles, who, Farr suggests, was the subject (and possible recipient) of the famous "Master" letters. From Dickinson's letters and poetry Farr stitches together "The Narrative of Sue" (100-77), a convincing story of Dickinson's devotion to and frustrations with the woman with whom she shared many of her adolescent secrets and mature poems. "The Narrative of Master" (178-244), Fair's story of the Bowles relationship, is, in the opinion of this reviewer, less convincing. She proves that Dickinson expressed herself to Bowles emotionally, but not that he was her "Master," nor that it matters to her poetry whether he or someone else was. More satisfying is Fair's placement of Dickinson's life and work within American Victorian culture; The Passion ofEmily Dickinson continues the argument and project of Barton Levi St. Armand's Emily Dickinson and Her Culture (1984). Both St. Armand and Farr want us to see Dickinson not as a cultural misfit, not as the last Romantic or first Modern (or Post-Modern), but as someone who shared many of the moral and aesthetic interests and values of her day. Both scholars explore links between Dickinson's practice of conceptualizing the world and eternity and that of contemporary artists and art critics. Both find John Ruskin an illuminating guide to what Dickinson was about, but Farr finds the paintings and pronouncements of Thomas Cole even more illuminating. She sees especially strong links between the imagery and vision of Cole's The Voyage ofLife series and the imagery and vision of Dickinson's life-at-sea poetry. Purported connections between Dickinson's work and that of Hudson River artists (besides Cole), luminists, and pre-Raphaelites are not so successfully illustrated, nor does Fair's discussion of nineteenth-century American art and culture have the 84Rocky Mountain Review brilliant sharpness of Barbara Novak's American Painting ofthe Nineteenth Century (1969) and Nature and Culture (1980), upon which Farr draws. Farr's culturally-at-home Dickinson is much less alienated and radical than the version of Dickinson dominant in contemporary criticism. Whereas, for example, Cynthia Griffin Wolffs 1986 biography portrays Dickinson as a religious wrestler skeptical of the correspondences between the natural and spiritual, the real and ideal, that delighted her Christian contemporaries, Farr thinks Dickinson placed faith in these correspondences . Whereas other literary historians such as Joanne Feit Diehl consider Dickinson at odds with the male-dominated late-Romantic/Victorian poetic tradition of her day (see Dickinson and the Romantic Imagination [1981] and Women Poets and the American Sublime [1990]), Farr suggests that Dickinson works within this tradition and has much in common with Wordsworth, Emerson, and Tennyson. And whereas feminist critics such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (following Adrienne Rich) have argued that Dickinson's stance is fundamentally counter-patriarchal and volcanically subversive (see TAe Madwoman in the Attic [1979]), Farr contends that Dickinson, as a poet, paid little attention to "patriarchy and its codes" (203). Small wonder that The Passion of Emily Dickinson's jacket boasts blurbs ofpraise from four members ofthe male critical establishment. Farr's book is clearly written and consistently interesting; it would make a worthwhile addition to any college or university library. It lacks the force...