Emily Dickinson and the Limits of Logic: The Example of Her Puritan Heritage

In a February 1859 letter Emily Dickinson draws a witty sketch of current local trivia for the benefit of Mary Emerson Haven who, together with her husband, had left Amherst the previous year. Joseph Haven had been professor of philosophy and preacher at Amherst College from 1851-58, and Dickinson jokingly compares his sermons to those of his successor Julius Seelye, a comparison that focuses on the different stances toward orthodoxy displayed by the two theologians. Recalling Haven's sense of humor and alluding to the resulting subversive nature of his sermons, Dickinson remarks, "[w]e have hardly recovered laughing from Mr Haven's jolly one. I insist to this day, that I have received internal injuries. Could Mr H[aven] be responsible for an early grave?" (L200). His successor, on the other hand, is portrayed as a much more sober occupant of the pulpit: "Mr S[eelye] preached in our church last Sabbath upon 'predestination,' but I do not respect 'doctrines,' and did not listen to him" (L200).

In the following paper I explore some of the reasons why Dickinson refuses to "respect 'doctrines'" and prefers the risk of "internal injuries" and "an early grave" to the comforts of doctrinal faith. I argue that Dickinson's disrespect is not based on an outright rejection of the ideological framework underlying Puritan doctrines; rather, the poet's subversion and eventual deconstruction of doctrinal discourse stems from her realization that it is orthodox Puritan concepts themselves which contain the seeds for their own deconstruction. In some of Dickinson's poems a seemingly logical and unambiguous discursive system (such as nineteenth-century New England Puritanism), if scrutinized closely, disintegrates into ambivalence, paradox, and multiplicity of meaning, a fact which eventually undermines Dickinson's faith in the substantiality of the signifier. For this discussion I have selected two examples of doctrines preached and practised in nineteenthcentury New England: (I) the Puritan Covenant of Grace, and (II) the Trinitarian method of Bible exegesis.

I. The Puntan Covenant of Grace

The Calvinistic concept of God, as outlined by Perry Miller (51 et passim), is that of an unpredictable and invisible ruler whose essence can never be delineated and whose actions cannot be subjected to the laws of reason or plausibility; thus salvation, according to Calvin, is the irrational bestowal of favor according to the passing mood of a lawless tyrant. This strict form of Calvinism, however, undergoes conceptual modifications in New England during the first half of the seventeenth century due to the Puritans' increased need for a more rational and intellectual justification of the ways of God to man (Miller 53-98). Two opposing forms of "rationalization" emerge with Arminianism on the one hand and Antinomianism on the other. While Arminians try to curb the arbitrary nature of God by proclaiming that human efforts and good works will inevitably lead to salvation, Antinomians come to regard human actions as irrelevant and interpret salvation as the exclusive result of God's immediate personal revelation. The concept of the Covenant of Grace as delineated by William Perkins and, in particular, William Ames is an attempt to negotiate between these two antithetical positions. Intended as an "arrangement between equals" (Miller 61), it stipulates that, after the failure of the Covenant of Works with Adam, God initiates a second contract with Abraham according to which he agrees—out of his own free will—to grant salvation to everybody who has demonstrated honest intentions and efforts in lieu of visible manifestations of faith (Miller 82-83). In this way, human actions and efforts are inscribed as an indispensable contribution to the contract (in contrast to Antinomianism), yet at the same time they are regarded as the accompaniment rather than the cause of salvation (in contradistinction to Arminianism). In the poem "I heard, as if I had no Ear" (P1039), Dickinson explores the implications of this new Covenant of Grace:

I heard, as if I had no EarUntil a Vital WordCame all the way from Life to meAnd then I knew I heard.

I saw, as if my Eye...