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Emily DickinsonIf I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1929A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Religious Context: Calvinism in New England
Emily Dickinson descended from Puritans and her paternal grandfather helped found Amherst Academy, which later grew into Amherst College. Amherst Academy functioned as a bulwark against increasingly popular Unitarianism, and its curriculum was used as a means of preserving Calvinist faith. Calvinism, an early form of Protestantism based on the writings of 16th century theologian John Calvin, sets forth the idea that human will is infected by sin and inherently depraved; the “elect,” however, are saved through God’s grace.
As a young woman, Dickinson—like all Calvinists—awaited certain signs of her election. During her youth, the entire town of Amherst was caught up in Revivalist zeal, and Dickinson expressed her wish to be caught up, as well. But by the time she attended Mt. Holyoke, she famously did not stand with her peers as one who wished to be Christian. Biographers wonder if Dickinson was making a conscious move away from orthodoxy, or whether she had not experienced the call to God as Calvinist teachings expect.
When Dickinson did not experience a religious transformation, she did what Puritans before her had done: She wrote. She wrote copious letters and numerous poems, often directly wondering about her own salvation and the means of its delivery. Dickinson’s poems regularly exhibit the kind of theological connection to nature seen in Calvinist writings—the hand of God in minutiae. But Dickinson did not see herself as “elect.” Some critics have noted this sentiment may make her more devout than the churchgoing Calvinists of Amherst. The poem “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking” aligns with the idea that Dickinson had come to some kind of understanding about her own devotion to God and her candidacy for grace. The idea is inherently Calvinist, though: that “one heart,” one act, can prove fidelity.
Literary Context: Feminist Literary History
Dickinson has long been a cherished icon of 20th century women’s literary culture. Without question, some sentiments attributed to her may paint her as more rebellious than her historic and cultural contexts could have allowed. Dickinson stood up for herself in unusual ways, refusing to attend church services until she felt the pull of a conversion that ultimately never came. She refused to entertain. To assume she was shy or phobic is likely insufficient of her true nature. It seems likely she wanted to do her own work and the burden of household matters was too time-consuming or trivial—or both. Her work is too innovative not to have been purposeful. She doesn’t imitate female writers of the day; if she had, she likely would have been published more. This determination to live her own life, coupled with the voice of individual identity she pioneered, makes her a feminist icon—even if critics have over- or underestimated her intention to inspire other women to assert themselves.
Paula Bennett’s groundbreaking 1996 work My Life, A Loaded Gun: Female Creativity and Feminist Politics placed Dickinson alongside Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath as one of the lights guiding female voice in the modern era. Bennett asserts that some of the impulses that drove Dickinson to redefine the self came out of the Puritan process of inquiry that all of the faithful would pursue awaiting signs of their election. Studying and reading signs in nature, writing autobiographical texts, reading—Dickinson arguably adopted all of these practices in a more secular way. But the strict Protestant practice of finding consolation through a cultivated relationship with the word of God shapes Dickinson instead into an individual unlike any previous Puritan. It’s this individualism that later resonates with feminist writers and critics, who rightly see Dickinson as a woman who broke new ground in language and lifestyle—whether she meant to change the world or not.
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