lonely than she.n(A personal interjection: I once contested a feminist onnthe claim that women in literature — as, admittedly,nelsewhere — are discriminated against. The point had to donespecially with the woman as poet. I said in defense of thentypical male that I never considered it an anomaly that anwoman might also be a poet. At one time, however, I hadnsome difficulty in reconciling the notion of the female poetnwith what I now take to be Robert Graves’s absurd theory ofnthe “White Goddess.” Still, the feminist accusation keptnnagging at me. And then I recently came across HenrynJames’s review of, yes, Helen Hunt Jackson’s MercynPhilbrick’s Choice (1867) in the Library of America editionn(1984) of James’s literary criticism. James could not havenknown at the time that the main figure in Mrs. Jackson’snperfectly dreadful roman a clef is Emily Dickinson herself.nJames says: “And what put it into the author’s head to makenher a poetess and endow her with the ‘poetic temperament’?nThese things do not at all hang together. Poets are not anliteral but an imaginative folk, devoted to seeing the charm,nthe joke, of things — to finding it where it may be, andnslipping it in where it is not.” This from one of the mostnenlightened minds of the period. Therefore, concede thenpoint to the feminists.)nAlthough, again, it was Helen Hunt Jackson who firstnintuited in Emily Dickinson something which only thenfeminine principle itself could have perceived, the poetnwould not have emerged into the modern consciousnessnwithout the work and scholarship of a few notable malencritics. It is now some 58 years since Allen Tate publishednperhaps the finest single essay on Emily Dickinson—thosenby Yvor Winters, R.P. Blackmur, and Conrad Aikennnotwithstanding—and yet, Tate, like the others, had to worknwith the gussied-up texts provided by Dickinson’s earliestnand least competent editors, whose immediate task was tonmake Emily acceptable to a turn-of-the-century audience.nAll subsequent studies and appreciations of the poet mustnremain in the profound debt of Thomas H. Johnson’s bodynof work, both in the variorum and one-volume editions ofnthe Poems (1955-57) and in the three volumes of thenincomparable Letters (1958) published by Harvard UniversitynPress. Also of inestimable value is the mass of wellorderednfactuality provided by Richard B. Sewell’s greatntwo-volume work. The Life of Emily Dickinson (1974), withnits necessary context of the small New England communityn— pastoral, theocratic, and remote — in which the poetnspent most of her life.nNevertheless, with all this taken into account, we are stillncatching up with Emily Dickinson in the field of criticalnstudies; and nowhere has this effort been more dazzling,nmore brilliant, and perhaps more excessive than in the worksnof the new feminist scholarship. If the centenary year of thenpoet’s death was not exactly a media event in the publicnmind, the scholars have known for a good many years thatnthere is something special about Emily Dickinson. There isnan obviously clear and compelling affinity between herncareer and what it may mean to have been a woman and anpoet in her time, and ours. So much is this the case, indeed,nthat the ground-breaking essay by the poet and criticnAdrienne Rich, “Vesuvius at Home: The Power of EmilynDickinson” (1975), has been all but superseded by thenastonishing acceleration of studies in the following decade.nA decade after Adrienne Rich’s still important essay, thenmost notable book to appear on the subject in the centenarynyear, 1986, was Cynthia Griffin Wolffs 641-page biographynof the poet, Emily Dickinson (Knopf). Again, this may havenbeen both the most notable and widely reviewed book of thenyear in that regard, but it is not by far the most important.nThe effort was indeed prodigious; but a more significantnvolume, published about the same time and hardly noticednby the reviewing press, was Paula Bennett’s My Life anLoaded Gun (Beacon Press) with its particularly incisivenessay on Emily Dickinson that cries for future in-depthntreatment in a separate edition. For the time being, however,nthe finest of the Dickinsonian studies in 1986 may be thenfirst American edition of Helen McNeil’s Emily Dickinsonnin a low-priced Pantheon paperback. Also of considerableninterest (appearing one year earlier than the occasion of thencentennial) is Emily Dickinson (Berg Publishers, Ltd.), bynDonna Dickenson. This little study is a most welcomenantidote to the kind of criticism practiced by the SandranGilbert and Susan Gubar {The Madwoman in the Attic)nschool of feminism, which is filled with self-centerednessnand enraged whining against a generally flawed patriarchy.nAt this point, then, one must certainly face the problemnof an excessiveness in Dickinsonian studies that is likely tonimpede an otherwise outstanding achievement. Even on itsnblandest levels, the excesses are nevertheless a hindrance.nSeveral of Cynthia Griffin Wolffs conclusions are whollynunwarranted, such as (1) the alleged failure of Mrs.nDickinson to establish and maintain “eye contact” with littlenEmily at a crucial stage in the child’s life; and (2) the notionnthat all her life Emily would wage an intense struggle againstnnnJULY 19881 13n