‘I gave him Leave to Live’: Emily Dickinson’s Non-service and Ralph Waldo Emerson

Abstract

Considering assistance ‘the finest of Joys’ (Fr1729), Dickinson singularly espouses withdrawing or withholding giving, regarding at times ‘leaving alone’ as an essential aspect of perfect assistance. This essay offers a reading of several of Dickinson’s poems that relate to the ethics of withholding: including ‘To offer brave assistance’ (Fr492), ‘We grow accustomed to the Dark -’ (Fr428), ‘I rose - because He sank -’ (Fr454), and ‘It came his turn to beg -’ (Fr1519), arguing that Dickinson’s idiosyncratic non-service stems from a creative conversation with the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson.