Stockholm Syndrome, 1862

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote this around 1862, during her most prolific period when she rarely left her Amherst home. She wasn't literally imprisoned—her confinement was voluntary, domestic, and psychological.

The poem maps habituation: how the unbearable becomes bearable, then necessary. Notice the progression from 'miserable' (line 11) to 'gratitude' (line 5) to 'friend' (line 1). The prisoner doesn't escape or rebel—she adapts. The 'appointed beam' becomes food she hungers for, suggesting addiction to routine.

Dickinson uses sensory deprivation language throughout. The 'narrow eyes' of the prison (line 4) limit vision. The 'planks / That answer to our feet' (lines 9-10) reduce sound to mechanical response. Freedom ('plashing in the pools') is remembered through a gendered past—'when memory was a boy'—suggesting childhood liberty is specifically masculine, while the female speaker learns 'demurer' circuits.

The steel lock becomes more real than Liberty's 'cheek' (line 20). Physical objects (beam, planks, key, steel) are tangible; freedom is abstract, theoretical. The prisoner knows the lock's 'features' better than her own face—'as our own / And as escapeless quite' (lines 23-24). Escapelessness becomes identity.

Watch Dickinson's invented grammar: 'passiver' (line 27) isn't a word, but she needs it to show hope dying by degrees. 'Content' isn't contentment—it's resignation 'Too steep for looking up' (line 28), a vertical wall that prevents even the gaze from escaping. The final stanza questions whether Heaven itself redeems, leaving the poem in permanent captivity.

What Gets Repeated

The entire poem appears twice in your text—32 lines repeated verbatim. This might be editorial error, but it's worth considering as intentional: prison is repetition. The 'narrow round' (line 25) isn't just the exercise yard—it's the poem's structure.

Dickinson rarely repeated full stanzas. If this doubling is deliberate, it performs imprisonment formally. You read the same lines again, trapped in the text's circuit. The 'geometric joy' becomes the poem's shape—measured, predictable, inescapable.

The key words that recur: narrow (lines 4, 25), steel/real (lines 19, 21), escapeless (line 24), appointed/stated (lines 6-7). These repetitions create the 'stint' (line 25)—the restricted allowance, the daily ration. Even Dickinson's vocabulary is rationed, dealing out the same words like the prison deals its beam.

Notice what doesn't repeat: 'Liberty' appears once (line 20), 'Heaven' once (line 31). Freedom gets single mentions while confinement gets the whole architecture of repetition. The poem enacts what it describes—you can't escape these stanzas any more than the speaker can escape her cell.

Emily Dickinson

A prison gets to be a friend;

A PRISON gets to be a friend;

Between its ponderous face

And ours a kinsmanship exists,

And in its narrow eyes

We come to look with gratitude

appointed beam

Prison rations become religious language—'appointed' suggests divine order, 'beam' could be light or wooden support. The prisoner hungers for literal food but also for the predictable structure.

For the appointed beam

It deals us—stated as our food,

And hungered for the same.

We learn to know the planks

That answer to our feet,

So miserable a sound at first

Nor even now so sweet

As plashing in the pools

When memory was a boy,

memory was a boy

Gender shift—Dickinson uses 'boy' not 'girl' for childhood memory. Masculine memory recalls freedom (splashing in pools), but present self is 'demurer,' more restrained.

But a demurer circuit,

geometric joy

Oxymoron—geometry is measurement, constraint, angles. Joy becomes mathematical, reduced to predictable patterns. The prison walk is a calculated circuit, not spontaneous play.

A geometric joy.

The posture of the key

posture of the key

'Posture' personifies the key—it has body language, attitude. The key's position (locked vs. unlocked) structures the entire day, more real than abstract Liberty.

That interrupts the day

To our endeavor,—not so real

The cheek of Liberty

companion steel

The lock becomes intimate—'companion' suggests friendship, constant presence. Steel is cold but reliable, unlike the 'cheek of Liberty' which remains theoretical.

As this companion steel,

Whose features day and night

Are present to us as our own

And as escapeless quite.

The narrow round, the stint,

The slow exchange of hope

For something passiver, content

passiver, content

Grammatically odd—'passiver' isn't standard English. Dickinson invents comparative form to show gradual deadening. Content replaces hope through slow linguistic erosion.

Too steep for looking up

Physical impossibility—content is described as a cliff face too vertical to climb with your eyes. The prisoner stops even imagining escape.

Too steep for looking up,

The liberty we knew

Avoided like a dream,

Too wide for any night but Heaven,

If that indeed redeem.

If that indeed redeem

Final doubt—even Heaven's redemption gets questioned with 'if.' The poem ends uncertain whether any liberation exists, even after death.