Emily Dickinson

At Home

THE night was wide, and furnished scant
With but a single star,
That often as a cloud it met

Blew out itself

The star extinguishes like a candle in wind—Dickinson makes celestial objects as fragile as household flames. This domestic scale is her signature move.

Blew out itself for fear.
The wind pursued the little bush,
And drove away the leaves
November left; then clambered up
And fretted in the eaves.
No squirrel went abroad;
A dog's belated feet
Like intermittent plush were heard

Intermittent plush

Dog paws on frozen ground sound soft-hard-soft. 'Plush' is fabric language for animal sound—she's mixing textures with acoustics.

Adown the empty street.

To feel if blinds

Subject shift—no warning. We jump from outdoor scene to the housewife's ritual. Dickinson drops 'she' and makes us supply it.

To feel if blinds be fast,
And closer to the fire
Her little rocking-chair to draw,
And shiver for the poor,

Shiver for the poor

She shivers *for* them, not *with* them. Sympathy from safety—the fire is right there. Dickinson is poking at comfortable pity.

The housewife's gentle task.
"How pleasanter," said she
Unto the sofa opposite,

The sleet than May

She prefers winter isolation to May's sociability ('thee'). The housewife chooses weather that keeps people away—this is Dickinson's autobiography.

"The sleet than May—no thee!"
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Dickinson's Indoor-Outdoor Architecture

The poem is built like a house with windows. First three stanzas: looking out at November desolation. Final two stanzas: pulling back inside to the housewife's ritual. Dickinson doesn't announce this transition—she just shifts from 'the wind' to 'to feel if blinds be fast' and expects you to follow.

The outside world gets personified violence: wind *pursues* and *fretters*, clouds make stars afraid. But these are small-scale disasters—a star blowing out, leaves getting chased. Dickinson makes cosmic loneliness feel as domestic as checking if your blinds are latched.

'Adown the empty street' is the hinge. It's the last outside image, and 'adown' is mock-archaic (even for 1860s poetry). She's performing quaintness right before revealing the housewife who's also performing—performing concern for the poor while enjoying her fire.

The Housewife's Confession

CONTEXT Dickinson rarely left her Amherst home after age 30, dressed in white, gardened, baked, and wrote 1800 poems mostly unseen. This poem is her defense of that choice.

The housewife talks to furniture—'Unto the sofa opposite.' Not to God, not to family. The sofa. This is isolation as chosen companion. Her final line admits what the whole poem has been building toward: winter is better because it keeps people away. 'May—no thee' compresses it perfectly. May brings 'thee' (visitors, obligations, the social world). Sleet brings solitude.

'Shiver for the poor' is the poem's cruelest moment. It's listed as a 'gentle task'—part of the housewife's evening routine, like checking blinds and moving her chair. Dickinson is diagnosing performative sympathy: feeling bad for others from a position of comfort, then going back to preferring the isolation that comfort allows. She's not condemning the housewife. She *is* the housewife, and she's honest about it.