Walt Whitman

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

I really liked this opening passage of Song of Myself. Whitman rejoices in himself in the opening lines of this poem and reveals his identity to the reader. He discusses his closeness to nature and his separation from society by saying, “Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, the distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.” He says that he wants to follow what society wants but he refuses to let it rule him. Instead he says he will, become one with nature.

Known by many as the “father of free verse,” Walt Whitman was a humanist and wrote at a time of transition between transcendentalism and realism. Yet he was somewhat controversial man of his time. He wrote about democracy, war, politics, race, and slavery, being patriotic, and about nature and homosexual love with vibrant descriptions of the human form. He was an outlaw in literature because of some of his poetry.

Walt Whitman was the first to experience celebrity or fame because mass media was beginning to flourish at this time. He loved being photographed and became the most photographed author. Because he experienced this new for the time kind of fame he also experienced “groupies” or fans. I thought the love story that was discussed in class was fascinating. British widow Anne Gilchrist fell in love with Whitman when she read Leaves of Grass. She was so enamored with him and his writing that she slept with the book under her pillow. She wrote a book review of Whitman’s in the hope that he would see it and fall in love with her just as she fell in love with him through his writing. She defended him and his writing at a time when many wouldn’t. It took him two years to acknowledge her review, and sent compliments…. through his assistant. Whitman had many fans, but Anne was different. She was different because Whitman wrote her back. Not only did he write her back but they devised a system of communicating with him while he was traveling. He would pick up newspapers from various cities and highlight specific information then send it to her. That way she knew where he was and how he was doing. I think that this was a very sweet story of a long lasting friendship. They didn’t have a romantic relationship although Anne did offer to marry him. After her death, Whitman said that she “was the most perfect woman he had ever known.” This relationship was so sweet and innocent and it really was something that I enjoyed learning about.

Whitman and Conception of the Body:

Whitman believed that there was no physical death. He also believed that everyone was at a bodily level. In class, we watched a film clip from Kinsey. In the clip blame was passed around, the father was not to blame for anything. Alfred Kinsley and his wife’s life experiences were better once they sought out help and learned more about the body. Whitman also believed in democracy. He thought of democracy as a way for people to integrate their beliefs in their everyday lives. He believed that for democracy to work it needs to include everyone equally or it won’t work.


The movie, A Home at the End of the World, questions what it means to be family as well as the traditional roles in the family. It questions things such as love and complications of love. Just as this class has been about origin stories, this movie shows Bobby’s origin story. During Bobby’s life, he searches for meaning and for who he really is. Once he meets Jonathon’s family and they take him in, he seems to be more at peace knowing that his life has meaning and a direction. He seems most happy when he is with Jonathon, and after moving in with him in New York and he meets Clare, his life seems complete. The trio makes a home and life together and begins to raise their daughter together.

I really enjoyed this class and thought we had some really good conversations on many different topics like love, survival and obsession and origin stories. I had learned about some of the readings in the class, but was intrigued by the different spin that our class took on it. I learned a lot about history and backgrounds of the authors from this class. I really liked how Suzanne brought in media connections and real life applications to the reading. It was very helpful with connecting to the text that was written during a much different time than the time we live in now.

As a future teacher, I am going to try to connect the information that we are learning in class with the types of things my students can relate with on a daily basis. I think that when you do that, you can give your students a richer understanding of the material you are trying to teach them. I think that if you can connect information to student’s lives than they will be more interested in what they are learning and work harder. I have tried to do this during my student teaching, and it seemed to help the students be more invested in the class. Being in this class has given me a different perspective on some of these topics, through our class discussions that I will definitely be able to take into my classroom someday. It is always important to be able to look at things with a different perspective and that is something I have always enjoyed in all of my college classes. I believe that class discussions really open up new ideas and make a person decide how they personally view multiple topics and so that is one thing I have appreciated throughout my college career and this class as well.

A Twist on Fairy Tales

There are many similarities between Dickenson and Sexton. Just as Dickenson has an interesting biography, so does Sexton. She was the youngest of 3 daughters and didn’t really know what her role in the family was. Her eldest sister was the “smart” one and her other sister was her father’s favorite. She grew up privileged just as Dickenson did. She was known as violate, untamed and very social as a young girl. She was also very popular. There are allegations about molestation by her father and possibly her favorite aunt, whom she was very close to. When she was 17 she was sent to boarding school in hopes of making her come back more of a lady and refined. She met Alfred Sexton and eloped with him. She first started becoming unfaithful to him while he was on his tour of duty and was compulsive about sex. Her husband was very sensitive and understanding about her indisgressions.

It was in 1974 when she gave birth to her second child that triggered her mental illness. She had depression and suffered from catatonic stupors. She attempted suicide multiple times and was sent to psychiatric hospitals for counseling. One therapist, Martin Orne seemed to help her and had her begin writing poetry about how she feels and what she experiences. She still drank a lot, and was heavily medicated with Thorazine, an anti psychotic. Orne diagnosed her with Bipolar disorder but many people dispute the validity of it because she had a sexual relationship with Orne. Her public persona was that of a “sexy crazy” such as a Marilyn Monroe.

In Transformations, she begins to refer to herself as a middle age witch.

“I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.”

She continues the idea of the middle age witch in her collection of Transformations. At the beginning of each chapter, the witch discusses the moral of the poem or story. For example, in Rumpelstiltskin, the witch warns of a small old man inside of us that wants to get out. The witch describes this old man as an “enemy within” and your Doppelganger. With this warning in mind, Sexton begins to tell the story of Rumpelstiltskin. In her poem, there are two different stories, the dwarf’s story and the story about marriage and motherhood. In this poem the marriage between the girl and the king is not one of love, but one of greed. It is a relationship of possession and servitude. Sexton doesn’t seem to care much for babies in the way that she describes the girl’s baby with the king. “He was like most new babies, as ugly as an artichoke but the queen thought him a pearl. “ (pg. 20) For Rumpelstilskin the baby was just another object for his possession. “but he wanted only this- a living thing to call his own.” (pg. 20) Many parents seem to think this way when they are in custody battles over their children. They want to have them but not really take care of them or show them love.


Just as we discussed in class, I like when you get to see fairy tales and their characters from different perspectives. This is the newest Shrek and the villain is Rumperlstilskin, the master manipulator and deal maker. There are many movies out now that give multiple perspectives on characters in fairy tales, one of them being the movie Hoodwinked. Hoodwinked gives perpectives of every main character in the movie with the story of Red Riding Hood. The book Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is another example of twisting a fairy tale. It uses the story of a girl named Briar Rose in Germany during the Holocaust. Teachers can teach history using fairy tales, just like this book Briar Rose.






Briar Rose is kind of disturbing when you know about Sexton’s background of abuse and mental illness. When I was reading this I was wondering if she was writing about herself as Briar Rose and then in class we discussed that same idea. The king is her dad and the price who saves her is her husband. After her hundred days of sleep she is afraid of sleep and becomes an insomniac. One passage that made me think she was talking about her own experiences was “each night the king bit the hem of her gown.” (109) The passage about her father kissing the back of her neck also disturbed me. To me that is not a fatherly kind of kiss, it’s erotic and shouldn’t be shared with a child. Another was “they all lay in a trance, each a catatonic stuck in a time machine.” Anne’s daughter discusses her mom’s disease and said she would often fall into a trance at the dinner table and stare. The trauma began when the curse was put on her each night when the king “bit the hem of her gown.” That may be why she was afraid of going to sleep because he would come at night and she would have to relive the nightmare. This type of poem exposes the vulnerability of the nuclear family and what can be the horror of it.

The Woman in White

Before this class, I hadn’t studied much about Emily Dickenson. I find it very interesting that she lived a “normal” life until she was 30 when she became a recluse. I did some research to try and discover why she became a recluse. I don’t know if one single event led to her withdrawing from society, but it seems that from a young age, she was troubled by death. Sophia Holland, her second cousin and close friend grew ill and died from typhus in April of 1844. Sophia’s death caused a deep depression in Emily and distressed her. When she was 18, she met an attorney named Benjamin Franklin Newton. She was close to Newton referring to him as family and he was a great influence on her until his death. He was the second older man to whom she wrote letters referring to him as tutor or master. Leonard Humphrey, the Amherst Acadamy principal died at the age of 25 from “brain congestion.” She wrote to a friend two years after his death saying, “"... some of my friends are gone, and some of my friends are sleeping – sleeping the churchyard sleep – the hour of evening is sad – it was once my study hour – my master has gone to rest, and the open leaf of the book, and the scholar at school alone, make the tears come, and I cannot brush them away; I would not if I could, for they are the only tribute I can pay the departed Humphrey". While in Philadelphia to visit family she met Charles Wadsworth, a minister. She had a strong friendship with him until his death in 1882.Her mother became ill in 1850 and was bed ridden until her death in 1882. Emily stayed home more often to help with domestic duties. While at home, she wrote as a way to escape. She wrote over 800 poems from 1858 to 1865. She is believed to have written the “Master Letters” from 1858-1861. The person to whom the letters are written are unknown and contemplated among many critics. She began writing less some believe because of the loss of help in the house. Many think she didn’t have time to write because she had to take care of the household. After much loss, she began to withdraw in 1867, even talking to people through the door when guests tried to visit. After that, she was rarely seen and when she was it was always in white. That is when she became known as “the woman in white.”

I find Dickenson’s life to be very fascinating. She was known for being rebellious for her time period. She rebelled against the conventional ideas about religion. In her poem, "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – / I keep it, staying at Home," she discusses the idea of being religious without attending a church. I think it is also intriguing that she never meant for most of her poems to be shared with the public and so they are better read silently to oneself.

We had a thought provoking discussion during the facilitation. One question that they brought up was “do our experiences shape us or do our feelings/emotions? I think that our experiences are mainly what shape us into who we are. It is not only what we go through in life, but how we deal with problems when they come our way. I feel that the experiences that we go through in life help shape our thoughts and feelings about certain things and without those experiences you are missing out on a part of life. Another question was “can we accurately believe what Dickenson is writing about even when she may not have experienced it?” I am kind of torn about this question. My initial answer, not having studied Dickenson before was no, I cannot believe what she says about love if she hadn’t experienced it. But then I stepped back and realized that she had 30 years of experiencing life and society. Who are we to say what she experienced or didn’t. Maybe she did find love, and we just don’t know about it.

The Master Letters are evidence of her “stuff of life,” that she knew love, rejection, joy. In her “Master Letters” she refers to herself as Daisy. In them, she also writes about a need to please the master. She has an intense desire, “I want to see you more – Sir- than all I wish for in this world- and the wish altered a little- will be my only one.” She shows that she is in a great pain, “I’ve got a Tomahawk in my side but that don’t hurt much, (if you) Her Master stabs her more.” When reading these letters the words that came to mind are: dreamer, young, niave, obsessed, waiting, desire, pleading and empty.





In her letters, she makes reference to herself as Daisy. In the Victorian era flowers had meanings and said things that people didn’t reel they could say out loud. They allowed for people to send out coded messages by the type of flower and color. The language of flowers began in the early 18th century first used by Lady Mary Wortley Montague who was the wife of a British ambassador to Constantinople. They were often communicated through Tussie-Mussies or small bouquets of flowers wrapped in a lace doily and ribbon. For example, a daisy meant innocence, and strength. They were wildflowers and one flower could produce over 500 seeds. Different flowers and colors mean different things, red roses mean passion, white suggust virtue and chastity and yellow stands for friendship. A sunflower is a sign of respect and a violet meant seduction, lust and appetite. When discussing the ideas of the language of flowers with regard to the letter a few brought up the idea of an erotic love.

One thought that these letters were intended as a strip tease for the master. She is being forward for a woman at that time, yet submissive at the same time. The woman is showing her devotion and commitment to him. Another idea that was brought up was that parts of these letters sound like “the other woman” writing to her lover. “I waited a long time-Master- but I can wait more- wait till my hazel hair is dappled.-“ Someone else brought up the idea of this master being her lost love that for some reason she had to leave. She tells him that she is going to wait for him forever and will always love him.

These letters also brought up discussion about the s&m relationship played out in them. Who has more power in the relationship? Some may think the dominator would, however the submissive sets the terms for the relationship. They are the ones that say yes or no. Why would someone want to be in this type of relationship? Kristina brought up that it can be freeing to give up all control because it means that you have no responsibilities. Dickenson’s “Im Nobody, Who are you?” shows why someone want to be considered a nobody.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

For Dickenson, to be considered a “nobody” means that you can live on your own terms, without having to be held up to anyone else’s standards. It allows you to create your own identity instead of relying on others to create it for you. If you are a “somebody” then you have society’s pressures that you must live up to. By writing Daisy in the letters she is giving a private name and not allowing anyone to set standards for herself. She is writing her own rules.

Source: Gips, Kathleen M. The Language of Flowers. Pine Creek Herbs, 1990.