수전 글래스펠과 수전 하우의 에밀리 디킨슨: 여성작가의 디킨슨 다시쓰기

Abstract

This paper examines how Susan Glaspell and Susan Howe interpret and recreate Emily Dickinson in their works, in unsettling some mysterious claims around Dickinson’s life and work. In Alison’s House, Glaspell evaluates a theory regarding Dickinson’s unfulfilled love toward a married man through Alison’s dilemma and her powerful love poems. At the same time, Glaspell deals with her own dilemma and preoccupation with the illicit passion between her and George Cram Cook. For Glaspell, Dickinson’s story works not only as a creative force, but also as an appropriate vehicle to express her own conflicts. Susan Howe also experiences a personal bond with Dickinson in the sense that they share an uncompromising spirit. In My Emily Dickinson, Howe rewrites her Dickinson by employing “creative and scholarly collage.” Howe views Dickinson’s seclusion as a “self-imposed exile,” and as a means of emancipation from her contemporary constraining representations. By inserting themselves into ongoing dialogues with Dickinson, Glaspell and Howe reconstruct intriguing reader-writer relationships, which are in fact relationships between authors.