17 pages • 34 minutes read
Emily DickinsonTell all the truth but tell it slant
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1890A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context
Romanticism began in the late-18th century and spanned into the mid-19th century. It departed from 18th-century popular notions of order, rationality, and harmony by celebrating “the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental” (“Romanticism.” The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica.com, 17 Aug. 2022). By the second phase of Romanticism, the ideals on which the movement began moved from a so-called universal ideal to focusing on national iterations of Romantic thought.
In pre-Civil War America, many writers began incorporating mysticism and dreams into their work, as well as tackling the intense, mythic quality of meritocracy, which is an ideology that strongly informed “the American Dream.” With the American Dream as a cultural value, Romantic writers sought to solidify their own identities, modes of expression, and voice (A Criticism of the American Dream, Georgia State University).
Dickinson’s work delves into “the hidden consciousness of fragmented thoughts” (“Romanticism.”), which is a popular Romantic trope. Her signature dashes and lines emote this quality. This is especially evident in “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” among other notable poems. She also rejects Realism in the poem by subverting a “story” and approaching the notion of truth in the abstract, viewing it as an energy lurking in the consciousness.
Philosophical Context
New England Transcendentalism, characterized by many tenets including a focus on the greater good, humankind’s innate ability to achieve the greater good by rooting inner truth in experience, and a belief in the unity in all creation, was an integral part of the Romanticism movement in America. Both movements, for instance, celebrated subjective, emotive experience (“Transcendentalism.” The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica.com, 2021).
New England Transcendentalism started in Concord, Massachusetts and spanned until 1855. Well-known writers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller defined a generation that sought to separate itself from older generations’ ideologies. They also rejected the “established order” of Unitarianism (“Transcendentalism.”).
In addition to different modes of thinking, Transcendentalists explored experimental living (such as Walden Pond), supported women’s rights through suffrage, and advocated for workers’ rights and safe conditions.
Dickinson weaves the “the revelation of the deepest truths” in “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” She explores the value of truth and its connections to the goodness of humanity. In a similar-themed poem, “A Counterfeit – a Plated Person,” she explores what it means to have a genuine identity versus one crafted to hide the truth (Dickinson, Emily. “A Counterfeit - a Plated Person.” Emily Dickinson Archive, 2013).
Historical Context: Women and Access in the 19th Century
While Transcendentalism offered radical ways of thinking about humanity, the greater good, and personal experience, socially and politically, women faced multiple restrictions in matters of their own lives. More specifically, society limited their lives in the public and private sphere, enforced sex-role expectations, and did not treat women as autonomous, sentient beings.
While Dickinson grew up in a family of means and social standing, these limitations existed uniformly in American society. According to the article “Emily Dickinson and the Victorian ‘Woman Question,’” women had very few rights in the early-to-mid 19th century. In 1839, the Custody of Infants Act gave custodial rights to mothers who divorced. Forty-three years later, the Married Women’s Property Act passed, ensuring women’s rights to land, accrued wealth, and their own identity in their name (“Focus: Word Choice and the Value of a Dictionary Discussion Activities.” National Endowment for the Arts).
Women’s education also changed in the 19th century. Typically, educators confined women’s educational subjects to areas of expression: music, the arts, language arts, and domestic crafts like sewing. In 1837, Mary Lyon of Mount Holyoke College broke convention by teaching female students subjects that had been reserved for men, such as math and sciences, philosophy, rhetoric. This paved the way for Dickinson and the access she had to a privileged education (“Focus: Word Choice and the Value of a Dictionary Discussion Activities.”).
In terms of historical context, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” is perhaps veiled and subversive because it was the only vehicle accessible for expression. Under such limiting conditions, telling ideas slant provides room for expression and advocacy while maintaining the peace and social order—more specifically, how a group or community will respond (or as Dickinson describes it, society’s “superb surprise” [Line 4]). Women have experienced similar restrictions on expression in the 21st century. Society often assigns terms, like “passive-aggressive,” to women when their paths of expression are invalidated or restricted. There are many negative expressions reserved for women who are expressing anger, displeasure, or are advocating for themselves in an assertive manner.
Dickinson focused on the greater good, and for her time, this greater good came out of blurring the truth (whatever the intended outcome). The dance of telling it slant is a necessity, even if society says it isn’t. In this light, telling it slant seems less a morally depraved “don’t” and more a philosophical and humanistic “do.”
Dickinson inspired many poets, prose writers, and artists. Poet Susan Howe, in her poem “My Emily Dickinson,” writes:
To be a woman and a Pythagorean. What is the communal
vision of poetry if you are curved, odd, indefinite, irregular, feminine. I go in
disguise. Soul under stress, thread of connection broken, fusion of love and
knowledge broken, visionary energy lost, Dickinson means this to be an ugly verse
(Howe, Susan. “My Emily Dickinson.” Poetry Foundation).
In the 20th century, Howe takes Dickinson’s baton with the same universal themes: the dialectics of (female) identity and spirituality, of truth and its power, and society’s response to it. The truth is ugly, and to show it otherwise is a lie.
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