Volume 10 63

because the sacred rituals and ceremonies per-
formed for the dead are the closest that most peo-
ple “upon Earth” will ever get to the mystery of
immortality before passing away themselves.

Lines 5-6:
In these lovely lines, Dickinson uses house-
keeping as a metaphor for the process of letting go
of the dead. The heart, broken to pieces by grief,
must be swept up and hidden from sight. Love,
like memory, must be stored in a safe place. Or-
der must be created to counteract the chaos of
death. On a more literal level, it is true that many
people, when they are in crisis, turn to thoughtless
tasks like housework in order to maintain control
of the situation. In fact, Dickinson plays with lan-
guage by using the “heart,” a word similar to
“hearth,” or fireplace, which would have needed
to be swept out before the mourners arrived. The
house must be straightened up in order for the fam-
ily of the deceased to receive visitors, but every
home is full of evidence left behind by the person
who has died.

Lines 7-8:
These final lines escape being melodramatic
because of Dickinson’s use of the verb phrase,
“shall not want to use.” After great loss, many
grief-stricken human beings react by vowing that
they will not love again if love is inevitably lost,
and loss brings such great suffering. Others hide
their love away out of a profound sense of loyalty
to the deceased, swearing that they live only with
the memory of their lost love until the grave. Both
of these reactions, though somewhat irrational, are
an important part of the process of grief for many
people. Finally, the idea that we will all be reunited
with our deceased loved ones in the afterlife (“Eter-
nity”) has been a comfort to the bereaved since the
beginning of time.

Themes.

Death

Readers with just a passing familiarity with the

Dickinson’s work, including “The Bustle in a

House” often come to the conclusion that the poet

was “obsessed with death.” Certainly death and dy-

ing are frequent subjects in Dickinson’s more than

1,750 poems, but to accuse her of such a fixation

is to underestimate her contributions to American

literature. Many of her male poetic contemporaries

are equally concerned with death, but have not been

thought to be so eccentric on account of it.

There are reasons why nearly 600 of Dickin-

son’s poems to have to do with death and dying.

First, as the descendent of Calvinists Dickinson

grew up in a culture that viewed mortal life as a

temporary interlude before the moment of death

and judgement, and, one hopes, ascension to

heaven. Though she rejected her family’s strict re-

ligious views, Dickinson would have certainly ab-

sorbed the attitudes. Second, death was common in

Dickinson’s life. People died of common illnesses

and in childbirth with a frequency that is hard for

modern readers to imagine. She lost three young

friends growing up and was greatly affected by

their deaths. Finally, Dickinson’s great strength as

a poet is her interest in probing and describing mo-

ments in the human psyche, and the moment of

death is without a doubt the most dramatic of all

possibilities.

In “The Bustle in a House,” Dickinson depicts

the state of a household after someone has died.

The pairing of death and domesticity is a common

theme in Dickinson’s poems. In the poem she de-

scribes the noticeable escalation of activity, the

bustle, that follows death. In the ninteenth century

these activities would include preparing the corpse

for burial, packing up belongings, and preparing for

guests. Such domestic activities are important to

her exploration of the dimensions of death,

“solemnest of industries.”

Domestic Sphere

That many of Dickinson’s poems employ im-

agery of domestic activity is not surprising: she

lived virtually her entire life inside her house in

Amherst, Massachusetts. She had some household

help with the chores, but she still devoted more time

than contemporary readers can imagine to her do-

mestic duties. Her letters often reveal an impatience

with and a distaste for the routines of housework,

but her poems show how she came to see this kind

The Bustle in a House

Media

Adaptations

• Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson:
  Unabridged,Caedmon Audio, 1992.