How can we cope with the inevitability of death? Writers like A.E. Housman understand the need to confront life’s troubles with their work: “But take it: if the smack is sour, the better for the embittered hour…” (Housman 651). A poet can better confront the unhappy parts of reality – like death – by “smack[ing]” themselves with it in a poem (Housman 651). Donne’s “Death, be not proud” and Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” are both attempts to come to terms with death by personifying it. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is a Swiss-born psychiatrist who studied the terminally ill and discussed her findings in On Death and Dying. Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief a dying patient goes through: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Another psychiatrist, Ellen Greenberger, found that sexualizing death either increased or decreased a person’s anxiety about dying (Kastenbaum and Aisenberg 141). Although both poems explore Death’s sexuality, the speaker of “Death, be not proud”, does not come to terms with death as smoothly as the speaker in “Because I could not stop for Death”. Donne’s speaker is in the anger stage of the grieving process and uses sex metaphors as a means to mock Death. The speaker of “Because I could not stop for Death” however, has reached the stage of acceptance, and views Death as a gentlemanly lover.
Donne and Dickinson grapple with death by personifying it, an approach that writers, artists – and the dying - have used for centuries (Kastenbaum and Aisenberg 141). Donne and Dickinson are seeking “a source of comfort, and intimation that [they] will be welcomed when [they have] passed through the transition of death” (Kastenbaum and Aisenberg 140). The appearance of personified death tends to reflect the society the individual is from. For example, death tends to be personified as whichever gender is more powerful: female in a matriarchal society, male in a patriarchal society (Kastenbaum and Aisenberg 138). Dickinson imagines death as a male. In her case it is a gentleman who wishes her to accompany him on a carriage ride. She acquiesces, as a Victorian woman would have to the men in her life (her father, and, if she had married, her husband). Donne does not specify the gender of death in his poem, but because the speaker addresses it as an equal it is almost certainly male. The speaker personifies Death not as a polite gentleman but as a scoundrel.
Anger, according to Kubler-Ross, is the stage in which terminal patients begin to ask why, specifically: “[w]hy couldn’t it have been him?” (44). The speaker of Donne’s poem has a similar response, deciding that Death is the one who deserves to die. The speaker mocks death by informing him of his powerlessness: “[those] whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow [d]ie not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me” (Donne 890). He continues to mock Death by comparing it to sleep, which is temporary, like he claims Death to be. Finally, he reminds Death that it is subject to “[f]ate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and that it is comrades with unsavory characters such as “poison, war, and sickness” (Donne 890). This is the voice of someone angry with Death – the speaker wants to put Death in his place.
The very form–a sonnet - echoes this need for control. In a typical Petrarchan sonnet, a shift would come between the eighth and ninth lines. Instead, the speaker continues to expand on his initial command, “Death, be not proud” (Donne 890). The argument becomes repetitive- the speaker brings back the subject of sleep twice in lines eleven and thirteen. He seems unsure of himself, and resorts to jabs at Death’s manhood.
There is another component to the speaker’s taunts – he is also putting down Death with sexual metaphors. Line twelve is both a question about Death’s proud swagger as well as a joke about erections: “why swell’st thou then? (Donne 890) The second to last line, “[o]ne short sleep past, we wake eternally” may make it seem like the speaker is at the acceptance stage, open to the idea of death as a means to get to heaven, but the next line –“death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die” (Donne 890) shows that the speaker is still not over his anger. Despite acknowledgement of his own eternal life, the speaker is still stuck on the idea that Death is going to get its retribution.
“Death, thou shalt die” can also be taken as a sex joke (890). “A favorite pun of Donne’s was on the word ‘die,’ which in his time carried the slang meaning ‘to consummate the sexual act.’ Donne makes extensive use of this pun in his great love poem ‘The Canonization.’ In ‘Holy Sonnet 10,’ Donne might similarly be punning on the word ‘die’ in the final celebration of the death of Death” (Holy Sonnet 10 Poem Summary). When Death “dies” he is spent, sexually, unable to continue with his original purpose. Jabbing at Death’s masculinity is another way to remind him he is not in control. The speaker, like the patients in the anger stage of Kubler-Ross’s study, is trying desperately to lash out at somebody– in this case, personified death - in retaliation for the unfairness of their own impending demise (Kubler-Ross 44).
Although there is no direct evidence that she did, Dickinson probably read Donne, including the Holy Sonnets like “Death, be not proud”, because they were popular at the time and Dickinson was a voracious reader (Farr 61). Dickinson’s form, though, is considerably different than Donne’s. She writes in four line stanzas, with only the second and fourth line rhyming. Dickinson’s use of capitalizations and punctuation - particularly dashes -was unusual. She did not force her thoughts into a closed form like a sonnet. Whereas the sonnet form of “Death, be not proud” could be looked at as a means of trying to control Death, the form of “Because I could not stop for Death” is relaxed and painless, much like the attitude of its own speaker.
The speaker of “Because I could not stop for Death” has reached the stage of acceptance. This makes sense, because she speaks retrospectively about her death. What has already happened is impossible to struggle against. Even the first stanza, a description of her dying process, does not suggest resistance. None of the other stages of grief –denial, anger, bargaining, and depression - are present in speaker’s tone. Death is not her enemy, but her lover.
Ellen Greenberger did a study of women with terminal cancer which showed that “death [seems] to have sexual overtones for many women” (Kastenbaum and Aisenberg 141). The speaker is in a thin night gown, practically nude. There is an intimacy between her and Death as they ride in the carriage, alone except for “Immortality”. This capitalization makes Immortality into a personified being as well – he is like the chaperone (needed in the Victorian era) on Dickinson’s date with Death.
Death has picked her up for a date, but is it one she wants to go on? She did not seek Death out, after all. Death had to stop for her (Dickinson 742). The poem does not include a conversation between the speaker and Death, so clues have to be taken from her actions. She is cordial towards her unexpected guest: she puts “away [her] labor and [her] leisure too” (Dickinson 742). She is exposed in her thin nightgown, and does not protest as they continue on their journey “toward Eternity” (Dickinson 742). This speaker, unlike the speaker in “Death, be not proud”, is willing to accept death without a struggle. She goes along willingly for the ride, even as they journey beyond her own grave. They are headed towards eternity, but are in no hurry to get there; Death “drove slowly, he knew no haste” (Dicksinson 742). They’re enjoying each other’s company.
In her study, Greenberger found that sexualizing death either increased or decreased the women’s anxiety about dying (Kastenbaum and Aisenberg 141). In “Because I could not stop for Death”, the speaker is comforted by the presence of Death as a lover. The speaker’s use of the word “we” throughout the poem reminds readers that Death is her companion; she is not making the journey by herself. She is calm, not upset by anything they pass – including childhood: “the School, where Children strove At Recess in the Ring”, the autumn of her life: “the Fields of Gazing Grain”, and finally the sun itself (Dickinson 742). These descriptions are straightforward and detached. Her grave, which would be an emotionally-charged sight for anyone not ready to die, is described stoically: “a [h]ouse that seemed [a] swelling of the ground” (Dickinson 742). This lack of emotion is a part of the acceptance stage – after working through the pain and emotional struggles of the other four stages, dying patients are able to quietly accept their fate (Kubler-Ross, 100).
But is it viable to compare the speakers of these poems to the subjects of Greenberger and Kubler-Ross’ studies? There is the problem of different time periods. Kubler-Ross and Greenberger did their studies in the 1960’s, Dickinson wrote her poem in the mid 1800’s, and Donne wrote his poem in the early 1600’s. But time period differences become less important when considering that despite how much society changes, death remains ubiquitous. Regardless of what society and time period they are from, when faced with death, a person has two options- they either accept it or they do not. Dickinson and Donne had encountered death around them. Donne’s father died when he was young, and early on in his adult life, his brother Henry was put in prison and killed. And a poet who writes about death must dwell on the subject, reaching a level of awareness comparable - if they had not been reminded sufficiently of their own death by society - to the people in Greenberger’s and Kubler-Ross’s studies. Everyone who lives, not just the terminally ill, is also in the process of dying.
The speakers of “Because I could not stop for Death” and “Death, be not proud” sexualize death differently because they are at different stages in Kubler-Ross’s model of the grieving process. Everyone must come to terms with death somehow, and personifying, and even sexualizing death through poetry is an effective way to do that. Not only can poetry help the poet - and the reader - “train for ill and not for good” (650), as A.E. Housman’s speaker suggested, in a sense it can defeat death. A good poem is immortal. Donne and Dickinson are, of course, dead. But their work lives on.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. “Because I could not stop for Death.” Perrine’s Literature Structure, Sound & Sense. Ed. Arp, Thomas, and Greg Johnson. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2006. 742.
Donne, John. “Death, be not proud.” Perrine’s Literature Structure, Sound & Sense. Ed. Arp, Thomas, and Greg Johnson. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2006. 890.
Farr, Judith Banzer. “’Compound Manner’: Emily Dickinson and The Metaphysical Poets”. On Dickinson. Ed. Edwin Cady and Louis Budd. London: Duke University Press: 1990. 52-68.
"Holy Sonnet 10 (Poem Summary)." Notes on Poetry. Answers Corporation, 2006. Answers.com 25 Oct 2008. http://www.answers.com/topic/holy-sonnet-10-poem-3
Housman, A.E. “Terrence, this is stupid stuff.” Perrine’s Literature Structure, Sound & Sense. Ed. Arp, Thomas, and Greg Johnson. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2006. 649-651.
Kastenbaum, Robert, and Ruth Aisenberg. The Psychology of Death. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1976.
Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: Collier Books, 1969.
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I was supposed to take this class earlier on in my career, freshman or sophomore year, I think, but it didn’t work out that way. I’ve already taken a lot of English classes – and this is one which is supposed to help with the very basics of being an English major: writing. Because I already have developed my approach to writing papers for college it was both comforting (when I was doing things the same way) and unsettling (when I was doing things differently) to go over the basics, and to compare my own writing to other people’s work. But even though I was supposed to have taken it earlier- I am pleased that I took Writing about Literature this term. What helped me the most in this class was the paper workshops and class discussions – they have already helped me outside of class, especially with my new job as a Reading-Writing Center tutor.
I started as a tutor this term too, so, in addition to our paper workshops, I spent a lot of time proofreading tutee’s papers. Even though it’s gotten easier to go through someone else’s paper and pick out what they need to work on, each paper needs a different approach (this is something Virginia Johnson taught me in her tutoring class, but it applied to all the papers in the workshops as well). Some papers need work on global issues such as organization, and adding, developing, or omitting ideas. Some papers need to work on writing errors: grammar, punctuation, and using the right words. And some have a paper that needs stylistic tuning: sentence structure, words, and voice. Actually, most papers (including my own) need work on almost all of those issues – the important thing is finding the biggest problems and tackling them first. I got a lot of practice with that by reading everyone else’s papers. During the workshops, it was nice to have enough variety in subject to keep reading the papers interesting, but to also have some people writing about the same thing I did so I could compare our approaches.
I tend to approach writing my own papers in the same way each time so it can be both enlightening and confusing to see someone approach the same problem differently. I’ve edited friends’ papers before, but before this term, I had never read such a mass quantity. Reading so many has made me think about my approach to editing my own papers. It would be great if I could be as detached from the work as one of my classmates or another tutor – it would make it easier for me to edit. What helps is having enough time (as was suggested in our book) to set the paper down and come back to it a few days later. Sometimes I even had to try that approach on other people’s papers in the workshop – setting it down for a while and then coming back to it, in order to reflect on it and make more helpful comments.
Unlike our workshop papers, though, in the Reading-Writing center comments have to be made immediately. I do not get much time to mull things over before the writer wants feedback, because the writer is right next to me waiting. The paper workshops we did in this class did give me enough time to think my comments through, which helped me practice articulating my ideas on what needs to be worked on. This has helped in my tutoring sessions.
The workshops have also shown me what it is like to be on the receiving end of peer comments. We had to take a tutoring session for my tutor training class, but I haven’t ever before gotten the quantity of peer feedback on a single paper that I did during our workshops. There was much variety in the comments I got on my papers, and reading them helped me understand the best ways to give constructive criticism. For example, a lot of the comments from my classmates were friendly as well as helpful, pointing out what I could work on while at the same time making it clear they respected me as a fellow writer. That is the sort of attitude I’d like to convey to any writer I proofread for, whether they are my friend, my classmate, or my tutee (or a person could be all three of those things, I suppose). I did feel a few comments I got back on my papers were harsh. But I was not too offended. I understood that the people who gave them did not intend to hurt my feelings – they also wanted to help. But the comments in our paper workshops (while much wanted) were mandatory, as well as indirect, which makes receiving harsh ones less upsetting. I do not want to give any comments to a tutee that I would not want to receive myself, especially because they are in a more sensitive position: they came to me for help, and they’re sitting right next to me as I talk to them.
I did not just learn about editing other people’s papers. I became more solid in the basics of writing, and relearned a few things I had forgotten. For example, I relearned the difference between a Shakespearean and a Petrarchan sonnet, which I was supposed to have already known from English 271. And that brought up another question in class: who came first- Shakespeare or Donne? The answer, which I looked up later, is that Donne and Shakespeare were contemporaries (Donne was born about ten years after Shakespeare). Classes are connected to each other – and to real life. It was helpful to go over and expand upon the basics of writing because it helped me as both a tutor and a student. Writing about literature, after all, is the bulk of what I’m going to be doing for the next two years at Augustana.
-Maria Ford
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