Emily Dickinson was a poet who never published her poems. Yet, her poetry recovered postmortem invokes heavy themes that relate to audiences today. One of these poems is “My Life Had Stood– a Loaded Gun,” a six-stanza four-quatrain poem describing a life being wielded like a gun by a male Master.
The gun is a profound image and symbol that permeates the poem. It’s a weapon associated with dominance, power, and death— an object that opposes whatever its Master points it at. The poem references the life being used to hunt a “Doe” (Line 6)– a female deer. The dashes strung throughout the lines create a sense of rhythmic pause, like the sound of a bullet being fired out of the gun. The repetition of words and phrases, like in lines 4–7, gives the poem some snappiness when read aloud as if the lines are prepped on the trigger.
To me, this feels like a metaphor for the stripping of one’s autonomy through the objectification of the speaker. This life, whoever’s life it is, is used to take another’s life. Its Master has possession and power over the life, able to wield it however he desires. The speaker does not have a free will. Instead, it is revolving itself around its Master, which makes the poem just as thought-provoking as it is terrifying.
I believe the speaker is Emily Dickinson herself, as she didn’t intend for her poems to be published. However, it could also be of the general female population since she lived during a male-dominated era. The audience is left ambiguous by the poet, bringing more intrigue to the poem and its message. I wonder why she decided to keep her poems a secret, considering the existence of famous female poets. Could there be more to her poems than meets the eye?
I think this is really insightful commentary on a very complex poet. I struggled to fully interpret this poem, and your interpretation really helped me look at the work with fresh eyes, so thank you! I’m excited to hear you talk about it in class discussion.
Catherine— I really loved your read of this poem. I was most intrigued by your interpretation of the gendered nature of the poem, more specifically, how Dickinson personifies a masculine weapon for her own purposes as a woman. I also connected this idea of the pen being mightier than the sword, and how, while she compares her life to a loaded gun, her poetry might also be a weapon of sorts. I think the connotation of the word “loaded” carried a lot of weight for me. When we compare something to a loaded gun, it is typically to imply that it is volatile— dormant but with the potential to cause great harm. Particularly in the context of her other poem we read for this week, “They Shut Me Up in Prose,” and the fact that she never intended to publish her works, I wonder about Dickinson’s outlook, particularly how she might’ve used her poetry as an outlet to express frustrations with a society and kept her “shut up”, feeling like a loaded gun.