Lives Like Loaded Guns

Lyndall Gordon's wonderful biography of Emily Dickinson reads sort of like a soap opera: there are affairs and power struggles; the power struggles have continued into the present day.

Gordon reveals Emily's brother, Austin,'s mistress, Mable Todd as the force conspiring against the truth of Emily's life. Todd was the first editor of Dickinson's poetry after her death, and she was jealous of Austin's wife, Susan. Todd made Susan into the bad guy of the whole situation, editing her out of poetry and letters, and undermining the truth of their close relationship. Gordon shows how one of the previously most significant biographies of Dickinson, written by Richard Sewall, takes the Todd side of the Dickinson feud.

Todd, never having met Dickinson in person (although she glossed over that fact and pretended that they were good friends), had an interest in making Dickinson into a romantic, other-worldly figure who was jilted in love. The truth is, as Gordon shows, Dickinson had a variety of lovers through her short life.

Gordon's surprise revelation (connected to Dickinson's choice not to marry) is her hypothesis that Dickinson had epilepsy, which was the reason that she hid out in her father's home. (A person with epilepsy in her day may have chosen not to marry in order not to pass it down to their children or in order to better hide the disease.) Epilepsy may have even been part of her wearing white dresses: epilepsy was treated in part by extreme cleanliness.

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