Safe in their Alabaster Chambers

1. Safe in their Alabaster Chambers The one and only Emily Dickinson

2. Safe in their Alabaster Chambers

3. Version 1~1859 annotations

4. 1859 version • Positive image of death and confident faith in the first stanza? • In traditional Puritan belief, wealth was a sign of God’s elect; this does not, of course, necessarily mean that the poem itself assumes the apparent quiet assurance of the ‘meek’ dead awaiting resurrection. • They may have satin-lined coffins and their confidence in resurrection, but their reality is suggested by the way they are cut off from all vitality and sensation by the ‘roof of stone.’ The dead in their alabaster chambers, one of Dickinson’s most effective and chilling images, seem suspended in some cold white prison. They are untouched by “Morning’, associated with hope, or by ‘Noon’, which we might associate with fulfilment and intensity. All that is left for them is the unmentioned night and death. • Repetition = timelessness and suspension, emphasised by the slowness forced by the end-stopped lines. • Stanza 2 contrasts the coldness and suspension of the dead with the vibrancy and activity of nature. Vitality emphasised by alliterative effects. Is this consolation? Or natural images to emphasise the terrifying deprivation of vitality imposed by death?

5. 1861~version 2

6. 1861 version • Possibility of change of tone suggested by dash and exclamation mark in stanza 1? Emphasis is thrown on the final phrase. • 2nd stanza rather than contrasting the dead with the natural world, contrasts the dead with larger, even cosmic events. The slow movement of the planets and constellations and the grand passing of time continues and in the face of this cosmic power, earthly power and material values seem unimportant. • What appears important on earth makes no impression in the greater scheme of things • Final line returns to the chilling whiteness introduced by the Alabaster chambers but compounds the effects with the aural image of dots dropping soundlessly on a snowflake – utter coldness and silence.

7. Why two versions? • Dickinson’s conflict may indicate an inability to choose between the desire for secure religious faith and a belief in cosmic indifference. • Relevance for us?