Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Emily Dickinson’s body of poetry contains elements of both Romanticism, which took hold in the United States in the early part of the 1820s, and Transcendentalism, an American literary and philosophical movement of the 1830s to 1850s. Dickinson lived from 1830 to 1886, so she would have had exposure to thinkers and writers representing both schools of thought.

Many of Dickinson’s poems reflect many different ideals that grew out of the artistic movement of Romanticism that originated in Europe. Thanks to Dickinson’s tendency to write about her own inner world, full of emotion, idealism, and independent thought, many literary scholars describe her work as Romantic. Additionally, the facts of her biography and her isolation later in life demonstrate her reluctance to conform to the norms of society and her wish to live according to her own terms, both of which are ideals that characterize the philosophy of Romanticism. In “Because I could not stop for death,” Dickinson addresses the relationship between a human’s spirit and its body as the speaker of the poem approaches death, another frequent theme in Romantic literature.

Literary scholars also note the influence of Transcendentalism on Dickinson. Some commonalities exist between Romanticism and Transcendentalism, and much of Dickinson’s life and work demonstrates this overlap.