“Nature” According to Emily Dickinson: Seeking Alternative Meanings to Mitigate the Climate Crisis

Abstract

The climate crisis provoked by human action has global warming as its main cause, due to high emissions of greenhouse gases and the degradation of the environment in the name of progress. As a result, heat waves, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, among other disasters, are becoming more common and will likely be part of our routine in the future. Believing that literary studies can and should take action to mitigate the crisis, this paper proposes an ecocritical reading of two poems by Emily Dickinson that address “nature”: “Nature – the Gentlest Mother is,” (Fr741), enhanced by Krenak’s (2019) views of nature, and “‘Nature’ is what We see –” (Fr721), accompanied by Murphy’s (2019) PAN and DIM theory. The poems allow us to challenge the assumption that nature is a gentle and dedicated mother, and accept that everything about nature will never be known, thus providing alternative meanings to this once-believed stable term. Following Martin Puchner’s (2022) ecocritical proposal, this paper understands that re-reading older texts can lead us to understand “nature” in multiple ways and thus change our life practices that contribute to the climate crisis and encourage us to take action.