“Emily Dickinson’s Use of the Persona” by John Emerson Todd: But is it more likely that she constructed personae or had alternate personalities?

Todd points out that in many of Dickinson’s poems, the “I” speaking is not Emily. It is a persona. He says she has four kinds: 1. The “Little Girl” Persona, 2. The “Lover-Wife-Queen” Persona, 3. Personae in Death and Eternity, and 4. Personae involving Psychology and the Divided Personality (1). He gives an example of the latter:

“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind —

As if my Brain had split —

I tried to match it — Seam by Seam —

But could not make them fit” (1, p. 83).

Todd uses the word “persona” to imply that Dickinson “more or less consciously adopted” those four kinds of “non-Emily” (1, p. xv) narrators.

But is that how most poems are written? Is that how Dickinson wrote? Where did her personae come from? Did she purposely, intellectually, construct them? I’m guessing that she didn’t construct her personae any more than most novelists construct their characters and narrators.

And that’s the trouble with concepts like persona, voice, alter ego, double, etc.: they are misleading about the creative process and uninformative psychologically. Emily Dickinson probably had alternate personalities.

1. John Emerson Todd. Emily Dickinson’s Use of the Persona. The Hague, Mouton, 1973.