Pessimism

Many of Emily Dickenson’s poems focused on pessimistic topics: of death, loneliness, isolation, etc. Given her life story and personality of a recluse, we can probably guess why she wrote the types of poems she did. Emily Dickenson was probably a very pessimistic person and sought to express her sorrow in her poems. She didn’t have much to do being alone in her house, so she had much time to dwell on her situation and other important life lessons.

The author of the book The Handmaid’s Tale is the opposite of Emily Dickenson. Margaret Atwood was a feminist. She wrote the book as an exaggeration of the oppression of females to show her point of view. The author’s point of view is actually the opposite of the point of view of the government in The Handmaid’s Tale. The narrator in the story, however, is in a more similar situation as Emily Dickenson. Both women live in a society where men and women are not equal and women are not supposed to express too much emotion. Their situations differ in that Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale was forced to stay indoors most of the time while Emily Dickenson had chosen to hide from the public.