Topic > Comparing Dickinson's "Much Madness is Divinest Sense" to Rich's "Aunt Jennifer" , each unique in its own composition of sonic affects, meaning, image and disposition. Both poets were women under the oppression of society during their time period, Rich was a lesbian and Dickinson simply a woman in the 1800s. As a result, the stories they tell in their work often revolve around the injustice they experienced and the way it affected them. However, despite the fact that these two share a similar environment, the way they communicate their thoughts is markedly different. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay For starters, Dickinson was a woman from a 19th-century Calvinist family in which men owned most, if not all, private property. The males who dominated society caused her “inferiority” as a woman. They created a patriarchal society where women were financially dependent on men and this was acceptable in that time period. In fact, his literary works were rejected for publication several times during his lifetime and were discovered and publicized only after his death in 1890. In lines 7 and 8 of Much Madness is Divinest Sense, Dickinson writes “Demur- you are at once dangerous – And managed with a chain –“ perhaps referring to the way her efforts in the literary field opposed the norms of society and therefore the media was forced to reject her every time. Likewise, Rich's position as a gay woman was not widely accepted in the 1950s. In fact, Rich married Harvard professor Alfred Conrad in 1953, likely due to peer pressure from his oppressive society. She later divorced him in 1970. In lines 7 and 8 of Aunt Jennifer's Tigers, Rich writes "The enormous weight of Uncle's wedding ring rests heavily on Aunt Jennifer's hand." Using the words “massive,” “weight,” and “heavily” is a form of organic imagery that connotes how the marriage synecdoche of the wedding ring is a burden to those who use it. This is likely a reference to how Rich's marriage only seemed to bring her down. Despite their obvious similarities in social environment, Dickinson and Rich did not share the composition of the two seemingly identical horror stories, they actually share a composition of sonic affects, meaning , image and arrangement to translate their experiences. In fact their structure showed a certain contrast due to their different literary periods. Much Madness is Divinest Sense is a single octave verse while The Mosquito is made up of three quatrain verses. Beyond this, an obvious difference between the two is the choice of diction. While Dickinson prefers to use abstract, intangible words like “madness” (line 1), “sense” (line 1), “majority” (line 4), and “dangerous” (line 7) to construct organic images, Rich uses verbs and more definitive concrete nouns for constructing visual images. In Aunt Jennifer's Tigers she writes: "Bright topaz inhabitants of a green world." (line 2) and “The tigers in the panel he made” (line 11). This makes sense since Dickinson wrote most of her work in the tail end of the Romantic era, characterized by an emphasis on emotional input. On the other hand, Rich wrote most of her work in the feminist literary movement during the postmodern era. The postmodern era, although difficult to characterize with specific elements, always shares the same idea of challenging implicitly modern ideas. Keep in mind: this is just.
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