[Emily] Dickinson was a useful figure to two American eras with much in common. In the 1890s a rich nation unnerved by urbanism, immigration and racial violence was looking back with nostalgia for a simpler, whiter, rural version of itself. Dickinson, sold as a kind of village folk figure whose withdrawal was a rejection of the modern world, became a spokeswoman for that past.
She played a related role in the cold war years. As paranoia about Communism and nuclear destruction grew in lockstep with expanding American might, the country again dreamed up a yesterday, this one peopled by God-fearing pioneers. Dickinson, the nunlike individualist, again filled the bill.
link: My Hero, Emily Dickinson, Outlaw of Amherst - NYTimes.com
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