On 15th May 1886, one of the most prominent writers in world literature, Emily Dickinson, passed away in Massachusetts. As with many other forgotten figures in history, it would take a long time before her work and writings were recognised, and her name appeared in the genealogies of modern literature. The case of Dickinson is even more serious, as until recently, she had been portrayed as a frivolous, uninteresting woman with no distinctive creative abilities. However, as researchers Ana Mañeru and María Milagros Rivera have pointed out, the writer’s work contains a message that opposes the conventions of her time, especially when her poems are read in their original version, respecting the feminine gender she consistently uses.
This is how we discover that her words are directed to another woman, a very close one, Susan Huntington Gilbert, Dickinson’s childhood friend and sister-in-law, who would become her editor and even the person who prepared and dressed her for the funeral of the American poet.
