Tag: gossip

The leaves, like women, interchange
Sagacious confidence;
Somewhat of nods, and somewhat of
Portentous inference,

The parties in both cases
Enjoining secrecy,—
Inviolable compact
To notoriety.

~Emily Dickinson

In my edition of Dickinson’s poems, this one has been titled “Gossip.” It’s interesting how a title can interpret and shift the meaning of a poem. Is Dickinson really talking about gossip? Does she mean to imply all that that loaded word conveys?

I’m not sure what to do with this poem, and it’s possibly at least in part because of that superimposed title. We’ve all been taught that gossip is bad. But what about “sagacious confidence”? That doesn’t sound bad. Is Dickinson being facetious? What does she mean by this?

It seems significant that the simile here is between women and leaves, a part of the natural world that, in “whispering” in the breeze, are doing exactly what leaves are supposed to do. No judgment there. Yet human gossip is a bad thing–and an activity stereotypically linked to women.

If the leaves are part of nature, aren’t the women part of it as well? Maybe the focus isn’t so much on what they’re saying as why they’re saying it in this way. I wonder how much of women’s whispered gossip has historically been subversive. Women in Western cultures have traditionally been silenced, left to whisper amongst themselves, their “sagacious confidence” dismissed as “gossip,” painted as petty and harmful.

Whose is the notoriety here? That of the people being talked about, or the women themselves? I have so many questions about this small poem, but I feel like Dickinson wouldn’t just go for the obvious–oh, look gossipy women, bad!! I feel like there’s more to her words than appears on the surface–I’m just not exactly sure what that is.