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Analysis Of Emily Dickinson's 'Depicted I Ve Stopped Being Theirs'

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It can be argued that the poem "I 'm ceded-I 've stopped being Theirs-", written in 1862 by Emily Dickinson, thematises the already undergone individual development of the narrator from childhood to womanhood. The narrator turns away from controlled conventions/social norms forced upon her and attains her identity through a second baptism she chooses for herself. The form of the poem can be considered of interest in that it is evocative of the metamorphosis of the narrator 's voice. The lines of the three stanzas mostly alternate between iambic tetrameters and trimeters, but they do so with an irregularity to their rhythm that feels like a conscious choice from Dickinson 's part to play with the conventions of forms and meters of her time and to subvert them, much like the narrator subverts social conventions with her controversial choice. The first line, "I 'm ceded-I 've stopped being Theirs-", is a perfect example of the juxtaposition between form and content: Dickinson seems to make use of different verbal voices to express the evolution experienced by the narrator. It could be said that alone, the first line embodies the core of the whole poem. There is a sharp opposition between the first and the second part of the line, separated by Dickinson 's distinctive dash which provides an interruption but also fluidly links the two parts together in a way that would have been less effected by using different punctuation. That passive voice "I 'm ceded" evokes an image of
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