Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 19

Hypervisual Standard of Popular Culture 17 From her early invitation —"Into my garden come!" (4, emphasis added)—to her late reconciliation wherein "I'll let my Heart just in sight" (597), 1 believe Emily Dickinson has resolved the tension between ocularity and gender by confirming herself within a cosmic/confidential exhibitionism, a femininity which is seen more than it sees and which attracts by that very allurement, rather than by a Whitman’s naked observation and robust "Undrape!" Indeed, Dickinson's quintessential power and enduring popularity reside in her understandable life-long passion simply to be noticed and appreciated—by God, by lovers, and by nature itself as her "friend." From fantasies where "in my awkward—gazing-face/The Angels— softly peered" (117), or where, as Queen of the universe, she is celestially "turned round and round—/To an admiring sky—" (159), or where, in even the smallest of states, she gaily continues to "strut upon my stem" (135), Dickinson transfixes herself, like the "brazen" Hester Prynne upon the scaffold, as "the point that drew all eyes." The poet will even aggrandize her role of replacing the holiest icon of her milieu—"See! 1 usurped thy crucifix to honor mine!" (704). In this sacro-popular calling, not as the "Bride of Christ" but as the American Woman/Wife, Dickinson can present herself to her culture as the exquisite hypervisual ideal, "Dressed to meet You— /See—in White!" (185). Moreover, she can now freely exult in a natural "coquettishness" or alluring feminine vanity which is much more at the root of Dickinson's popular acclaim than is generally conceded: A Charm invests a face Imperfectly beheld— The Lady dare not lift her Veil For fear it be dispelled— (201). It is obvious, too, that a good deal of Dickinson's appeal for her literary mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, was just this sort of coy femininity which deftly extracted from the man all he had to give by the woman's intuitional appeal to the voyeur's fancy. Dickinson writes to the bemused Higginson: "While my thought is undressed—I can make the distinction, but when I put them in the Gown—they look alike, and numb" (Letters 2:404). Or, again, she reveals that "I write today from my pillow" to ask the man to bear