“the Rates - lie Here”: Dickinson’s Reflections on Value and Quantity

Abstract:Scholars have long recognized the prevalence of economic metaphors and mathematical concepts in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and several studies have illuminated the role of quantitative reasoning within her work. However, the scholarship has yet to unify these insights into a clear picture of Dickinson’s understanding of value. This essay brings together various threads in order to argue that Dickinson invokes quantitative forms of value ironically, for the purpose of extolling higher, qualitative forms. In this respect, the paper suggests, Dickinson could be described as a counter-quantitative transcendentalist. The study begins by exploring conceptions of value in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy, the intellectual origin of American Romanticism and Transcendentalism, with which Dickinson is often associated. The theoretical framework begins by describing Dickinson as a Kantian transcendentalist and culminates in Karl Marx’s famous distinction, in Capital, between use value and exchange value. Marx’s schema demonstrates how quantitative forms of valuation tend to erase qualitative differences, promoting abstraction and dehumanization. This framework opens to a taxonomy of higher values that Dickinson posits as beyond quantification, namely, elusiveness, irreplaceability, wholeness, transcendence, and self-sufficiency. Examples from Dickinson’s poetry illustrate how she satirizes quantitative thought while engaging with these higher, more transcendent values. Finally, a close reading of the poem “For Death - or rather” (Fr644, M 325) showcases Dickinson’s use of poetic techniques to deepen her reflection on worth.