Dickinson's interest in spiders was a part of her lifelong interest in the natural world. A recurring theme in her poems and letters is how humans understand themselves within the context of "Nature," which she described in a poem written about 1863 as "what we see," "what we hear," and "what we know--Yet have no art to say" (J668; F721). Her poems and letters are full of the images of animals and plants--roses and dandelions, bees and houseflies, rats and robins, frogs and worms, leaves and grasses--and form an important subject of her work. For Dickinson, the ubiquitous household spider may have been especially interesting; in other parts of this site, you can read examples of the ways in which writers in the nineteenth century routinely used spiders as images and symbols: as frequently-misunderstood artists creating fantastic works, as industrious workers tenaciously devoted to a single task, or as complex animals with a shrewd and ferocious instinct for survival.

In an early letter to her absent brother, Austin, Dickinson mused about the morning household routine in which he is sorely missed and uses the clearing away of spiders to indicate the low level of activity in the household since he has been away: "Th e breakfast is so warm and pussy is here a singing and the teakettle sings too as if to see which was loudest and I am so afraid lest kitty should be beaten--yet a shadow falls upon my morning picture--where is the youth so bold, the bravest of our fold, a seat is empty here--spectres sit in your chair and now and then nudge father with their long, bony elbows. I wish you were here dear Austin--the dust falls on the bureau in your deserted room and gay, frivolous spiders spin away in the corners. I don' t go there after dark whenever I can help it, for the twilight seems to pause there and I am half afraid, and if ever I have to go, I hurry with all my might and never look behind me for I know who I should see. Before next Tuesday--Oh before the coming stage will I not brighten and brush it, and open the long closed blinds, and with a sweeping broom will I not bring each spider down from its home so high and tell it it may come back again when master has gone--and oh I will bid it to be a tardy spider, to tarry on the way, and I will think my eye is fuller than sometimes, tho' why I cannot tell, when it shall rap on the window and come to live again. I am so happy when I know how soon you are coming that I put away my sewing and go out in the yard to t hink" (17 October 1851, DEA Archives: Dickinson/Austin Dickinson correspondence). http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/dickinson/correspondence/austin/l58.html

In her poems, Dickinson extends this use of the spider; she often plays with the idea of the connection between the magnificent work of the spider, the way in which that work can suddenly be destroyed, and the subsequent effect on the spider/artist. A lthough we don't know exactly how or why Dickinson composed any of the poems in which spiders were a major image, we know that Dickinson was well aware of the use of spiders in the works of other poets (see, for example, the section on Poetic Contexts in this site) and read widely. The Dickinsons subscribed to Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Scribner's Monthly, and the Atlantic Monthly. These magazines included news as well as articles on fa shion, humor, current events, science and lite rary criticism. Articles on the natural world appeared regularly; Dickinson doubtless read or at least scanned popular articles such as Charlotte Taylor's article "Spiders:--Their Structure and Habits," which appeared i n Harper's and is available on this site.

Although we have no exact information about the date of composition of the poem we refer to as #F1163 and OMC #141,"A spider sewed at Night," there were evidently two manuscripts of it that were probably prepared in 1869. One of the manuscripts was se nt to Susan Dickinson on a sheet of paper, folded in thirds, addressed to "Sue" on the outside, and signed simply "Emily" at the end of the poem.

Dickinson sent the other manuscript (now lost) to her much--loved cousins, Louise and Frances Norcross. Frances later made two copies of the manuscript, one for Emily's sister, Lavinia Dickinson, and one for Thomas Wentworth Higginson, sent on 19 July 1891 when Higginson was collecting Dickinson's poems for publication. "A Spider sewed at Night" was first published in the second series of the edition Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd prepared as Poems (1891).

As you read the poem and consider how Dickinson may have composed this work, you might be helped by thinking about the following comments about some of the more difficult lines: "A word about Dickinson's pronouns: virtually always she uses the suffix 'self' to imply a doubling. The reflexivity of 'self' interposes a grammatical mirror in her work that comments upon psychological tensions. In addition, Dickinson often repeats the pronoun so as to give a hyperreflexivity. . . . Dickinson has discove red in her technique of hyperreflexivitiy a way for form to reproduce many times over the motif of the multiplied self. At the most rudimentary level of language, Dickinson's poetic structures reflect images in the way of funhouse mirrors. . . . Poem 11 38 [F1163] similarly offers the fantastic syntax of 'Himself himself inform.' The examples multiply as one reads the poet's oeuvre, the poems becoming a gallery of ghostly grammars, Doppelgängerontology. Dickinson's hyperreflexivity mimics the got hic psychology of divided self." (Daneen Wardrop, Emily Dickinson's Gothic: Goblin with a Gauge, Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1996, pp. 115--116).

Click below to see a scan of the surviving manuscript of "A Spider sewed at night."

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