Hope is a strange invention

Written in 1877, “Hope is a strange invention” is an 8-line poem consisting of two quatrains. The poem was only printed in 1955 when the complete works of Emily Dickinson were published. This lyric poem conveys the speaker’s thoughts and feelings about the virtue of hope. The text is one of a series of three poems beginning with the construction “Hope is….” The poem features an optimistic tone regarding the nature of hope, even though Dickinson wrote it after the Civil War scarred the nation and while she was experiencing the Long Depression and Reconstruction. Part of this historical context in which the poem can be read and interpreted also includes the Transcendentalism movement begun by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This literary and philosophical movement inspired Dickinson’s writing and her moral outlook on life. In “Hope is a strange invention,” Dickinson’s speaker attempts to dissect hope and identify its origins in the heart. The speaker likewise describes the perpetual movement of hope and its innateness to the human experience. This connection between perception and the human experience was a vital component for Transcendentalism. In addition to Transcendentalism, Dickinson’s writing was also influenced by her increasingly reclusive behavior throughout her life and by the expectations and restrictions placed upon women in the mid-19th century.

Poet Biography

Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, the second child of Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson. Edward Dickinson was a treasurer at Amherst College, the school Dickinson’s grandfather assisted in founding. Edward would later serve a term in Congress. Emily Norcross Dickinson was from an elite family in Monson, Massachusetts. In addition to her mother and father, Dickinson’s family also included her older brother, William Austin, and her younger sister, Lavinia.

For her early education, Dickinson attended Amherst Academy for approximately seven years. Later, she would attend Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for a year before she left for unknown reasons. While attending these various institutions, Dickinson exhibited a predilection for various subjects, including composition and the sciences. Her botany class also prompted her to compose an herbarium.

It was during her teenage years when Dickinson began to develop her love of writing. One of her friends, Benjamin Newton, gave Dickinson a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry. Emerson would leave a great impression on Dickinson’s own work. She shared her early poetry with her friend Henry Vaughn Emmons and kept a close group of friends: Abiah Root, Abby Wood, Emily Fowler, and Susan Gilbert. Other influences during these early years included the death of Dickinson’s cousin, Sophia Holland. Religious revivals of the time also made Dickinson question the nature of faith and the soul. Dickinson’s family was largely evangelical Calvinist and belonged to Amherst’s First Congregational Church. Despite this rather large religious pressure she faced while growing up, Dickinson never joined the First Congregational Church or other institutionalized faith in her lifetime.

In 1856, Susan Gilbert, a very close friend of Dickinson, married Dickinson’s brother, William Austin. The newly married couple moved next door to where Dickinson lived with her parents and sister. It was Gilbert who would introduce Dickinson to another of her poetic inspirations, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. As Dickinson entered her early 20s, she became more and more reclusive, leaving home infrequently and only maintaining correspondence with select individuals by letter. Coinciding with this self-seclusion, Dickinson and Lavinia nursed their convalescing mother from 1855 to 1859 as she struggled with an unknown disease.

From 1858–1865, Dickinson experienced her most productive period in terms of textual output. During this period, Dickinson pieced together her manuscript collections, writing out copies of her poems on sheets of paper and sewing them together. Within this span of time, Dickinson would write approximately 40 booklets of poetry—roughly 800 individual poems. During her lifetime, Dickinson shared her poetry most frequently with her sister-in-law. Only a handful of her poems were published publicly (without Dickinson’s permission), while the greater part of her collection remained private. Dickinson also began exchanging her work with Thomas Wentworth Higginson around 1862.

Between 1864 and 1865, Dickinson made her last excursions beyond her comfort zone of Amherst. She traveled to Boston to receive treatment for iritis, an eye condition that caused Dickinson pain and aching of the eyes. After returning home to Amherst, Dickinson rarely left her family’s Homestead estate (“1855–1865: The Writing Years.” Emily Dickinson Museum). Towards the final 15 years of her life, Dickinson continued to produce around 35 poems a year. Yet, while she continued to write poetry, she no longer bound them into collections. These later years also brought sadness and death to Dickinson. Her father died in 1874, her mother passed away in 1882, and her 8-year-old nephew, Gib, died in 1883. After Gib’s death, Dickinson fell ill. She died of a stroke at age 55 on May 15, 1886, though more contemporary diagnoses list hypertension as the cause of death. While there are speculations that she had amorous relationships and received a marriage proposal, Dickinson never married.

After Dickinson’s death, Lavinia gathered together some of her sister’s poems. This collection appeared in 1890 as Poems by Emily Dickinson. Mabel Loomis Todd, a family friend, assisted in transcribing Dickinson’s poems, while Thomas Wentworth Higginson helped edit the text. However, because the poems were edited to fit standard literary conventions of the time, some of Dickinson’s uniqueness and stylistic idiosyncrasies were lost.

Poem Text

Hope is a strange invention—

A Patent of the Heart—

In unremitting action

Yet never wearing out—

Of this electric Adjunct

Not anything is known

But its unique momentum

Embellish all we own—

Dickinson, Emily. “Hope is a strange invention.” 1955. Poetry Daily.

Summary

The poem compares the abstract notion of hope with invention. The poem’s third-person narration states two distinct traits of hope: It originates within an individual’s heart, and it is inexhaustible despite its constant employment. The second stanza describes hope as a complementary component of the heart. The speaker admits that nothing is known about hope other than that it pervades all aspects of life.