Emily Dickinson’s “The Bustle in the House”

            “The Bustle in the House” is a short but dramatic work, written in iambic trimester (c. 1866) which in the space of two stanzas, each consisting of one sentence, manages to convey intense meaning.  “The Bustle in the House” uses grammar in the form of nouns, verbs, appositives and gerunds and the meaning of language, to masterfully compare the physical and the spiritual, leading the reader on a journey similar to the one taken when we die.

The first two lines are as follows and set the mood and tone immediately:

The bustle in a house
The morning after death

            The words “bustle” (verb) and “death” convey opposite images and show that there is life after death. They also show us that there has been tragedy in the house of the speaker. The lack of punctuation throughout the poem leads to a very brisk pace – indicative of the feeling that after death we are supposed to get on with things very quickly, and after the stillness and somberness of death comes the action of bustle, by those who remain.  The first verse is completed by the following two lines:

                        Is solemnest of industries

Enacted upon earth, –

            In this case, the word “solemnest” acts as appositive to the noun “industries”, as it describes and reinforces what is meant here. An appositive is a noun or pronoun — often with modifiers — set beside another noun or pronoun to explain or identify it. (Owl, 2006)

            The word “industries” is again in contrast with death as it conveys action – reinforced by the verb “enacted”, although the phrase itself suggests that the survivors are just going through the motions.

The noun “earth” reminds us that we are still in the physical realm in the first verse, and as the last word in that verse, serves as a good way to transport us to the spiritual, as the dead are transported from the physical to the spiritual.  It is also directly after “earth” that we see two of the only four instances of punctuation in the poem – the comma and the dash.  There is meaning in this use of language.  In general, Dickinson’s work around that time showed a transition from a dominant use of the exclamation mark to a preference for the dash. This accompanied her shift from ejaculatory poems to poems where the energies exist more in the relationships between words and between the poet and her words – such as “The Bustle in the House”. (Denman, 1993). We are transported to the next stanza.

            The use of terminology and phraseology in the last verse is interesting:

                        The sweeping up the heart,

And putting love away

            A gerund is a verbal that ends in -ing and functions as a noun. The term verbal indicates that a gerund, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being. However, since a gerund functions as a noun, it occupies some positions in a sentence that a noun ordinarily would, for example: subject, direct object, subject complement, and object of preposition. (Owl, 2006).  Here, the word “sweeping” is a gerund.

When a person dies we physically pack away photos and store away the deceased’s belongings, yet it also refers to the way we bury things in our hearts and suppress feelings, until the final two lines:

                        We shall not want to use again

Until eternity.

            We know that actually we have not forgotten and there IS a time when we will want to bring the things out again – for we will meet up with the deceased again in heaven (eternity). The use of the full stop here signifies the end of the poem, the end of the sentence, and on another plane, the end of life.  The phrase can also mean that physically we put the things away and will never ever want to use them again.

            In conclusion we can see how “The Bustle in the House” uses grammar in the form of nouns, verbs, appositives and gerunds and the meaning of language, to masterfully compare the physical and the spiritual, leading the reader on a journey similar to the one taken when we die.

Works Cited

            Denman, Kamilla, 1993 “About Dickinson’s Use of the Dash” retrieved 3 Jan 2007 from the website http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dickinson/dash.htm

            Owl, 2006: Verbals, Gerunds, Participles and Infinitives, retrieved 3 Jan 2007 from the website http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_verbals.html#gerunds

            Owl, 2006:  Appositives, retrieved 3 Jan 2007 from the website http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_appos.html