The Beginning of the Calendar of Deaths

Abstract

The 1870s began the cycle Dickinson was hoping to avoid: she wrote on July 27, 1872, to the Norcross cousins, “Little Irish Maggie went to sleep this morning at six o’clock, just the time grandpa rises, and will rest in the grass at Northampton tomorrow. She has had a hard sickness, but her awkward little life is saved and gallant now. Our Maggie is helping her mother put her in the cradle …” (LII 496). The Dickinsons’ new maid, Maggie Maher, was doing her work of bridging elements of the community with the occupants of the Homestead, and while Dickinson’s somewhat patronizing tone (speaking of the teenager’s “awkward little life”) offends today’s reader, the diminution of the young woman’s body can be forgiven. It was a practice of sentimental writing to equate women’s lives with their childhoods: the trope of innocence was the aim. In this case, the daughter of James and Ellen Kelley was dead at 17.