The subjunctive mood in the writings of Emily Dickinson

The subjunctive mood in the poems of Emily Dickinson was from the outset a source of confusion to editors and readers. The first editors thought that these forms, in particular the third person singular verbs which omit the s inflection, were incorrect usages. These editors often ''corrected" them by adding the missing inflection. Later, more scholarly critics recognized and labelled them as forms of the subjunctive mood. Since 1955 Thomas Johnson and some other contemporary critics have suggested that they are not true subjunctives but forms of a "universal present indicative."

It is now known that the chief influences on Emily Dickinson's poetic style were from Elizabethan literature, written in a language rich in subjunctives and the other archaisms which characterize her poetry.

There is little or no correspondence in the appearance of subjunctive forms in the letters and in the poems. The subjunctives were almost entirely poetic devices. The subjunctive forms in poems appear in many different syntactic and semantic contexts. Therefore, one explanation of these forms is not satisfactory, although the Johnson interpretation may apply to a few poems. In 1863 Emily Dickinson used them in an average of one in every three poems, a frequency twice as high as the average. Furthermore, that frequency built up to the year 1863 and gradually declined thereafter. She apparently chose the subjunctives deliberately and they became a characteristic of her finest work.