The Full Text of “They shut me up in Prose –”
1They shut me up in Prose –
2As when a little Girl
3They put me in the Closet –
4Because they liked me “still” –
5Still! Could themself have peeped –
6And seen my Brain – go round –
7They might as wise have lodged a Bird
8For Treason – in the Pound –
9Himself has but to will
10And easy as a Star
11Look down opon Captivity –
12And laugh – No more have I –
The Full Text of “They shut me up in Prose –”
1They shut me up in Prose –
2As when a little Girl
3They put me in the Closet –
4Because they liked me “still” –
5Still! Could themself have peeped –
6And seen my Brain – go round –
7They might as wise have lodged a Bird
8For Treason – in the Pound –
9Himself has but to will
10And easy as a Star
11Look down opon Captivity –
12And laugh – No more have I –
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“They shut me up in Prose –” Introduction
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“They shut me up in Prose—” was written by the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson. The poem's speaker compares being constrained by society's conventions and expectations (metaphorically called "Prose," a word that refers to any writing that is not poetry) to being put in a closet as a little girl so that she'd be "still" and quiet. Yet the speaker also describes how she has escaped this confinement through her mind and imagination, which she implies can never be contained by society's rules. On a more literal level, the poem also celebrates the freedom of poetry writing itself compared to the more rigid and formulaic (in the speaker's mind, at least) world of prose writing. Dickinson published only a handful of poems during her lifetime, instead sewing many of her poems into handmade fascicles or booklets. “They shut me up in Prose—” was included in Fascicle Twenty-One, and dates from late 1862.
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“They shut me up in Prose –” Summary
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Society tries to hold me back with boring, restrictive conventions—much like how, when I was a little girl, my parents locked me in a closet because they wanted me to settle down.
Settle down—ha! If only they could have seen how my mind kept moving about. They might as well have punished a bird for not following their rules by putting it in the pound.
That bird simply has to decide to leave, and, just as easily as a star looks down from the sky, he'll fly away and look back down on the thing meant to keep him captive, laughing. I can set myself free just as easily.
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“They shut me up in Prose –” Themes
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Social Repression and Imaginative Freedom
The poem’s speaker feels constrained by social conventions (which she metaphorically calls “Prose”), and compares this sense of confinement to being locked away as a little girl so that she would be “still.” Even as society aims to repress her, however, the speaker laughs at the idea that anyone could imprison her rebellious, rambunctious mind. The poem thus celebrates the power of the imagination, which offers freedom from the dull, rigid, and often sexist confines of mainstream society.
“Prose,” which refers to writing that’s not poetry, is here a metaphor for the boring, restrictive, and “prosaic” codes of society, including those that expect women (like the speaker) to be quiet and obedient. When the speaker says that “[t]hey” attempted to “shut [her] up in Prose,” then, she’s talking about the way that both the people around her and society in general have been eager to reign in her individuality.
The speaker also remembers being “put in the Closet” as a child, because “they liked [her] ‘still.’” In other words, the speaker’s family wanted the speaker to follow norms for girls and be well-behaved. They literally confined the speaker in an attempt to restrain her energy and freedom, and the speaker feels like the world now figuratively does the same thing to her as an adult. (This is almost certainly a reference to the fact that, in Dickinson’s time, women were expected to spend their time and energy caring for their husbands and children—not writing poems.)
The speaker, though, easily escapes these forms of confinement through her “Brain”—that is, through her ability to think and imagine. Scoffing at the idea that she was ever truly “[s]till,” the speaker imagines what “they” would have done, if, having confined her, they could see how much her “Brain” continued to think and “go round.” There was no way anyone could have locked up her mind because the “Brain,” she insists, is always free.
The speaker then compares her mind to a “Bird” who people foolishly try to constrain in a cage without a roof: the bird can simply fly away, and “[l]ook down” over his former “Captivity.” The speaker suggests she too could “fly away” through her mind; no one can limit her ability to imagine other realities.
Ultimately, then, the poem suggests that societal repression can always be thwarted by the freedom and power of the imagination. The speaker even “laugh[s]” at attempts to hold her captive, suggesting that societal restrictions are laughably powerless compared to the power of one’s mind. The world might think that it’s got the speaker under its control, but it can never grasp all the thoughts swirling around in her imagination.
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The Power of Poetry
“They shut me up in Prose—” explores how people can find freedom through their imaginations, and, by extension, through writing poetry. The speaker associates “Prose”—or any writing that is not poetry—with social restriction, suggesting that she could never feel free by writing in this form. By contrast, the poem implies that poetry is the true art of the imagination, allowing the writer genuine freedom and discovery.
The speaker says that “they”—meaning society at large—attempted to “shut [her] up in Prose.” While the speaker uses “Prose” as a metaphor for restrictive social norms, she also suggests that this literal form of writing is inherently boring and limiting—something that can only “shut [her] up” or imprison her, or any writer.
Importantly, prose is a way of writing used within everyday society, in everything from textbooks to legal documents. Prose is not only metaphorically connected to social conventions; it is also part of these conventions and helps to sustain them. Prose, then, the poem suggests, is not an art form that can allow for true imaginative freedom, beyond the bounds of these conventions.
By contrast, the poem implies that poetry—which is, in a sense, the opposite of Prose—allows the speaker to move beyond these boring, restrictive conventions of daily life. Poetry, the speaker suggests, is the art form truly connected with the imagination. The speaker illustrates this idea through the poem itself, leaping imaginatively from her own experiences of confinement, to those of a bird, and then a star. Only within poetry, the poem implies, are such quick imaginative leaps possible.
The poem’s line endings also reinforce this sense of poetic freedom: instead of ending sentences or lines with punctuation (as would be required by the conventions of prose), the speaker uses dash lines, creating a sense of ongoing energy, openness, and momentum. The poem as a whole, then, is not bound by the rules governing prose. In breaking free of these rules, the poem suggests that that poetry is boundless in its potential, allowing the writer, too, to experience boundlessness and possibility.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “They shut me up in Prose –”
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Line 1
They shut me up in Prose –
The speaker says that “They”—meaning the people around her and/or society as a whole—have attempted to “shut [her] up,” or imprison her, “in Prose.” Prose is any writing that is not poetry. Here, the speaker uses “Prose” as a metaphor for all of the boring, confining, and “prosaic” conventions of society. The speaker means that she has been “shut up” or confined by these conventions.
To understand what this means for the poem, it can be helpful to remember that the poet, Emily Dickinson, was a woman living in 19th-century New England. Women’s roles were limited and tightly circumscribed in this world: they would be expected to marry and have children, and to be quiet and obedient.
The “Prose” of social conventions, then, likely stands for all of these codes of behavior. These conventions would attempt to “shut” the speaker “up” literally, in limiting what she could do with her life, and figuratively, in the sense of silencing her. (As it happens, Dickinson did not obey these conventions: she never married, and in her poetry, she subverted a range of cultural norms throughout her life!)
The speaker, then, makes it clear from the outset that she has experienced confinement and constraint—or at least, attempts to confine her. She associates this confinement with societal conventions, and by extension with societal codes of behavior for women at the time Dickinson was writing.
Interestingly, though, the speaker also associates this sense of restriction and limitation with prose writing itself, with all of the conventions of syntax and punctuation that go along with it. The speaker implies that she could never escape the restrictive conventions of daily life by writing in prose; she can only do so through poetry.
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Lines 2-4
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet –
Because they liked me “still” – -
Lines 5-6
Still! Could themself have peeped –
And seen my Brain – go round – -
Lines 7-8
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason – in the Pound – -
Lines 9-11
Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Look down opon Captivity – -
Line 12
And laugh – No more have I –
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“They shut me up in Prose –” Symbols
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The Bird
The bird in the poem symbolizes the freedom and the power of the speaker's imagination. The speaker uses an analogy to compare her own confinement to that of a bird in a “Pound”—a kind of fenced enclosure without a roof. The speaker envisions the people around her foolishly attempting to convict the bird of "Treason," or disloyalty to the government. This would, of course, be very silly, and speaks to how ridiculous the speaker feels it is that the world attempts to reign in her thoughts.
Of course, the bird only has to “will” it, or decide to leave, and he can fly away into the sky. The speaker too, the poem suggests, can “fly” away from her restrictive circumstances, through the imaginative power of her mind. The bird, then, speaks to the ease with which the speaker can escape her confinement, and the inner freedom she can find through her own will.
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The Star
The star in the poem symbolizes distance and perspective. Set far up in the sky, it introduces a new point of view into the poem. Looking down on earth from such a height, all human activity—including those societal norms that confine the speaker—would appear small and even inconsequential.
In the poem, the speaker describes escaping her confinement through her imagination. She compares this ability to escape to a bird flying away, and then compares the bird to a star. By extension, then, the speaker compares herself to the star. She suggests that through her mind, her imagination, and her poetry, she too can gain this kind of perspective. From such a “height,” those social norms that attempt to restrict her would seem laughably insignificant.
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“They shut me up in Prose –” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Metaphor
The speaker treats “Prose,” which refers to any writing that is not poetry, as a metaphor for restrictive and boring social norms. She says that “[t]hey,” meaning the people around her and society as a whole, attempt to “shut [her] up” within such conventions, limiting her energy and freedom.
To better understand this metaphor, it's helpful to remember that Dickinson was a woman living in 19th-century Amherst, Massachusetts. She lived in a small, socially conservative, religious town at a time when women’s roles were tightly circumscribed: they were expected to marry and have children, not be poets or artists, and they were also expected to be quiet and obedient. Dickinson chafed against these expectations, and one could well imagine that she felt “shut up” by such a context!
Within the poem, the metaphor implies that the speaker found societal conventions dull and confining. The metaphor connects these social confinements with literal prose, which the speaker suggests is artistically confining. Since prose is a type of writing associated with everyday life, the metaphor implies that the speaker could never escape the limitations of everyday life by writing in prose. Instead, the poem implies that poetry is the art form most deeply connected to the imagination, allowing the speaker to escape the bounds of society and find true, imaginative liberation.
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Analogy
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Simile
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Personification
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Anadiplosis
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Juxtaposition
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Enjambment
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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"They shut me up in Prose –" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Prose
- Peeped
- Lodged
- Treason
- Pound
- Opon
- Captivity
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Any writing that is not poetry.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “They shut me up in Prose –”
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Form
“They shut me up in Prose—” is made up of three quatrains, or four-line stanzas. Quatrains are pretty standard for Dickinson's poetry. Here, they give the poem a measured, even shape.
On the one hand, they might evoke containment—their four lines suggesting the four walls of a room, for instance. Just as importantly, though, the poem also radically resists the containment of its form. Instead of ending sentences, lines, or stanzas with periods, the speaker turns to dashes throughout. This is again very common in Dickinson's poetry, and suggests are resistance to regular rules of grammar and syntax.
Where conventional punctuation, like commas or periods, would bring the reader to a partial or full stop, these dashes propel the reader forward over the ends of lines and stanzas. The poem, then, enacts what the speaker describes: a movement out of containment and enclosure, and toward freedom and possibility. The poem’s final dash line, which occurs right after the last word, “I” creates a sense of the speaker herself flying out of the poem, reinforcing the idea that the speaker is bound neither by societal convention nor by the typical strictures of “Prose.”
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Meter
The poem is primarily written in iambs, a type of metrical foot in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable. Most lines have three iambs, making the overarching meter here iambic trimeter. Consider, for example, the poem's first two lines:
They shut | me up | in Prose—
As when | a lit- | tle GirlThe poem also incorporates variation into this pattern. For example, the second stanza begins with a stressed syllable, in the word, “Still!” This stress calls attention to the word and its repetition, just as the speaker begins to describe how she wasn’t still at all:
Still! Could | themself | have peeped –
The poem also varies its rhythm by changing up the number of syllables in the third line in every stanza. Line 3, for example, has an extra unstressed syllable dangling at its end:
They put | me in | the Closet –
And line 11 has two extra beats, for a total of eight syllables (though some readers might smoosh the syllables of "Captivity" together a bit):
Look down | opon | Captiv- | ity –
While variations like this are pretty common in poetry, it's interesting that both of these lines end on words related to confinement ("Closet" and "Captivity"). That both have extra syllables in them might suggest the speaker struggling against this captivity.
Finally, the poem’s seventh line is again eight syllables long, making it iambic tetrameter (meaning it has four, rather than three, iambs):
They might | as wise | have lodged | a Bird
It's again as though the speaker is rebelling against the poem's metrical constraints, with the extra foot here suggesting the bird's power to escape its cage.
These syllabic patterns also allude to a kind of meter that was important in Dickinson’s time: hymn meter, or the typical meter used in religious hymns. Hymns often used what was called short meter (repeating lines of six syllables) and common meter (lines alternating between six and eight syllables in length).
By drawing on hymn meter, as Dickinson did in many of her poems, the poem nods to important social conventions of the time (as the word "hymn" suggests, many poems using this meter were tied to religion). Just as importantly, though, the poem also diverges from the set meter of hymns. It creates its own pattern. Through its meter, then, the poem subtly illustrates what the speaker describes, as it acknowledges social conventions yet moves beyond them to create its own music.
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Rhyme Scheme
“They shut me up in Prose—” has an interesting rhyme scheme that follows this pattern:
ABCB DEFE BGHH
Both the first and second quatrain adhere to a regular ABCB pattern: “Girl” and “still” rhyme in the first quatrain, and “round” and “Pound” rhyme in the second. This fixed rhyme scheme conveys evenness and containment; each quatrain, ending on a closing rhyme sound, creates a kind of enclosure. The rhyme scheme, then, can be read as illustrating the confinement the speaker has experienced.
Importantly, though, the poem introduces variation into this fixed pattern. Note that in the first quatrain, “Girl” and “still” are not complete rhymes, but slant rhymes. From the very beginning, then, the poem introduces an element of resistance to the rhyme scheme’s containment, suggesting that even as a “Girl,” the speaker was never truly “still.”
As the speaker describes escaping this confinement entirely through her imagination, the rhyme scheme also changes dramatically, with the last quatrain following a different pattern:
- Here, the first line ends with a B ending: “will” rhymes with “still” from the opening stanza.
- Then the poem includes the new G rhyme sound of “Star.”
- The poem closes with what can be read as a rhyming couplet, with “Captivity” and “I” creating a sound close to rhyme.
Even here, though, the reader unavoidably hears the difference between the two sounds, so that the “I” at the poem’s ending creates its own, new line ending, shifting away from the “Captivity” that came just before. The poem’s rhyme scheme, then, helps to convey what the speaker describes: a movement out of containment and enclosure, toward imaginative, and musical, freedom.
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“They shut me up in Prose –” Speaker
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Several aspects of the poem suggest that the speaker is the poet Emily Dickinson herself:
- The reader knows that the speaker is female, since she talks about being “a little Girl.”
- The poem also describes the restrictive circumstances in which the speaker lives: she describes being “shut […] up” in the boring “Prose” of societal conventions. Dickinson herself chafed against the oppressive social and gender norms of her era.
- Finally, the rejection of "Prose" implies that the speaker has found freedom specifically though its alternative: poetry. In contrast to prose writing, which is associated with the very constraints the speaker wants to escape, the poem suggests that poetry is the art form of freedom and allows the speaker limitless possibilities.
The poem, then, can be read as describing Dickinson’s own experience as a poet, and even more specifically as a female poet, within the context of 19th-century New England. At the same time, the poem's take on restriction and freedom is likely one that that many women, artists, and free thinkers can relate to today.
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“They shut me up in Prose –” Setting
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The speaker compares the feeling of being restricted by society to being put in a closet as a child, so the setting can be thought of, in part, as that closet itself. The reader can imagine the speaker enclosed in this dark, limiting space, which lends a sense of claustrophobia to the poem's opening lines.
As the poem progresses, however, the speaker breaks free of this setting, and the confinement that it represents, through her imagination. The poem's setting thus moves from the closet itself into the speaker's mind, where her imagination allows her to transcend all physical limitations. She describes a bird flying free of a “Pound,” or fenced enclosure without a roof, and then imagines a “Star” in the sky looking down over the outdoor scene. When the speaker escapes confinement through her imagination, then, the setting of the poem moves into the natural world, a place unbound by social convention. Here, the bird, the star, and the speaker’s mind can move freely.
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Literary and Historical Context of “They shut me up in Prose –”
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Literary Context
Emily Dickinson's work stood apart from the literary establishment of her day in terms of both form and content. Though she is now famous for her use of slant rhymes, idiosyncratic punctuation, loose meter, and unconventional capitalization, these were quite innovative for her time. Her poems are also filled with unique and striking imagery and figurative language, as well as deeply personal considerations of nature, faith, and death. And despite being notoriously reclusive, she found a sense of wonder and freedom in her writing that she celebrates here and elsewhere; take "I dwell in Possibility," where, as in this poem, Dickinson rejects the restrictions of stodgy "Prose" in favor of the freedom and "possibility" of the poetic imagination.
Though Dickinson published only a handful of poems during her lifetime, it would be a mistake to view her only as a literary recluse, or to think that she didn’t intend for her poetry to be read in the future. She ordered many of her poems into sequences that she then sewed together into fascicles (or booklets), saving many other poems as unbound sheets. Dickinson included “They shut me up in Prose—” in Fascicle Twenty-One, which dates from late 1862.
After Dickinson’s death, various people close to the poet sought to gain rights to and publish Dickinson’s work. Yet these early editions dramatically changed Dickinson’s poem's so that they would align with more traditional norms of rhyme and meter. In the 20th century, Harvard scholars Ralph Franklin and Thomas Johnson each published editions of Dickinson’s poems, providing their own numbering system but ignoring Dickinson’s original ordering. Only in 2016 did Harvard University Press publish a version of Dickinson’s poems that preserves Dickinson’s original ordering of the poems and keeps multiple versions intact.
In a way, then, the story of Dickinson’s work reflects the story the speaker tells in this poem. People within the literary establishment sought to alter Dickinson’s work and make it look like more conventional poetry; in a sense, they attempted to “shut [the poems] up” in the “Prose” of literary convention.
Although in her life she published little, Dickinson read widely and was influenced by a range of writers past and present, including Shakespeare, Milton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her work also bears influences from religious scripture. Dickinson is considered a major American poet, who along with Walt Whitman helped to shape a distinctly American poetry for centuries to come.
Historical Context
Dickinson wrote “They shut me up in Prose—” in 1862, in what was then the small, religious, conservative New England town of Amherst, Massachusetts. This historical context is important to the poem, and especially to understanding the speaker’s experiences of personal and social confinement.
When the speaker refers to being “shut […] up” within “Prose,” or punished as a child so that she would be “still,” she calls to mind to a range of societal conventions of the time. Within this time period (and of course, in any places into the present), girls and women were expected to be quiet, still, and well-behaved. Women would be expected to marry and have children, not become poets.
Dickinson wrote the poem, then, within a cultural context that was acutely restrictive and limiting, especially for women. Within such a world, the speaker’s assertion of imaginative freedom and autonomy is all the more striking and remarkable.
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More “They shut me up in Prose –” Resources
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External Resources
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The Emily Dickinson Archive — View original manuscript versions of many of Dickinson’s poems and read more about her work at the Emily Dickinson Archive.
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The Emily Dickinson Museum — Learn more about Dickinson’s life and work at the website of the Emily Dickinson Museum, which is located at Dickinson’s former home in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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Dickinson Electronic Archives — Read Dickinson’s correspondence, critical articles about Dickinson’s work, and more at the Dickinson Electronic Archives.
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Manuscript Version of “They shut me up in Prose—” — View the original manuscript of “They shut me up in Prose—” in Dickinson’s handwriting.
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Biography of Emily Dickinson — Learn about Dickinson’s life and poetry, and read a range of her poems, through the Poetry Foundation.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Dickinson
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