Emily Dickinson

Apocalypse

APOCALYPSE.
I'm wife; I've finished that,
That other state;

Czar = Emperor

Dickinson uses the masculine title 'Czar' (emperor), not 'Czarina.' She claims absolute power through a male role.

I'm Czar, I'm woman now:
It's safer so.
How odd the girl's life looks
Behind this soft eclipse!

Eclipse metaphor

An eclipse blocks light—her girlhood is now hidden behind marriage. 'Soft' suggests gentle concealment, not violence.

I think that earth seems so

Heaven/earth reversal

Those in heaven look back at earth as distant and strange. She's reversed the usual view—marriage is heaven, girlhood is the lost world below.

To those in heaven now.
This being comfort, then
That other kind was pain;
But why compare?
I'm wife! stop there!

Command to self

The exclamation point and dash make this urgent. She's literally stopping herself mid-thought, refusing to continue the comparison.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Irony Problem

Dickinson never married. She wrote this around 1860, in her late twenties, during a period of intense productivity when she was also writing poems about renunciation and loss. The speaker's triumphant tone—'I'm wife!'—sits uncomfortably against what the poem actually describes: girlhood as 'pain' that must be forgotten, marriage as a 'soft eclipse' that hides the past.

The key question is whether this is celebration or critique. The 'stop there!' command suggests the speaker is silencing doubt, cutting off a dangerous comparison before it undermines her claimed happiness. The word 'safer' (not 'better' or 'happier') implies protection from risk, not fulfillment. And the heaven/earth metaphor works both ways—heaven may be better than earth, but it also means you're dead to your former life.

The 'Czar' title is telling. Dickinson chooses the masculine form of absolute ruler, suggesting marriage grants power—but power over what? In 19th-century marriage, wives had almost no legal rights. The grandiose title may be ironic, claiming sovereignty in a state of legal subordination.

The Structure of Forgetting

The poem moves through three emotional stages that contradict its surface meaning. First, declaration: 'I'm wife; I've finished that.' The semicolon makes finishing girlhood sound like completing a task. Second, distancing: girlhood now looks 'odd' and far away, seen through the eclipse of marriage. Third, self-censorship: 'But why compare? / I'm wife! stop there!'

That final 'stop there!' is the poem's confession. If marriage is genuinely better, why forbid the comparison? The speaker has to actively prevent herself from thinking about what she's lost. The exclamation points throughout ('I'm wife!' appears twice) suggest someone trying to convince herself, performing certainty to cover doubt.

Dickinson uses 'comfort' versus 'pain' to describe the two states, but notice she doesn't say marriage is joy—just the absence of pain. Comfort is relief, not ecstasy. The poem titled 'Apocalypse' (meaning revelation or unveiling) ironically describes an 'eclipse'—a covering, a hiding. The revelation may be that marriage requires forgetting who you were.