Physiological response
Notice the physical reaction—not intellectual but bodily. The word itself triggers actual blood flow, like a fight-or-flight response.
Prisons broad
Dickinson inverts the expected—prisons should be narrow, confining. 'Broad' suggests she's thinking of something larger than a jail cell.
Childish at my bars
The adverb matters: not 'childishly' (foolishly) but 'childish' (like a child). She tugs with a child's hope despite adult knowledge it won't work.
Reading Notes
The Agoraphobic's Paradox
CONTEXT Dickinson rarely left her Amherst home after age 30, eventually limiting herself to her bedroom and garden. By the 1860s she dressed only in white and refused to see most visitors face-to-face, speaking to them from behind doors.
The poem's prison isn't a cell—it's broad. This is the key inversion. Dickinson's confinement was her father's house, her town, the expectations for a 19th-century woman. The bars aren't iron; they're social, psychological, maybe chosen. Notice she says my bars, claiming ownership.
The visceral opening—quicker blood, flying attitude—reveals what the word 'escape' does to someone who can't or won't leave. It's not metaphorical longing; it's a physical jolt. For someone living in self-imposed isolation, even the word triggers the body's flight response. She's addicted to the fantasy while remaining imprisoned by choice or circumstance or both.
Only to Fail Again
That final again is devastating—it means this isn't the first attempt. The pattern is established: hear about freedom, tug at the bars, fail, repeat. The exclamation point adds desperate energy, not triumph.
Dickinson uses soldiers battered down to describe others' escapes—violent, forceful, masculine action. Her own attempt is childish, a word that suggests both innocence and futility. She can't or won't use force. The tugging is habitual, almost compulsive, like a caged animal's repetitive motion.
The poem never explains what the bars are or why she can't break them. That ambiguity is the point. For Dickinson, writing 1,800 poems while barely leaving her room, the prison and the sanctuary were the same place.