I like your exegesis but I read the opening lines as a reference to the explorer who gazes upon “wastes” and “wilderness” and is stricken by the emptiness. The poet then confronts her face, and it confronts her back in a mirror, real or metaphorical, like the explorer on the edge of the vast, empty landscape. Explorers’ accounts of strange lands were popular and show up in much 18th and 18th literature which Dickinson may have read. From there, I agree with what you propose the poem shows of the poet’s conflicted self.
she certainly could be influenced by explorer’s accounts! she refers to distant places pretty often in her poems, though she didn’t travel much. not generally in terms of wilderness or waste, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t be doing so this time.
This is fascinating. Thank you.
I like your exegesis but I read the opening lines as a reference to the explorer who gazes upon “wastes” and “wilderness” and is stricken by the emptiness. The poet then confronts her face, and it confronts her back in a mirror, real or metaphorical, like the explorer on the edge of the vast, empty landscape. Explorers’ accounts of strange lands were popular and show up in much 18th and 18th literature which Dickinson may have read. From there, I agree with what you propose the poem shows of the poet’s conflicted self.
she certainly could be influenced by explorer’s accounts! she refers to distant places pretty often in her poems, though she didn’t travel much. not generally in terms of wilderness or waste, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t be doing so this time.