My_Life_had_stood—a_Loaded_Gun

My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun Powerful Weapon Emily Dickinson’s poem "My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—" is a powerful statement of the speaker’s choice to forego the accepted roles of her time and embrace a taboo existence, a life open only to men. The speaker does so wholeheartedly and without reservation, with any and all necessary force, exulting in her decision. She speaks with great power and passion, tolerating no interference, and wills herself to maintain this choice for her entire life. The mix of masculine and feminine images, their juxtaposition, and their occasional transformation across the gender line, is inherent in the message of the poem. The opening stanza begins with a series of masculine images: "a Loaded gun" (1), "The Owner" (3—later identified as "He"—17, 21). The ambiguous image of the fourth lineis her being carried away by her own love to be — enraptured— or defiled.The second stanza resolves this question. Suddenly the speaker is "We," "roam in Sovreign woods" (5), indicating an acceptance of the relationship. masculine, stanza, speaker, power, gender, poem, images, role, loaded, life, image, feminine, being, without, roles, proclaims, poet, herself, gun, glow, foe, destroy, woods, very, valley, speaker’s, second, rhyme, rather, powerful, poetry, outlive, one, message