A Summary and Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Much Madness is Divinest Sense’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Much Madness Is Divinest Sense’ is the unofficial title of one of Emily Dickinson’s poems (she tended not to give her poems titles: they’re simply numbered in her Complete Poems, and this one is number 620).

The poem challenges conventional notions of sanity and madness, arguing that what society often perceives as ‘madness’ can actually be some kind of profound insight and truth, while those appearing ‘sane’ might be deeply misled. Indeed, what society calls ‘madness’ in some may even be some sort of divine insight, or ‘sense’.

Summary

Much Madness is divinest Sense –
To a discerning Eye –
Much Sense – the starkest Madness –
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail –
Assent – and you are sane –
Demur – you’re straightway dangerous –
And handled with a Chain –

To paraphrase Dickinson’s short poem: to a perceptive person, what appears to be ‘madness’ or insanity in another is actually good sense, divinely inspired. Conversely, what many people assume to be common sense is, in reality, unadulterated madness.

It’s the general consensus among society which determines what is called ‘madness’ and what is deemed ‘sanity’: if you ‘assent’ or agree with the mainstream view in a particular society, you are considered sane, but if you ‘demur’ or object, you’re immediately viewed as dangerously mad, in need to being restrained with a metal chain for your own, and other’s, safety.

This is a loose paraphrase of Dickinson’s little poem, to serve as a ‘way in’ to understanding its core meaning. But what else needs to be said? For a start, how did she come to write such a poem, and hold such views?

Analysis

In one of her letters, Emily Dickinson wrote: ‘Had we the first intimation of the Definition of Life, the calmest of us would be Lunatics!’ Dickinson’s poem is interested not just in worldly sanity (or insanity) but in ideas of the divine, or religious. If any of us had a glimpse of the divine and discovered the real reason we’re all here on earth, the revelation would be enough to render even the sanest and calmest of us a babbling madman (or madwoman).

Dickinson’s poem is, of course, concerned with a reversal of normality: ‘Much Madness’, she begins by asserting, is actually – contrary to popular belief ‘divinest Sense.’ Not all madness, we should note, but ‘much’, nevertheless. For every random person who is merely mentally unwell and in need of help and sympathy, there may also be a William Blake, or some other visionary who was denounced as a ‘lunatic’ because their insights and work were barely understood by their contemporaries.

In other words, contrary to societal expectations, we should keep in mind that what is considered mad might hold deeper meaning than what appears normal. And the flipside of this is that behaviour or attitudes which might appear ‘normal’ and perfectly sane may actually be madness, but the insanity of such behaviours and ideas are hidden from people because the majority holds them.

Consider some of the views which people of a century or so ago held. Eugenics was, for a long time in the early twentieth century, enthusiastically endorsed by many prominent intellectuals and thinkers, who believed that all of humankind could be improved with a little cleansing of the gene pool.

Nowadays, the mainstream view is that eugenics is an abhorrent practice and an unacceptable infringement on an individual’s right to have children. We take such a view for granted, but a hundred years ago, many leading thinkers would look at you as if you were mad for saying such a thing.

Similarly, two hundred years ago, the idea that women should have equal voting rights to men was a fringe notion in many countries. In Britain, even the Chartists campaigned for electoral reform for men alone, rather than women. Nowadays, it’s people who object to equal suffrage for the two sexes who are considered the irrational ones.

The point, then, is that societies decide which views are considered ‘mad’ and which are ‘sane’, but societies can be wrong. It’s the majority that decides, but there’s a well-known logical fallacy, argumentum ad populum (Latin for ‘appeal to the people’), which revolves around claiming something is true or morally good because many people think it is. Two centuries ago, many people in Britain and the US believed slavery was a good thing. How many people in the twenty-first century believe it is?

This phenomenon was already well-known in the nineteenth century, when Dickinson (1830-86) was writing. Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, published in 1841, had explored how many manias of the past – from Tulip mania to the South Sea Bubble to the Crusades – were regarded as perfectly rational pursuits, or beliefs, when they happened.

The Tyranny of the Mob

The speaker of Dickinson’s poem highlights that divine inspiration from God often comes to those perceived as mad; she implies that these individuals possess a unique, divinely-inspired understanding. However, society fails to recognize their genius, instead labelling them ‘starkest Madness’.

If this were all the poem said, however, the sentiment would be unremarkable. What gives ‘Much Madness Is Divinest Sense’ its acute psychological edge – its ‘bite’, we might say, or even its social commentary – is the closing image of the ‘demurrer’ being bound in chains for merely voicing opposition to the beliefs of the crowd.

As Helen Vendler points out in her study of Dickinson’s poetry, Dickinson, ‘demur’ is a mild verb which means voicing the gentlest opposition to something. It is not vehement rejection or resistance, but, we might say, a simple case of saying, ‘But surely …’ or ‘But what about …’

For this offence, the demurrer is proclaimed ‘mad’ and restrained in the most objectionable way. What else, we may wonder, does the bullying mob plan to do with that individual once they have him or her chained? As Vendler argues, the Dickinson’s ‘protest is against the Majority’s vehement conviction that a demurral to its views is so dangerous that it must be repressed, censored, or bestially punished.’

So Dickinson’s poem criticises the majority, not just for lacking the insight that a handful of rare visionaries have into what is true and what is not, but for treating those who do possess that insight both cruelly and unfairly, feeling confident that they are in the right because they outnumber the individual demurrer.

Form

The poem’s unconventional use of capitalisation, dashes, and slant rhyme reflects Dickinson’s unique style and adds to the poem’s enigmatic nature. The metre is largely iambic:

Much MAD-ness IS di-VIN-est SENSE –
To A dis-CERN-ing EYE –

It might be worth reading this prose poem from the twentieth-century Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran alongside Dickinson’s, since its message – if that is the word – chimes in some ways with the meaning found in this poem.