The Honesty of Agony

In Dickinson’s poem “I Like A Look of Agony,” she emphasizes the truth of pain, of hurt, of death. While people often put up fronts to fake happiness, thereby presenting false states of contentment, one cannot sincerely fake unhappiness. For, to “fake” unhappiness implies a true underlying discontent, which thereby renders feigned unhappiness true unhappiness. In other words, only an unsatisfied person will have reason to want to appear unhappy — and then he really is unhappy, is he not? While uncertainty can and does often surround perceived happiness, Dickinson likes the “knowing” that accompanies a pained, discontented look. She likes that she can “know it’s true” (1).

In seeing the pain in the faces of others, in recognizing the honesty and realness of this hurt, Dickinson is also able to form a link between herself and others, a sort of pain community. She has her own hurts — which she may or may not be able to mask from others, but which she cannot really deny within herself — and she can find something of a comfort in allowing herself to see and connect to the uncontrived pain of other individuals. She knows that pain is true because she has felt it herself, seen it in the face of her own hurt. After all, she does not say that she likes to see these types of pains in others because they are true — as a statement of universal fact — but rather because she knows they are true. In other words, the knowing is something personal, which she in turn uses to encompass a greater capacity, but which begins with her first. Then, she uses this personal knowing to connect with those around her, in whom she can see similar pains.

This pain community, however, is also one of femininity, one that apparently excludes men. “Men do not sham convulsions,” she writes, “Nor simulate a Throe” (3-4). “Men,” of course, could simply be an all-embracing word used to imply humankind in general. Yet, Dickinson seems to upset this idea with the somewhat ironic use of the word “Throe” in the following line, which is a severe pain, and which can specifically be used in the context of the pains of child birth. And, a man obviously cannot fake the discomfort of giving birth — not simply because one cannot truly fake one pain without revealing another, true pain — but rather because a man cannot truly possess this type of pain. Therefore, an implication exists that men exude a callousness that preempts them from feeling true anguish at all; they do not conceive to fake pain because they cannot feel it in its true sense to begin with. Therefore, the truth of agony and a pain community is seen through a feminine gaze, and one which probably peers a bit cynically upon men and the notion that they could possibly conceive of the true pains of women, as exemplified by the idea of the female pains of child birth.

If seeing pain in the faces of those around her is indeed something that Dickinson found noteworthy, giving it enough merit as to be written about, this merit stems not only from agony’s physical authenticity but from the inner dishonesty that often surrounds pain. While visible pain is not dishonest, a layer of deceit frequently exists between the inner pain and the surface, between what one feels and what others see. People often cover hurt with lies of contentedness, which is what makes outward happiness less trustworthy than outward pain. Dickinson, however, prefers painful truths to pleasant lies; she prefers the knowing of agony to the guesswork of other’s joy.

Perhaps, Dickinson does not see a space for the pleasant or happy to truthfully exist in the sphere of her own reality at all. If pain is a truth, then maybe joy is indeed simply a lie — a cover-up or an attempt at self-deceit. A person may forget that she is unhappy or block out a pain and for a time think she is quite content, but maybe Dickinson is suggesting that if this person was really being honest, then she would indeed be quite unhappy. In other words, perhaps joy is just the lie between bouts of awareness of pain and agony, which is really always present. In embracing this pain all the time, an individual is only being honest. The embracing of hurt and agony, with disregard to the so-called lie of joy and peace and happiness, may create an inevitable sense of vulnerability or a feeling of exposure, but Dickinson still prefers this truth. And, to what end does this truth lead? The ultimate end and the ultimate truth: Death.

Death is Dickinson’s ultimate truth. One can never fake death, can never pretend to be alive on the outside while dead on the inside — in a physical sense, that is. In a metaphoric sense, though, that is exactly what people often do. Living people can exude an aura on the outside that is contrary to what they feel inside. Death, though, has a physicality beyond emotion, in which everything has been externalized; nothing is hidden. The eyes are unseeing — “glazed” — and the mind is a blank upon death, behind a forehead beaded with sweat. The deceased does not even get credit for creating this perspiration — instead the personified Anguish has place the beads there (7-8). Everything has been exposed, inside-outed — even pain, anguish is on the outside now, visible to all. The eyes are still open, but the mind has ceased, and all that is left is the truth — the truth that is pain, that is hurt, that is ultimately death. The pain that cannot be concealed. The truth that cannot be faked. The reality that is true and unseeing and lasting.