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The Belle of Amherst is a one-woman play by William Luce. Based on the life of poet Emily Dickinson from 1830 to 1886, and set in her Amherst, Massachusetts, home, the 1976 play makes use of her work, diaries, and letters to recollect her encounters with the significant people in her life – family, close friends, and acquaintances. It ...
- Charles S. Dubin, Michael Merrick, Don Gregory
- 1976
A biographical drama about 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson, starring Julie Harris and based on her poems, letters and notes. The IMDb page provides cast and crew information, user and critic reviews, trivia, and plot summary.
- (137)
- Biography, Drama
- Charles S. Dubin
- 90
This PBS production was filmed before a live audience in Los Angeles, which adds to the theatrical flavor of the performance. Harris is in her glory as Emily...
- 88 min
- 7.5K
- EncourageTV
A one-woman play based on the life of Emily Dickinson, the nineteenth-century American poet. The play depicts her childhood, her relationship with her family and friends, and her struggles with publication and recognition.
- Events in History at The Time The Play Takes Place
- The Play in Focus
- Events in History at The Time The Play Was Written
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The nineteenth-century family
In the typical New Englandhousehold of the nineteenth century, each family member generally had his or her own responsibilities. The father’s obligations centered around working outside the home and making most decisions. The mother, on the other hand, ran the household—cooking the meals, raising the children, and keeping it clean. Children were expected to behave, work hard in school, and help their parents as needed. As an example, because Emily’s mother was ill and restricted to bed, Emily...
Religious fervor
In the early 1800s a wave of debate about religion swept the United States. Much of it centered around the differences between Calvinism and Unitarianism. Calvinist beliefs held that God was revealed in three forms and that all good on the earth was God’s doing, while all evil was the burden of humans misusing God’s grant of human freedom. Unitarians rejected both the belief in a trinity of deity (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and creeds held sacred by other sects. To Unitarians, religion...
Education in the nineteenth century
Nineteenth-century education had broken sharply with that of the previous century, a period in which only half of the women in America could even sign their own names (Cott, p. 101). By 1840 most New England men and women knew how to read and write. In many cases, New England children received schooling beyond basic literacy, and in The Belle of Amherst all three Dickinson children attended school, although Emily attended only sporadically. She did, however, manage to earn her way into Amhers...
The plot
This one-woman play follows the life of Emily Dickinson between 1845 and 1886 at her home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Through a first-person monologue, Emily tells stories about the Dickinson family, her religious crisis, and her romances and unrequited love, also revealing others’ perceptions of her. Emily’s family consists of her mother and father and two siblings, her sister Lavinia and a brother named Austin. Theirs is a close family. When Mrs. Dickinson suffers a stroke, Emily and Lavinia...
The influence of nineteenth-century poetry
Emily reveled in the “joys of language and mysteries of poetry” (Chambers-Schiller, p. 100). When she read poetry, she experienced a physical reaction. Her whole body went cold and she felt as if the top of her head had been taken off (The Belle of Amherst, p. 7). She particularly enjoyed reading the poems of other mid-nineteenth century writers, especially the works of female British poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Emily was drawn to Browning, whom she felt demonstrated that women...
Sources
After spending many years as a musician and singer, William Luce turned his attention to the writing of “mono-dramas” or one-person plays with a particular interest in female writers. He worked as a composer and playwright for television shows as well as Broadway theater. He enjoyed writing plays about famous literary women, as demonstrated by The Belle of Amherst, as well as mono-dramas about Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Hellman, and Emily Brontë.
Changing role of women
During the 1970s, a strong feminist movement emerged that advocated equality between women and men. In 1966 Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, and a small group of women founded the National Organization of Women (NOW), a group dedicated to gaining equal rights for women, similar in many ways to the movement born of the Seneca Falls Convention in the midnineteenth century. In the 1970s NOW pushed for political changes and lobbied successfully for the passage of the Education Titl...
Reviews of the play
The Belle of Amherst opened in Seattle, Washington, in February of 1976 and then moved to Broadway, where it received laudatory reviews. Critics applauded the play for its ability to bring together Emily Dickinson’s poetry, letters, family tales, and memories in a way that portrayed her reclusive life. One critic commented that Julie Harris, who acted in the role of Dickinson, actually became her during the play. Luce was lauded for his ability to merge the poetry with the text of the play. I...
Bennett, Paula. Emily Dickinson: Woman Poet. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990. Boiler, Paul F. American Transcendentalism, 1830-1860: An Intellectual Inquiry. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974. Chambers-Schiller, Lee Virginia. Liberty, a Better Husband: Single Women in America; The Generations of 1780-1840. New Haven, Conn.: Yale UniversityPr...
Nov 15, 2017 · by Danielle Charette. Critics have been trying to rescue Emily Dickinson from her Amherst attic for a long time. Over the past half-century, scholars have sought to debunk the characterization of Dickinson as New England’s most notorious spinster, shrouded in her white dress.
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THE BELLE OF AMHERST ACT ONE The curtain is always up. The entire action of the play takes place in the Dickinson household in Amherst, Massachusetts, 1845–1886. The stage suggests two rooms. Stage right is Emily Dickinson’s bedroom. It contains a narrow iron bed with railings at the head and foot. At the end of the bed is a trunk. By
