SOURCE: "Locating a Feminist Critical Practice: Between the Kingdom and the Glory," in Emily Dickinson: a Celebration for Readers, edited by Suzanne Juhasz and Cristanne Miller, Gordon and Breach, 1989, pp. 9-19.

In the following essay, Walker analyzes the way in which Dickinson's views and portrayals of power relationships were influenced "by her experience of gender." Walker maintains that while some feminist examinations of Dickinson have painted her life as a "model of a successful feminist manipulation of circumstances," this view is inaccurate, given Dickinson's fascination with male power.

In three different letters, numbered by Johnson and Ward 292, 330, and 583, Emily Dickinson uses a passage from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:13) to privilege power as a category surpassing or incorporating kingdom and glory. One such passage reads: "When I was a little Girl I remember hearing that remarkable passage and preferring the 'Power,' not knowing at the time...