Nudity, power, beauty, paradise, knowledge, authority, rebellion, anger, punishment, and injustice: these are all themes that Emily Dickinson.s poetry grapples with and repeatedly explores. They are also themes that she found in the Genesis narrative of Adam and Eve in her King James Version of the Bible.

As a central influence in Dickinson.s Nineteenth Century, Puritan, New England society, the Bible was a primary text at both Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke, where Dickinson attended (Sewell 362). At home, Dickinson.s father read a chapter a day to his family (Sewell 694), and at age 14, he gave her a copy of the King James text (Seelbinder 18).

Everyone in her life encouraged Emily Dickinson to study the Bible, hoping it would bring her close to God and would convince her to join the church. In Dickinson.s hands, however, the Bible had the opposite effect. At age sixteen, Emily...