Dickinson Review: My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun – (Season 3 Episode 8)

The tide is turning in both the Civil War and the Dickinson Family war on Dickinson Season 3 Episode 8, “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun -.” After a two-week slump of less than stellar episodes, and with only two more episodes to go, we are finally given the chance to see Emily process some of what’s been going on around her.

Let me just start by saying Hailee Steinfeld gives a tour de force performance on this episode, and we go through a range of emotions with Emily over the course of the half-hour. I’ve said it before, but Steinfeld has to be one of the busiest, hardest-working young actors out there right now, and Dickinson Season 3 Episode 8 gives her a lot of exciting material to work with. 

If there is a central theme to this week’s episode, and one that has been threaded throughout this season of Dickinson, it’s legacy. The discussion kicks off at Frazer’s funeral and continues as Emily helps her father write out his Will. 

The rest of the episode is fun, sure, but this ends up as one of the most poignant scenes on Dickinson Season 3, maybe even the entire series.

After such a lovely day with her father, and having a genuine heart-to-heart about trust, Mr. Dickinson breaks that tender bond in half when he asks Emily to write out the clause in his Will that gives all of his assets to Austin, or even Austin’s nameless son. Even though Austin is estranged and Emily has been his number one supporter.

I get that in the mid-1800s, women had almost no right to financial independence, however, it’s still the ultimate slap in the face, especially when Mr. Dickinson has the gall to say, “your little unnamed nephew could very well end up your guardian someday,” and talks about how “women are too emotional” to own property. 

I guess in some way it shows that Mr. Dickinson does value his family that he is willing to look past the feud and bequeath everything to his only son. It’s still incredibly disrespectful to speak to his daughter that way, and I was really pleased with the rebuttal Emily threw his way.

It’s also nice knowing that the real-life Emily had the last laugh there. For all the hullabaloo Edward Dickinson was throwing around trying to cement his legacy in history, his most defining characteristic two centuries later is that he was the father to one of America’s greatest poets.

It’s an even sweeter victory knowing that Emily’s legacy is more often credited to her sister and Sue, the two women, who helped compile her work to be published. One might say, it’s a poetic ending.

Okay, mini-rant over.

Usually, I’m one to bemoan the weight that Dickinson gives Emily’s “delusions” within the narrative, but in this case, I was mad enough with her that I welcomed the internal inferno it lit within her.

Mr. Dickinson’s misogynistic comments throw Emily into a tizzy, evaluating her entire stance on this internal Dickinson v. Dickinson family feud. She decides she was siding with the wrong party, and defects to her brother’s side — we’ll presumably see their reconciliation in the next episode.

The last third of this episode doesn’t seem to have much grounding in reality, though I do think Emily’s fever dream on this episode serves the Dickinson Season 3 storyline better than the Syliva Plath-Back-to-the-Future interlude from Dickinson Season 3, Episode 7 “The Future never spoke” did, no matter how entertaining it was.

Similar to the Walt Whitman fever dream from Dickinson Season 3 Episode 4, “This is my letter to the World,” Emily does her best “realizing” to a techno-pop beat, with a bit of hazy club dancing thrown into the mix. As I’ve been clocking all season, Dickinson has been referring to Dante often, so it’s nice to see it pay off.

Emily’s inferno ends up playing out as her deepest fears, some that maybe she herself doesn’t even realize.

First encountering Lavinia, the youngest Dickinson is playing nurse to a group of sickly or wounded men that inferno-Vinnie refers to as her “all or none of her husbands.” Emily is worried that she ruined Vinnie’s chance at happiness.

When Emily runs into Austin their usual back and forth about his marriage is a little more interesting than it normally is. This time he needles at one of this season’s greatest conflicts — the relationship between Sue, Emily, and Emily’s poems.

“You don’t love Sue, you love writing poems about loving Sue.” Oof.

My main criticism of Dickinson Season 3 has been how hot and cold Emily’s cycled. In some episodes, she’s much in love with Sue and ready to live life with her, but by the next, we’ll find her closed off to the idea of even showing the other woman affection.

Emily needs to learn to separate the poet from the poem, and she needs to do it within the next two episodes, or the series will end and there won’t be any resolution. Hopefully, her Inferno-Family will actually spur some change.

If there’s one thing that Dickinson has done well over the course of the series, it’s put Emily and co. in situations where they end up dancing to boppy music.

Sue and Emily, looking like a wedding cake topper, have a sultry scene alone, perform a dance that starts off fairly traditional and then descends into the kind of erratic movement that some birds perform as a mating ritual.

And yet, even though Sue tells Emily that they are free to be together, the poet is still hesitant to kiss the other woman. If these interactions are meant to reflect Emily’s personal nightmares, I’m led to believe that her deepest fear is that loving Sue means she’ll have to give up her family.

Or, looking at it from the other angle, she’s equally worried that even without anything in their way, she won’t be able to make Sue happy.

Frazer: Abandon all hope.

Back in Dickinson Season 3 Episode 1, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”, when we encountered the Dickinson family at the funeral for Mrs. D’s sister Emily noticed a tiny yellow bird up in the tree, then tweeting at her when it landed on the coffin. This prompted her to write the poem that the Dickinson Season 3 premiere was titled after.

She saw this bird as a sign to keep writing and to never give up hope. Somewhere along the way, amidst the Civil War and her family’s own war, she lost sight of that little bird. When it appears at the end of her spiraling inferno, I can only hope that it signifies brighter things ahead for Emily and the rest of the Dickinsons.

Stray musings from this episode: 

• There was criminally too little Lavinia
• What sketchy business was Sue up to at Frazer’s funeral? If she’s trying to get one of Emily’s poems published again, I hope it goes better than the last few times she’s done it.
• Emily’s inferno had the vibes of a technopop vampire movie, which is just me saying I’d be 100% okay with watching this cast act together again in a technopop vampire movie.
• I’m usually one to dunk on the supernatural side of this show, but if Emily really is omniscient and that means Henry is okay with the North Carolina regiment, I take back anything bad I ever said about it.
• Higginson’s “well shit” after coming out of his tent to try and find his regiment only to realize they were gone is my kind of humor
• Ella Hunt and Hailee Steinfeld have insane levels of chemistry and it’s a bummer that due to pandemic protocols we didn’t get to see a more lovely side of their characters in this final season.
• It bears repeating – Emily ripping her dad a new one gets a 10 out of 10 from me.

What did you think of this episode of Dickinson? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Dickinson Season 3 is available to stream on Apple TV+. New episodes premiere on Fridays.

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