Dreams

Helen Hunt Jackson appreciated and admired the conventions of poetry. Growing up in a comfortable, upper-middle-class home with a massive library under the guidance of the college professor father she loved, Jackson studied the intricate constructs of poetry, particularly from the Renaissance.

Unlike her close friend Emily Dickinson, who evolved her poetry into eccentric and radical forms that experimented with rhythm and rhyme, Jackson found her voice in exploring rather than deconstructing the defining poetic forms of Western culture. In “Dreams,” for instance, she follows the Petrarchan sonnet form that dates to 14th-century Renaissance Italy. With its elegant diction, sculptured metrics, and elaborate rhyming scheme, the Petrarchan sonnet uses the first eight lines to pose a problem and the closing six lines to offer a solution. This contrapuntal structure provides Jackson’s poem with a stable architecture.

That is not to say, however, that Jackson does not experiment in her sonnet or upend expectations to create a jolting impact. At first, “Dreams” appears conventional in its careful rhythm and rhymes, moving from problem to solution exactly where it should, at the end of Line 8. The moment is even marked by a dramatic exclamation point.

Yet its argument challenges convention. Jackson ironizes the Petrarchan sonnet’s traditional problem-solution format: Dreaming, usually regarded as sweet and welcome, is the problem; death, terrifying in its absoluteness, is welcomed as the solution. Jackson edges toward paradox, as the sweet release of dreams is the enemy, and heaven, far from the glorious paradise envisioned by sacred writings, is valued only because, at last, the speaker might finally get some untroubled sleep.

The opening octave plays against the traditional assumption that dreaming is a delight, a chance to escape dreary routine. Within the Romantic tradition that defined poetry in the era when Jackson came of age, dreams were regarded as exotic, luxurious environments that made the real world pale in comparison. Jackson, however, figures the world of sleep as an invasive and terrifying reminder of humanity’s helplessness against the reckless energy of the brain. “Mysterious shapes” (Line 1) of both “joy and pain” (Line 1) assail the sleeper, who is trapped and vulnerable.

Importantly, however, Jackson is no Edgar Allan Poe: The poem’s octave does not venture into the lurid world of nightmares. Rather, Jackson writes from the perspective of a respected, educated, middle-class wife and mother whose life has been defined by a series of tragedies. She regards dreaming as the enemy only because in dreams, the difficult and painful memories that she works so valiantly to control during the day can come at her. These “[m]ysterious shapes” (Line 1) are the painful “secrets” (Line 4) that she courageously chains up in “houses” (Line 3) and stoically refuses to visit during the day.

Sleep, then, compels the defenseless dreamer to confront memories that they’d rather avoid. This locks these tragedies into a perpetual loop. The emotions stay raw no matter how long it has been since the events took place. Within the compelling animation of dreams, memories seem real again, and they send the speaker’s “pulses” (Line 7) racing. The simple uncomplicated “bliss” (Line 7) of the speaker’s daytime world is shattered, forcing the speaker to weep anew: “Oh, cruelty!” (Line 8), the speaker bemoans, that dreams make such traumas “live again” (Line 8).

Although far short of the graphic nightmares conjured by the Gothic writers whom Jackson read, “Dreams” offers an unsettling proposition in its opening octave: Dreams are not friendly or welcome and are hardly joyous release.

In keeping with the Petrarchan sonnet form that Jackson admired, the closing six lines, the poem’s sestet, offer an unexpected solution: the release of death.

Jackson, no atheist and not doubting the reality of heaven, distances herself from the sestet’s logic by putting its argument into the mouth of others: “They say” (Line 9), she begins, when slightly straying from the foundational tenets of her Christian faith, that heaven is a place of eternal rest—a sweet reward for a life of belief and good works maintained amid the sorrows inevitable in earthly existence.

If death is like nightfall and heaven is eternal rest, then the only way the speaker will embrace the afterlife is if it provides absolute control over her dreams. Heaven would be heaven only if it offered the one thing earthly mortal life denies the speaker: the power to dream how she wishes. What kind of eternal rest would it be, the sestet argues, if the sleep granted there is upended by the same endless loop of sorrows and traumas?

This unconventional version of the Christian heaven offers no streets paved in gold, pearly gates, gorgeous light, choirs of angels and archangels, or thrilling encounter with the radiant reality of God. Rather, heaven is sleep undisturbed by the ghost memories that have haunted Jackson and made dreams into enemies. Locked in that loop of dreams, she imagines that death will be the only thing able to release her.

Jackson completed the poem during her last months of being ill with stomach cancer. The vision offered here can be read as a desperate prayer from someone who knows that she is near the end of her life. A lifelong Unitarian, Jackson hopes that heaven awaits with what she could never secure on earth—peace.