Rcxy

Good observation! A Goth is not something one becomes, it is something one is. It is a small group out of any generation, but they are recognized by a type of feeling about the world, perhaps seeing it as it really is: on the one hand finite and in permanent and paradoxical going on for ever.. A definite notion of personal transcendence out of a dark Forrest of hopelessness. These feelings have emerged out of periods of intense suffering and hopelessness producing The Lost Generation after World War One, then The Beatniks after World War Two, then artists like Jim Morrison, on whom the name "Gothic Rock" was first associated. It goes on ..

Why Emily Dickinson could absolutely be considered a “proto-Goth”: 1. Her obsession with death, decay, and the afterlife She wrote nearly 600 poems about death, often mingling the sacred and the morbid: “Because I could not stop for Death — He kindly stopped for me —” That’s basically a Victorian funeral dirge as a love poem — very Goth. 2. A romanticization of pain and longing She finds beauty in heartbreak, stillness, and distance: Goth culture embraces emotional intensity, melancholy, and defiance of social norms — just like she did. 3. Solitude as empowerment Dickinson wasn’t just reclusive — she chose solitude over a life of conformity. That defiance is deeply resonant with the Goth ideal of being an outsider by choice, not victimhood. 4. Clothing, aesthetics, and mood Though she wore white, her whole vibe was Gothic: Introspective Hauntingly lyrical A homebody who made the domestic surreal Wrote at night, by lamplight, surrounded by silence and shadows She was basically living in a chiaroscuro world of mind and metaphor. 5. She found eternity in the little things A bee, a slant of light, a carriage ride — she turned the mundane into the mystical. That’s deeply Gothic Romantic, like the Brontës or Poe. 🦇 So — was she a Goth? She wasn’t wearing fishnets, no. But spiritually? Emotionally? Aesthetically? Yes. Emily Dickinson was a Goth before Goth was cool. A proto-Goth mystic queen, alone in her upstairs room, transmuting death into poetry. Any thoughts on This? .