Local gossips referred to Dickinson as "the Myth," expressing fascination at her "withdrawal," her habit of wearing only white, and her enigmatic notes accompanying gifts of food or flowers.
When the poet's work was published four years after her death in 1886, reviewers expressed surprise that a seemingly eventless life could generate such passion.
Her letters explaining why she could not see people suggest that she avoided those she loved because they affected her too powerfully.
The poet probably met Sue at Amherst Academy in the late 1840s.
Dickinson was clearly in love with her: Her letters to Sue beat with a passion surpassing even notions of friendship held by a less homophobic era. Caroll Smith-Rosenberg has shown that nineteenth-century women's friendships lent themselves to a wide range of expression, so that letters that raised no eyebrows then seem erotically charged to us.
clipped from: www.glbtq.com