Before attempting a deconstructionist reading of Dickinson’s poem, perhaps it is judicious to engage first in a focused close reading of the text (at least a close reading that engages the metaphorical trope as it relates to the poem). Utilizing the literary trope of metaphor, the poem seems to thematize its own limitless “Possibility,” arriving at an ostensible unity between its form and content. To begin, then, it is important to note that the form of the poem is largely characterized by the continuation of an extended metaphor, which compares the signifier Possibility to another signifier, House. Controlling the reader’s interpretation of the text as a whole, the metaphor fundamentally shapes the ways in which the reader approaches the content of the text itself. Indeed, as the speaker initiates the metaphor, declaring “I dwell in Possibility--/A fairer House than Prose--” (Dickinson, Lines 1-2), one immediately confronts the abstraction and ambiguity of the speaker’s language; Possibility is qualified only by its divergence from Prose and its metaphorical comparison to House, but no definite meaning is ascribed to Possibility in itself. Ultimately then, the meaning of Possibility can be gleaned only by relying on the relationship between the poem’s form (the extended metaphor) and its content (the signifiers: House, Possibility, Prose) in the text. If, as the metaphor suggests, Possibility is a House, and if this House is fairer than Prose (also a House), it follows that Possibility lies in opposition to Prose; indeed, Possibility is Possibility only insofar as it is not Prose. From this opposition, this comparative difference, Possibility, as not-Prose, comes to take on at least a relative meaning- Poetry. As such, the extended metaphor establishes the relationship between the initially vague signifier, Possibility, on the one hand, and its metaphorical referent, House, on the other, and extracts from this relationship a third and more fundamental textual connection- Possibility as Poetry. In doing so, the form (the metaphorical trope) of the poem participates not only in the enabling of the interpretation of the content of the poem but also in the enabling of the interpretation of the poem as a whole. That being said, the speaker, sustaining the metaphor, continues to qualify Possibility with characteristics often attributed to houses. The language of domesticity becomes prominent as the speaker describes the “numerous…Windows” (Dickinson, Line 3), the “Chambers” (Dickinson, Line 5), and the “roof” of Possibility (Dickinson, Line 4). This House, as Possibility (and this Possibility as Poetry) comes to be described in domestic imagery that is nonetheless ambiguous and abstract. Indeed, the Windows are numerous, but no specific number is given; the Chambers are “as the Cedars” (Dickinson, Line 5), but that only makes them unable to be seen through- they are “[i]mpregnable of Eye”(Dickinson, Line 6); the Roof of the House consists of the limitless infinitude of “the Sky” (Dickinson, Line 8). But this ambiguity, this abstract inaccessibility, is precisely the source of the poem’s meaning and its strength. For indeed, in its ambiguity, the poem seems to situate itself exactly where it began, in “Possibility”; in the vague, but powerful abstraction of Possibility, the poem achieves its “maximum potentiality” (Johnson, 697).
