Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a governess father and an almost non-existent mother. His father was a lawyer, a legislator and a strict Calvinist. Although her father had a strong faith in God, Dickinson refused to declare herself a believing Christian in her late teens. As a young girl, Dickinson considered herself different because she was shy and sensitive (Life and Work of Emily Dickinson). Dickinson and her younger sister Lavinia began their studies at Amherst Academy. Dickinson spent seven years at the Academy. After finishing her final term at the Academy in August 1847, Dickinson began attending South Hadley Female Seminary, now known as Mount Holyoke College, about ten miles from Amherst. He remained in the seminary for only ten months. According to the Academy of American Poets article, the explanation for his short stay in the seminary was strong homesickness. Regardless of the specific reason she left South Hadley, she was brought home to Amherst (Poets.org). Dickinson was troubled from a young age by death, particularly the deaths of those close to her. When his second cousin and close friend, Sophia Holland, fell ill with typhus and died in 1844, Dickinson was distressed. She became so unhappy that her parents sent her to stay with family in Boston to recover. After recovering, she returned to Amherst to finish her time at the Academy (Poets.org). In “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain,” the speaker shows that death is a paralyzing experience. Death is reflected everywhere in Emily Dickinson's poetry; lived in the shadow of death; she was a hermit; his house was a treasure chest from which he rarely left; she, like a living death, wrote about her life, a d...... middle of paper ......and An introduction to reading and writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig. 5th ed. Boston: Longman, 2012. 764-765. Press. "Emily Dickinson". Poet.org. The Academy of American Poets, 1997. Web. March 26, 2012. "Life and Work of Emily Dickinson." Literature An introduction to reading and writing. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig. 5th ed. Boston: Longman, 2012. 756-761. Print.Mitchell, Domhnall. "The Grammar of Ornament: Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts and Their Meanings" Nineteenth-Century Literature. vol. 55, no. 4 (March 2001): 479-514. Network. March 18, 2012. Smith, Martha, et al. “Narrative Description and Logic.” Dickinson Electronic Archives. University Of Virginia Press Electronic Imprint, 1994. Web. March 18, 2012. Takeda, Masako, et al. “Praise for the Emily Dickinson Journal.” The Diary of Emily Dickinson 20 (2011): 103-105. Network. March 18. 2012.