Her poetry contains many references to gender issues, the civil
war, and shifts in religious views.Poetry became her voice, while
her seclusion became her public outcry against the oppression of
her gender.She talked about the difference in gender roles between
men and women and the subjucation of women in marriag.
How women are considered inferior and have no say in making
decisions,but just holding the responsibility of becoming a home
maker and bearin children.Through her poetry she penned down her
own thoughts about marriage and the state of women,since she saw
her own mother being subserviant to her father.
Her representative stance on gender issues didn't just
represent the typical victim, the struggling woman, or the strong
female character, but spread to a larger spectrum of
women. Her manipulations of female stereotypes were done
in such an extremity, that it exposed many gendered “norms” and
social limitations.
Emily didn't just depict marriage as an act of oppression
against women, but as form of degradation. The women is not longer
a human, but as cargo. To submit to a husband's will meant to lose
independence, but to become a “product” meant losing your identity
as a human being.
She believed that if men had not created a society that
repressed women, women would not have had the need to fight for
equal rights.