Journal 50: Ze Soul

The soul in Emily Dickinson's poem refers to a person's emotional attachment. What she means by "The soul selects her own society" is that the soul, one's emotional attachment, will find what it believes in, what it loves, and what it wants to follow. She uses soul instead of logical thinking such as people, mind, or the brain because she wants to emphasize on the emotional part of the person choosing the "society". She wants to emphasize this because she liked two older married man and she wants to express that she did not think about it logically. If she had considered this with 'logic', 'consciously' then she would know that this will be an outrageous feeling and she would not tolerate it. She is saying that she loved these two men not because she had done a cost-benefit analysis but because her soul selected these two men and there is nothing she can do about it. Once she had fell in love with them there is no changing her feelings because "the valve" closed off like stone and is stubborn in that she cannot alter what she had chosen unconsciously. It is kind of defensive in that she tried to defend herself that she didn't mean to fall into reclusion and depression because falling in love with them wasn't her logical intention nor was she able to change her mind.