If you were forced to read Emily Dickinson in an American literature class, you probably remember the "Myth of Amherst." You know the one. She’s the Belle of Amherst, a fragile, virginal recluse who spent her entire life dressed in white, hiding in her room, and pining away for some distant, unattainable man. It’s a tragedy, really. Or at least, that’s the story the Victorian editors—and your tenth-grade textbook—wanted you to believe.
Then came Wild Nights with Emily.
Released in 2018 (and still catching people off guard on streaming services today), Madeleine Olnek’s film took a sledgehammer to that dusty, porcelain image. It stars Molly Shannon. Yes, that Molly Shannon. Choosing a Saturday Night Live veteran to play America’s most revered poet was a stroke of genius because it immediately signaled something very important: this is a comedy. But it’s a comedy rooted in a truth that scholars have been shouting about for decades.
Emily Dickinson wasn't a shut-in because she was shy. She was a powerhouse who had a decades-long, passionate, and incredibly messy love affair with her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson.
The Revisionist History of Wild Nights with Emily
Honestly, the movie feels radical because it treats the Dickinson family like a sitcom. But it’s a sitcom backed by infrared technology. See, for over a century, the primary keepers of Emily's flame were people who had a vested interest in keeping her "respectable." Chief among them was Mabel Loomis Todd.
Mabel was the mistress of Emily’s brother, Austin. She never actually met Emily face-to-face while she was alive, yet she became the primary editor of her poems after she died. Wild Nights with Emily shows how Mabel literally erased Susan from the poems. She used chemicals to bleach out Susan's name from the manuscripts. She cut up letters. She tried to craft a narrative of a lonely spinster because a queer, vibrant, socially active woman didn't fit the 19th-century brand.
The film relies heavily on the work of Martha Nell Smith, a Distinguished University Professor and a leading Dickinson scholar. Smith’s book, Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson, changed the game by showing how Emily and Susan’s relationship was the intellectual and emotional core of the poet’s life. When you watch the movie, you aren't seeing a "modern reimagining" of Emily. You’re seeing the version of Emily that actually existed before the erasers got to her.
It's funny. Really funny. Molly Shannon plays Emily with this sort of desperate, breathless energy. She’s trying to get published. she’s navigating the weird social politics of Amherst. She’s making out with Susan (played brilliantly by Susan Ziegler) in the parlor while the family is right next door. It’s chaotic.
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Why the Humor Matters
Most biopics about poets are boring. They’re full of slow-motion shots of ink quills and people staring wistfully out of windows at rain. Olnek avoids that trap by leaning into the absurdity. The 19th century was weird. People were repressed, sure, but they were also human.
The humor in Wild Nights with Emily serves a dual purpose. First, it makes Emily relatable. She’s a writer trying to get her work seen by editors who just don’t "get" her. We’ve all been there. Second, it highlights the absurdity of the censorship. Watching Amy Seimetz’s Mabel Loomis Todd perform "The Belle of Amherst" while actively destroying Emily's true legacy is a masterclass in dark irony.
Breaking the Recluse Myth
People often ask why Emily stayed home so much if she wasn't some kind of social paraphobic. The movie gives us a much more practical answer: she was busy.
She was a professional. Even if she wasn't being paid like one yet.
Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems. She baked bread. She gardened. She maintained a massive correspondence. In the film, her "reclusion" is framed as a boundary. She didn't want to talk to boring neighbors because she had work to do. By staying in her room, she could control her environment. She could write. She could see Susan on her own terms.
It’s a choice, not a pathology.
One of the most striking things about Wild Nights with Emily is how it handles the publication struggle. We see Emily meeting with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Higginson is often portrayed as Emily’s mentor. Here, he’s kinda just a guy who doesn't know what to do with a woman who writes "too much." He tells her to "delay" publishing. He suggests her rhymes are too "spasmodic."
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The film shows the frustration of being a genius in a room full of people who are worried about whether your punctuation is too aggressive. It turns the dashes—those iconic Dickinson dashes—into a point of rebellion.
The Susan of it All
Let's talk about Susan. In the "official" history, Susan was the cold, distant sister-in-law. Wild Nights with Emily flips that script. Susan was Emily’s editor, her muse, and her primary audience.
The movie showcases how many of Emily's poems were sent directly to Susan with little notes. "With the exception of Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than any one living," Emily once wrote to her. That’s not "best friend" talk. That’s "intellectual soulmate" talk.
The chemistry between Shannon and Ziegler is the heart of the movie. It’s not just about physical intimacy; it’s about the intimacy of being truly known by someone. Susan understands the poems. She understands the ambition. When the movie shows them together, the world expands. When they're apart, or when the "traditional" world intrudes, the frame feels smaller.
The Science Behind the Story
If you think the movie is just taking liberties for the sake of a good story, you should look into the "Open Me Carefully" project. Scholars used specialized imaging to look at the manuscripts Mabel Loomis Todd edited.
They found the names.
They found where "Sue" had been scratched out and replaced with "he" or nothing at all. They found the bits of paper that had been physically removed. Wild Nights with Emily dramatizes this detective work by showing the physical act of erasure. It’s a literal historical crime scene.
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What’s fascinating is how long it took for this to become common knowledge. Even after the evidence was undeniable, many institutions resisted the idea of a "Gay Emily." It messed with the image of the virginal American saint. Olnek’s film doesn't ask for permission to tell this story. It just tells it, and it uses Emily's own words to back it up.
Impact on the Dickinson Legacy
Since the film came out, there’s been a noticeable shift in how Dickinson is portrayed in pop culture. You can see the influence of this irreverent, queer-coded approach in the Apple TV+ series Dickinson.
But while the TV show goes for a high-gloss, Gen Z aesthetic with Wiz Khalifa playing Death, Wild Nights with Emily stays closer to the period’s actual textures. It feels more grounded in the specific, claustrophobic reality of 1880s Massachusetts. It’s a movie that trusts the audience to handle the nuance of a woman who was both a genius and a person with a complicated love life.
How to Watch It Today
You can find the film on most major VOD platforms. It’s a quick watch—about 84 minutes—but it stays with you. If you’re a fan of Portlandia or Drunk History, the tone will feel very familiar. It’s smart, biting, and deeply empathetic.
It changes the way you read the poetry. Suddenly, poems like "Wild nights - Wild nights! / Were I with thee / Wild nights should be / Our luxury!" aren't abstract metaphors for some spiritual longing. They're direct. They’re hot. They’re exactly what they sound like.
Moving Beyond the Textbook
If you want to dive deeper into the real Emily after watching Wild Nights with Emily, skip the old biographies. Start with the source material that the film celebrates.
- Read the Letters: Get a copy of Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson. It’s eye-opening. You’ll see the poems in their original context—embedded in letters, surrounded by gossip, jokes, and expressions of deep longing.
- Visit the Emily Dickinson Museum: If you're ever in Amherst, go to The Homestead and The Evergreens (the house Austin and Susan lived in next door). Standing in the space where these two women lived and loved makes the film's narrative feel even more tangible. There’s a narrow path between the two houses. They called it "the path." They used it constantly.
- Look at the Manuscripts: The Emily Dickinson Archive online allows you to see high-resolution scans of her original poems. Look for the "scraps." She wrote on the backs of chocolate wrappers, grocery lists, and envelopes. It shows a woman who was writing in the margins of a busy life, not someone disconnected from the world.
- Question the Gatekeepers: Whenever you read a "definitive" biography of a historical figure, ask who wrote it and what they had to gain. The story of Emily Dickinson is a cautionary tale about how easily a person's true self can be buried under the weight of "propriety."
Emily Dickinson didn't need to be saved. She just needed to be seen. Wild Nights with Emily finally turns the lights on in that legendary bedroom, and honestly, it’s a lot more fun in there than anyone led us to believe.
Practical Next Steps for Fans and Scholars:
To fully appreciate the historical context, check out the Digital Emily Dickinson Archive to see the original "envelope poems" mentioned in the film. For those interested in the academic side of the erasure, Martha Nell Smith’s research papers at the University of Maryland provide the deep-dive evidence regarding the physical alterations of the manuscripts by Mabel Loomis Todd. If you're looking for more media that challenges the "spinster" trope, the 2016 film A Quiet Passion offers a more somber, though still complex, look at her life that pairs interestingly with the comedic tone of Olnek's work.