Emily Dickinson has been regarded as a proto-feminist, and this poem reveals her thoughts on what we might now call the double standard. In effect the poet is challenging the societal attitude that deems it acceptable for men to enjoy sexual relationships with women, while the “harebell” who is persuaded to “loose her girdle” is regarded as a “fallen woman”. The man — or the “lover Bee” retains his standing and respectability, but the woman is despised.

Dickinson presents the injustice through a humorous, playful metaphor, though the underlying message is serious. A woman’s loss of status meant ruin.

Beyond this, there may be a broader interpretation in which the question is asked; is anything yearned for as good as one hopes? Is realisation of an aspiration inevitably disappointing?

Structure
The poem comprises two quatrains or four-lined stanzas. There is a simple ABCB rhyme scheme. The first and third lines are iambic tetrameter, that is four iambs to the line, where a iamb is one unstressed followed one stressed syllable. The second and fourth lines are made up of two iambs and a single syllable.

Language and Imagery
The voice is that of a third person narrator, we can assume the poet, in playful mood, though the point made is serious; a wry expression of the injustice faced by women in the nineteenth century and up to the present day.

The personified Harebell and Bee are both
metaphors for male and female sexual entities. Through these and using rhetorical questions Dickinson makes her point.

Punctuation and pace are typical of the poet, with a halting, choppy rhythm and dashes in the second stanza. The childish, almost nursery-rhyme rhythm is of course ironic.

See The Poetry of Emily Dickinson; Atlantic Review
BBC Podcast ‘In Our Time’ – Emily Dickinson