It is a bit of a stretch but I'm wondering if Ruby is set on becoming Emily Dickenson after I did a bit of research on the woman for five minutes.
1) Emily Dickenson started to become a recluse at the age of 23. Ruby is 22, and while she does go outside, for now, she does spend a lot of time in the Bones Manor and doesn't go outside and socialize with people other than her parents. By30, Dickenson was a total recluse and rarely left her bedroom, and Ruby does similar. I can see Ruby doing similar to Dickenson in order to mimic her favorite writer, perhaps claiming that becoming a recluse is a good writer's aesthetic. By the age of 30, Dickenson was a total recluse and I'm wondering if we will see the same for Ruby when she hits thirty.
2) Emily would also only really correspond with people through letters and Ruby does have all of her young pen pals and it's how she is looking for friends. I can see Ruby thinking that her letters would be worthy of getting published especially when she is a writer and for people to study them- though it would only be used to study the mind of a recluse who spends the day acting like a child and twirling around in her garden.
3)Dickenson was known for wearing white. The only thing that I need to say is Ruby wearing that white nightgown and running around like a victorian ghost in her night routine video not too long ago. Also, I did notice that Ruby was dressed in an old nightgown after she wrote her poetry in the studio. Would Ruby take up her aesthetic to mimic her favorite writer?
4) Writing like Dickenson and tearing up the paper. This was a bizarre show from Ruby and it had actually surprised me to see her tear up paper like she was a child. Instead of finding her own literary voice, Ruby is mimicking a famous poet, showing a lack of creativity and authenticity toward her own work. It has made me believe, combined with her asking her viewers for ideas from books, and also her copying from YA thrillers for plot lines, that Ruby is just hoping that if she copies from a published author enough and applies it to her own books then something is going to stick and she is going to get published.
The ripping up the paper was just a lot of performative nonsense just to be like a writer and just to fulfill an aesthetic. Nothing that she does is orginal and she is constantly copying from others instead of having individual thought or creative drive.
5) From Thomas Wentworth Higginson said that in comparison to Dickenson that he had never been ' with any one who drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her.' It made me think about Ruby and my experiance of watching her videos, I don't know if anyone else feels the same way.
I don't know if it's a case of class envy but I do wonder how much Ruby has spent ont this holiday. I think it's great that she actually went forward on this holiday and she is seeing the world and not stuck in her bedroom, but I'm curious about the money that she is spending. To do an hour writing session in the Emily Dickenson museum it's $200 for an hour and it's not avalible to the public. Ruby can afford to do things such as this but refuses to pay$17 for a book. Also the offering to give £100 to five people feels like bad taste and I'm glad that she took it down. She could have given it to a food bank or a community organisation and it would have made all the diffrence. It's just feels like she was doing something to pat herself on the back and ease her conscious for a bit. If Ruby wanted to make a diffrence, she would have done so. I do wonder what prompted this sudden urge to donate.
Stay toxic, Yesica 