"Moses Was’nt Fairly Used—": In the Footsteps of Harriet Tubman in Emily Dickinson’s "So I Pull My Stockings Off"

This essay would like to propose a new way of reading Dickinson's poem "So I pull my Stockings off" that links it to a more specific subject—slavery. In these verses, the speaker’s meditation on unruly behavior has always been analogized with the fate of the most notable biblical transgressor—the prophet Moses. But, if the secular reality of nineteenth-century America is considered, the poem might have an ulterior interpretation, for in those years there was another person popularly associated with the name “Moses”—Harriet Tubman.