She figured out how to live on the sea

For many reasons, ranging from the repressions of her religious and patriarchal culture to her own apparent constitutional frailness, the public world was closed to her, mandating a search for some alternative to open expression and publication. Inevitably, she was drawn to the life of fancy, which essayed the future through imaginative self-projection, not practical effort.

-- Habegger, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson