To Make One’s Toilette After Death

To Make One’s Toilette After Death - meaning Summary

Vanity After Death

Dickinson’s short lyric treats the futility of posthumous concern with appearance. The speaker imagines making a toilette after death and finds it possible but awkward; dressing the body and arranging hair feels more absurd once the living eyes that admired those details are gone. The poem contrasts private taste with the absence of audience and hints that moral strictures or divine law (the "Decalogues") further separate the deceased from their former vanities.