Is it necessary for a writer to write about the social/political issues of their time?

As readers – or more particularly – as students, we analyse writing and place our own interpretations upon it. Even if an author hasn’t purposefully included any relevant social or political issues in their writing, we still see it. We point out one character as a feminist, or an anarchist, or a communist, because they wear trousers, or smoke in a smoke-free zone, or have Russian ancestry. Perhaps the author had none of this in mind.

Emily Dickinson has been pigeon holed into a role in history. The role of the isolated, lonely woman that wrote poems about things she had never seen. She has been rammed firmly into this position by readers that take information about her time and find evidence of it in her poetry. When reading about Dickinson, a lot of the information is ‘supposed’. It is ‘supposed’ that she was influenced by Shakespeare and Emerson as it is ‘supposed’ that she wrote about the Civil War.

Writers don’t need to write about the social and political issues of their time in order for their writing to be good, or to be well liked or successful. But it seems to be necessary for us as readers for the writer to include these issues. It allows insight into their world, their time and their life. And we want that insight.