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Like countless educated women in the late nineteenth century, Vinnie (Lavinia Dickinson, sister to Emily) faced the problem of vocation, as finance capitalism and the Industrial Revolution did away with the domestic economy that had dominated colonial and early national life. With the middle-class home transformed into a center of consumption by the mid-nineteenth century, the home because the "women's sphere," but what was a woman to do in it? If, as Vinnie said late in life, "Austin had Amherst" and "father believed," what were the women to do?
In assuming her role as a poet with "title divine," Emily found her vocation and made her home, at least for herself, a center of production in a unique, new form of domestic economy. Mrs. Dickinson took upon herself the work of love, ailment, and complaint. That left Vinnie with the job of looking after all of them. ("I had the family to keep track of.")

~Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief, Roger Lundin, 131. It comes highly recommended.

Note the argument that the industrial revolution changed the home from a place of production to a place of consumption. Can you see Betty Friedan and her sisters bored and depressed, asking themselves, "Is this all there is?" Can you see the American dream and the Puritan work ethic falling into consumerism and materialism? We have to still to learn how to think and change when presented with these cultural paradigm shifts.