ample

Assumption: the term “ample” denotes a sufficiency or morethansufficiency of something. It deals with quantitative aspects and can do so in the material domain, and in the psychic one. It becomes symbolic especially in reference to penis. Emily’s references to the size of her lover’s genital predominantly use terms of hugeness. One may ask: on what did she base her comparison? I presume that she has made sexual acquaintance with but one penis. She may have occasionally seen that of her brother in childhood. And while it is not entirely to be dismissed that sighttouch experience may have occurred with other penises in the awakening period of the year between her return from Mt. Holliyoke Female Seminary and her acquaintance with Samuel Bowles, 8. August 1848 to 8. August 1849 (and the fact that the boys of the students’ paper at the college, published her valentine in the February number of the Indicator in 1850 rather suggests that the young men of Amherst of the time did not exactly consider her a prude), it is not necessary to go into such speculations: if Sam’s penis was really of “stupendous diameter” one may assume that he would have been the first to brag to her about it.