ing her from her beloved sister, Nettie. After Celie
goes to live at Mister’s house, he in turn isolates her,
keeping her like a prisoner, forced to cook, clean,
and have sex, but receiving no comfort or love from
anyone. Briefly, when Nettie lives with them, Celie
feels joy again, but Mister literally tears them apart
from one another and forces Nettie out of the house.
Significantly, Mister tries to keep Nettie from teach-
ing Celie how to read—and once she is gone, he
hides the letters Nettie sends. These letters, had they
been delivered, would have given Celie the human
connection she so desperately needed. Her isolation
cultivates in her feelings of worthlessness—feelings
that leave her to wonder if she is even human.
Forced isolation such as Celie and Minnie expe-
rience may also be brought on by society or by the
circumstances of one’s life. In William Shake-
speare’s The teMpest, Ariel and Caliban have been
isolated for years, alone on an island, until a ship-
wreck brings others into their lives. Both of them
react based on their previous isolation. Ariel, who has
been imprisoned in a tree, is willing to do Prospero’s
bidding because he is grateful to have the company
of others once again. Caliban, on the other hand, is
horrified to have to share “his” island. His years alone
have made him rough and unable to communicate
well—and thus he appears to the shipwreck survivors
as a beast, unfit for human interaction.
While isolation often produces effects that dehu-
manize people, positive changes may also result from
extended solitude. As Anthony Storr argues, “The
capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when
changes of mental attitude are required” (29). He
relates stories of such isolated souls as the children’s
author Beatrix Potter and the 17th-century explorer
and nobleman Sir Walter Raleigh. Schooled at home
by a nanny, Potter was isolated as a child, with no
opportunity to mix with other children. She made
“friends” with the animals she encountered—rab-
bits, mice, ducks—and spent hours drawing them.
As an adult, she would go on to produce the famous
and beautifully illustrated Peter Rabbit stories. Storr
theorizes that the isolation she experienced as a
child forced her to create companions, and that is
what led to her ultimate creativity (111–112).
Raleigh wrote the first volume of his Historie of
the World, about ancient Greece and Rome, while
imprisoned in the Tower of London. Again, Storr
theorizes that like Potter, Raleigh devised something
for his mind to do while his body was physically iso-
lated. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story the^
yeLLow waLLpaper, the narrator is confined to her
room for what her husband and her doctors have
declared a “nervous” depression. With nothing else
to do, she becomes obsessed with the room’s wall-
paper, eventually believing she is one of the women
on the wallpaper. In the end, the narrator does reach
psychosis—but one can read this ending as a kind of
freedom from her husband’s control. Her isolation
forces her to think in a new way, and ultimately he
frees her from the room because of this.
Isolation, while mostly a difficult, debilitating
force for human beings, can also produce interesting,
creative results in its victims. By and large, however,
being isolated challenges our basic human needs and
calls into question the meaning of our lives. Litera-
ture, with its windows into the thoughts and feelings
of the characters it portrays, allows us a glimpse into
the isolated mind.
See also Bierce, Ambrose: “Occurrence
at Owl Creek Bridge, An”; Chopin, Kate:
awakeninG, the; Conrad, Joseph: heart oF
darkness; Defoe, Daniel: robinson crusoe;
Frost, Robert: poems; Harte, Bret: “Luck of
Roaring Camp, The”; Hawthorne, Nathaniel:
“Rappaccini’s Daughter”; Hemingway, Ernest:
oLd Man and the sea, the; Hurston, Zora
Neale: their eyes were watchinG God; James,
Henry: turn oF the screw, the; Joyce, James:
dubLiners; Molière: Misanthrope, the; Mor-
rison, Toni: bLuest eye, the; Salinger, J. D.:
catcher in the rye, the; Steinbeck, John: oF
Mice and Men; Twain, Mark: adventures oF
huckLeberry Finn; Wharton, Edith: FroMe,
ethan; Williams, Tennessee: streetcar naMed
desire, a.
FURTHER READING
Conliffe, Mark. “On Isolation.” Midwest Quarterly 47,
no. 2 (Winter 2006): 115–130.
Storr, Anthony. Solitude. New York: Free Press (1988).
Williams, Kipling D. Ostracism. New York: Guilford,
2001.
Jennifer McClinton-Temple64 isolation