What does it mean to feel alone? The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘The Loneliness one dare not sound’, poem by Emily Dickinson, ‘On Solitude’ essay by Michel de Montaigne
Student Questions
Premise students bring questions to class that help guide and deepen the conversations. Here’s a sampling of student-generated questions from this session:
Is the value of solitude, the turning in on one's self as Montaigne describes, the key to aging well?
What does Montaigne mean by “Solitude seems to me more appropriate and reasonable for those who have given to the world their most active and flourishing years…’? I bristled because he seemed to say we must earn solitude via work.
Is helplessness of your situation-- or the belief that you are helpless-- cause the feeling of loneliness? As in, this cannot be changed.
How should we understand seclusion?
What’s the contrast between forced solitude and chosen solitude?
Related to the larger question… I wonder if sometimes we “sound” the differences between loneliness and solitude if we’re not touching something essential about being human?
"After Stilpo had escaped from the burning of his city in which he had lost wife, children and goods, Demetrius Poliorcetes, seeing him with his face undismayed amid so great a ruin of his country, asked him if he hadn’t suffered any harm; he replied that No, thank God, he had lost nothing of his own.” is solitude selfish?
I’m thinking about solitary confinement as being the most feared punishment, Why is this?
How does the narrator try to reach out to her husband? What is his reaction? Is this her last contact with sanity? Do you think John really has no comprehension of the seriousness of her illness?
Would you consider the woman in the story a reliable narrator? If not, how does this affect your reading of the story?
Early in the story, the narrator says, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.” (first page) What comment does this make about the role of women in marriage? What gender assumption does it establish/reinforce? Over time, how could it make the narrator or any person feel?
“Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York. In 2020 he exhibited six new works at the William Morris Gallery in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, his first solo exhibition of new works at a UK museum. In 2020 the William Morris Gallery exhibited six portraits by Kehinde Wiley featuring women and girls that the artist met on the streets of Dalston, East London. The portraits offer a visual response to the Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s acclaimed feminist short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and can be contextualized within the wider narrative of Wiley’s portraits and paintings by European ‘old masters’.”
