"notes on solitude":

"women in solitude" by Merete Ipsen

It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helpmate for him. In the Christian Genesis, this was the reason for the creation of woman. Eve was created as a socially oriented creature in order to give Adam a social life.
Existentially, men can thrive on solitude, women cannot. We may be born as girls and boys with different bodies, but it is through a psychological process of formation that we develop our gender identity. When the gender is formed, the girl follows her mother’s example, whereas the boy differs from his mother. Masculine identity is built on being different, on moving away from the life-giving, but also all-embracing nurture, torwards an exploration of solitude. Feminine identity imitates the mother, developing reactions to make mother (and all others) find her worthy of love.

As the nurturing functions are cultural-historically distributed between the two genders, the girl’s identity is tied to a reflection of the mother and a constant preoccupation with entering into social relations. In principle, the boy can go his own way – as long as his mother and his Eve do not fail him. As a general rule, they do not, as being social is in their nature. Many of our heroes from stories and fairytales are different versions of Tom, Dick and Harry, who went into the great world alone, climbed the highest mountains alone, or appeared as great leaders alone. While the stories of our heroines are of destiny tied to relations. About being worthy of love. The story of Snow White illustrates woman’s solitude as a nightmare: Snow White’s mother is not just a normal mother, but an evil stepmother, who is aware of the daughter’s reflection and actively competes with her for beauty and favours. The culmination, where she rejects her, is extremely anxiety provoking for the daughter: Snow White flees into solitude that is filled with darkness and phantoms. Luckily, she perseveres and finds herself by building new relations with birds and animals, with the Seven Dwarfs and with her prince. The anxiety of separation is healed; the trials of solitude are over.

Being alone is not necessarily the same as solitude. All women know the bliss of watching the sunrise on a quiet morning, for example. We can stand alone in the great universe in joy and gratefulness, as long as our psychological relations to our mother and our ‘loved ones’ are intact. The inner host of relations leaves us open to such sensuous situations where we are alone but not lonely.

Even though I claim that solitude is not in harmony with the feminine universe as an existential condition, many women have nonetheless experienced it. Solitude can come from the sorrow of having lost. Solitude can be found in a depression where the social skills have faded. The irrevocable solitude must be death, which we are all going to experience, and then there’s no ‘running to mummy’.

Under old family structures, with many siblings and cousins, solitude was not omnipresent as it is today. We can consider, whether solitude can be a privilege; an expression of the individual – male or female – having a freer scope. The girls become less dependent on happiness based on their being worthy of love. Women of the future will travel into the great world alone, will overcome obstacles alone and will appear as leaders. They will dare to stand alone, but hopefully also in good networks with others. Modern women must look solitude in the eyes as a form of existence, which they must ‘master’. To seek into a new close relation is not the only way out of solitude. Woman must dare to see herself as lonely, as have the courage to live in the separation. With this experience she can return, strengthened and with the capability for building authentic and deep relations with others.

By Merete Ipsen, curator at the Women’s Museum.