Solitude
1. The state or situation of being alone.
Synonyms: isolation; peace; peace and quiet
2. A lonely or uninhabited place.
Synonyms: wilderness; unspoilt area; backwoods
The word solitude is linked to both the serenity one can find in being alone and the purity of undisturbed wilderness. Thus, it is incredibly important in understanding the individual’s place in the romantic period.
The rise of romanticism coincided the Industrial Revolution. This was a time—from the mid-1700s to the late 1800s to be precise—in which various technological inventions facilitated the production of goods in America, more specifically in the textiles industry. Along with the fact that these textiles inventions coincided a dramatic decline in mortality rates and thus population growth, the Industrial Revolution saw a complete in culture, as more people than ever before began to engage in factory life and consumerism (“Transcendentalism”). In part because of the beliefs of Transcendentalism, but more importantly because of this change in culture, many romantic writers began to write against the noise, machinery and materialism of the Industrial Revolution and began to write in praise of nature, where they thought humanity belonged.
No one took the belief that the individual belonged in nature more seriously than Henry David Thoreau. He saw that, as a human in an industrial society, he could not hold on to his autonomy and individuality; thus, he built a cabin in the woods, where he lived in solitude and wrote of his experiences there in his most famous book, Walden (Belasco and Johnson 943, 944; vol. 1). Thoreau also described his experience of living alone in nature (albeit in a loose manner—he claims to be a tree) in the short poem “I Was Made Erect and Lone,” which goes:
“I was made erect and lone,
And within me is the bone;
Still my vision will be clear,
Still my life will not be drear,
To the center all is near.
Where I sit there is my throne.
If age choose to sit apart,
If age choose, give me the start,
Take the sap and leave the heart”
– (Thoreau).
As in the definition of solitude, Thoreau blends the peace of isolation with his place in nature. Thoreau, like his romantic contemporaries, does not mind “being made lone” or having to “sit apart.” In fact, the romantic can rejoice in being alone, as long as they can keep “the heart”: that is, as long as the individual gets to remain the individual and as one’s self.