Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 2013 A room of one's own, revisited: An existential- hermeneutic study of female solitude Karin Arndt Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Arndt, K. (2013). A room of one's own, revisited: An existential-hermeneutic study of female solitude (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/287 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN, REVISITED: AN EXISTENTIAL-HERMENEUTIC STUDY OF FEMALE SOLITUDE A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Karin Leah Arndt December 2013 Copyright by Karin Leah Arndt 2013 A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN, REVISITED: AN EXISTENTIAL-HERMENEUTIC STUDY OF FEMALE SOLITUDE By Karin Leah Arndt Approved November 8, 2013 ________________________________ ________________________________ Eva Simms, Ph.D. Will Adams, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Associate Professor of Psychology (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Anthony Barton, Ph.D. Leswin Laubscher, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Chair, Psychology Department (Committee Member) Associate Professor of Psychology ________________________________ James C. Swindal, Ph.D. Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts iii ABSTRACT A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN, REVISITED: AN EXISTENTIAL-HERMENEUTIC STUDY OF FEMALE SOLITUDE By Karin Leah Arndt December 2013 Dissertation supervised by Eva Simms, Ph.D. This study presents an existential-hermeneutic analysis of nine women’s first- person accounts of extended periods of solitude. The accounts were analyzed along the five existential dimensions of spatiality, temporality, embodiment, language, and co- existentiality, producing a rich portrait of the women’s lived experience of solitude. One of the first-person accounts was provided by the author of the study, who underwent three solitary retreats in the interest of this project, adding an autoethnographic component to the work. Theory from the existential-phenomenological, monastic, ecopsychological, and feminist literatures was applied to the data, enabling us to interpret the significance of the shifts the women experienced through an interdisciplinary set of lenses. The women experienced both subtle and profound shifts in their senses of self and modes of being in the world over the course of their retreats. In the absence of direct iv human relations, the women developed greater intimacy with things, non-human beings, and the Divine. Through the practice of simplicity, the women cultivated humility and more contemplative modes of seeing, revealing previously hidden contours of the material world and fostering a child-like sense of wonder. By leaving clock time and slowing down, the women became increasingly oriented toward the present moment, entrained to the rhythms of the natural world, and attuned to their desire. By retreating from the gaze of the (human) other, the women worked to heal a sense of alienation from their own bodies, experienced a respite from feminine performativity, and came to move through the world more seamlessly and comfortably. And by observing silence, the women cultivated the ability to listen beyond the human conversation and the chattering of their own minds, developed a more sacred relationship to language, confronted their emotional “demons,” and found themselves increasingly drawn toward the poetic. Overall, through their solitudes, the women developed a greater stance of receptivity toward the more-than-human world, deconstructed elements of identity and modes of being aligned with the “false self,” and recovered aspects of their lived experience which had been neglected or suppressed over the course of becoming an adult, and especially a woman, in the context of contemporary American culture. v DEDICATION To the old woman living on the edge of the village, this has always been for you vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you first and foremost to my family – to Mom, Dad, Patty, and Kristin – who have been my ever faithful cheerleaders through the years. Thank you for supporting my studies, my desires for solitude, and my life quest. I am so fortunate to have such wonderful people in my life. I seriously lucked out. Thank you to Bo, my beautiful feline companion, who rested peacefully in the nook of my arm throughout the long days and nights of writing this dissertation. You have brought great joy to my life. Thank you to my friends for inspiring me and walking alongside me throughout this journey. Special heartfelt thanks to Sarah Nokes-Malach for her companionship and wise counsel, and to Daniel Muller for his consistent support and wicked sense of humor. Thank you to the psychology department at Duquesne University for cultivating and defending depth, intellectual rigor, and soul in the arid field of contemporary academic psychology. Thank you for supporting my work over the past seven years. Thank you to my dissertation committee, most especially to my committee chair, Dr. Eva Simms, whose guidance, inspiration, and intellectual example has been invaluable to me. Thank you to Dr. Will Adams and Dr. Anthony Barton for your guidance and feedback vii on this project and for being such excellent teachers, creative thinkers, and lovely people. I am very appreciative of you. Thank you to the Sisters of St. Francis, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, and the School of Lost Borders for enabling me to descend into solitude safely, inexpensively, and in the context of traditions that have long supported solitary retreatants. Thank you also to my two hermitages, Greccio and hermitage #1, and to the Galisteo Basin for containing my solitude through the long days and nights. Thank you to the women of this study. It was an honor and a pleasure to spend so much time with your words over the past few years. Finally, thank you to , always a presence in absence. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………...……………………………………………...…………….…iv Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………v Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………...……….vii Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………...……1 Ways of defining solitude……………………………………………..…………10 Women’s relationship to solitude………………………………………..………18 Gaps in the literature……………………………………………………..………26 Chapter 2: Research questions and methodology……………………………….……....29 Carrying out the analysis: What I actually did………………………..…………36 Chapter 3: Introduction to the Women…………………………………….……………39 Chapter 4: Space………………………………………………………………………...54 Introducing space……………………………………………………...…………54 Theme 1: Simplicity………………………………………………..……………60 Theme 2: Re-learning to see………………………………………….…………80 Theme 3: A different kind of mirror………………………………….…………96 Theme 4: Re-enveloping themselves: The power of the hermitage…..………108 In summary……………………………………………………………………..120 Chapter 5: Time………………………………………………………………………..125 Introducing time………………………………………………………….……..125 Theme 1: Structure and desire…………………………………………………145 ix Theme 2: Evolving a different rhythm…………………………………………157 Theme 3: Waiting……………………………………………………...………168 Theme 4: Becoming present………………………………………………...…173 Theme 5: Slowness………………………………………………….…………182 In summary…………………………………………………………..…………194 Chapter 6: Body……………………………………………………………..…………202 Introducing the body……………………………………………………………202 Theme 1: The transparent body……………………………………..…………212 Theme 2: Returning to the senses…………………………………...…………233 Theme 3: The “I can” body……………………………………………….……250 Theme 4: “Feeling comfortable in my own skin”……………………………...263 In summary…………………………………………………………..…………276 Chapter 7: Language……………………….……………………………..……………281 Introducing language…………………………………………………...………281 Theme 1: Listening to the inner voice…………………………………………299 Theme 2: Listening to one’s pain………………………………………………307 Theme 3: Listening beneath the personal, cultivating anonymity…………..…315 Theme 4: Listening to the voice of God………………………………….……320 Theme 5: Listening to the “speech” of the world………………………...……326 Theme 6: Care in the use of language………………………………….………337 Theme 7: Poetry…………………………………………………………..……344 In summary………………………………………………………………..……355 Chapter 8: Co-existence…………………………………………………..……………358 x Introducing co-existence…………………………………………………..……358 Theme 1: Solitude is contained by the other…………………………...………368 Theme 2: Animal engagements………………………………………..………387 Theme 3: Solitude and community………………………………….…………401 In summary………………………………………………………..……………416 Chapter 9: Solitude and the Recovery of the True Self: Bringing it all Together…….420 Chapter 10: Limitations and Contributions of the Study………….………..………….432 Limitations……………………………………………………………..……….432 Contributions…………………………………………………………….……..438 References…………………………………………………………...………………….451 xi Chapter 1: Introduction Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and well-known solitary, wrote in 1957: Not all men are called to be hermits, but all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally. When that inner voice is not heard, when man cannot attain to the spiritual