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A Pelican in the Wilderness:
Hermits, Solitaries and Recluses
by Isabel Colegate
Counterpoint, Washington D.C. 2002, 262 pages.
Reviewed by Kathleen Housley
There is an enormous difference between someone who chooses to be a hermit and someone who is forced into it. So also is there an enormous difference between the need for privacy and the search for solitude. Unfortunately, in her first non-fiction book, the novelist Isabel Colegate tends to lump them together without sufficient examination of motivations. She makes little distinction between misanthropes, mountain men, mentally ill, and rational people who find in solitude a way to increase wisdom and faith.
For example, in a chapter ostensibly devoted to monks who seek solitude in forests, Colegate jumps from 18th and 19th century Russian hermits who joyfully embraced their style of life with its repetition of the Jesus prayer, to the 20th century writers William Gerhardie (for whom a strong case could be made for mental illness), J. D. Salinger, and Doris Lessing. Then Colegate ends the chapter with a description of a five-member Russian family living in extreme conditions in Siberia. They had never chosen to be hermits. Instead, persecuted for their orthodox faith, in the 1920s they had retreated farther and farther from their oppressors until they had been cut off from civilization. Such jumps in subject are discombobulating; unfortunately, they occur frequently in the book. Non-specific chapter titles, which would be more appropriate for a novel, as well as a lack of endnotes, compound the problem.
In looking at women hermits, Colegate acknowledges that for those who were Christian, a powerful male benefactor and protector was often essential. She mentions that Julian of Norwich was sometimes in danger of persecution, even death, and that she was anxious that her revelations appear to be within the bounds of orthodoxy. St. Teresa of Avila was also careful to maintain the support of several priests. But Colegate does not look closely at the huge risk run by women who chose to withdraw from civilization completely. Many were judged to be heretics or witches and suffered the consequences.
A Pelican in the Wilderness is described as an “idiosyncratic personal essay.” Indeed it is, for while enthusiasm for her subject is not lacking, Colegate’s ability to structure and assess her material is. Her writing style can be very descriptive and lively, particularly when she is relating her own research experiences. However, the book gives the impression that she has taped together her voluminous research note cards without carefully analyzing what compels a person to become a hermit or a solitary.
Kathleen L. Housley has written poetry and articles for numerous journals including Woman’s Art Journal, New England Quarterly,The Christian Century, and Image. An Affiliated Scholar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, her area of concentration is the interconnection of religion and American culture. Housley’s first book, The Letter Kills But the Spirit Gives Life, explores the lives of five nineteenth-century suffragists, one of whom translated the Bible and had it printed by Mark Twain’s publishing company as part of her battle to prove the intellectual capability of women. Housley’s most recent book, Emily Hall Tremaine: Collector on the Cusp, is available from University Press of New England. Tremaine, a famous art patron, was a Christian Scientist whose interest in abstraction was based on her belief in non-duality.
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