‘So that my soul may have time to grow’: Joy and Happiness in Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Solitary Summer

Abstract

This article discusses the Romantic and Transcendentalist roots of Elizabeth von Arnim’s joyful retreat from the world in The Solitary Summer (1899). By exploring how von Arnim incorporates themes and ideas from William Wordsworth and Henry David Thoreau, it situates von Arnim’s concepts of joy and happiness in the Aristotelian tradition of eudaemonia and shows how the practice of mindfulness turns Elizabeth’s garden into an ongoing project of self-cultivation.

Keywords:

• happiness
• joy
• Thoreau
• Walden
• Wordsworth
• women’s writing
• eudaemonia
• Buddhism

Notes

1 See Römhild (2014).

2 See Römhild (2014).

3 See Römhild (2014).

4 See Römhild (2014).

5 For von Arnim's religious leaning, see Walker (2013).