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Hello. This is 6 Minute English
from BBC Learning English.
I'm Neil.
And I'm Rob. It's great that you're
here to keep me company -
to spend time with me so
I don't get lonely -
because loneliness is the
subject of this programme. It's good to be here, Neil.
I think many of us have
experienced loneliness at
some point. Maybe you've
felt lonely because all your
friends have gone out for
dinner without you, or
maybe you've felt lonely
just because you don't
fit in somewhere. Yes, that's when we sometimes
use the expression 'to feel
lonely in a crowd'. Well,
we'll be exploring if this
is a new idea or something
humans have always
experienced, and along
the way we'll be teaching
you some new vocabulary. But now I'm here to keep you
company, how about a
question for me?
Of course! Well, one
possibly lonely man is
Mauro Morandi. He's lived
alone on Budelli Island in
Italy for many years, but
how many years exactly?
Is it: a) 6 years,
b) 31 years, or
c) 44 years? Umm ... 44 years would be
tough, as would 31, so
I'll go for 6 years. OK, Rob, we'll find out
later if that's right.
Now, I'm sure we all
want to be alone from
time to time, to escape
the demands of our
colleagues or the
pressures of real life,
but would we really want
to be totally alone? Well, I certainly wouldn't.
And research has found that
prolonged social isolation
is bad for us,
particularly mentally. It's an interesting topic,
and one that the BBC Radio
4 programme Thinking Aloud
has been exploring.
Its guest, Fay Bound Alberti,
Reader in History at the
University of York,
explained how loneliness is
a relatively new
emotional state. A state is a condition at
a particular time. Let's
hear what she had to say
about references to
loneliness in literature. Well, novels are
fascinating, because there's
a difference between novels
in the 18th Century, when
they first came into being,
and novels in the 19th
Century - in the 18th
Century something like
Robinson Crusoe, there's
not a single reference
to loneliness. By the 19th
Century novels are
full of lonely people
and that reflects those
kinds of social changes. Give me some examples.
What may count
as examples? Well, I suppose I'm
thinking about if you
compare something like
Wuthering Heights where
you have this desperate
desire on the part of
the heroine to find love
which is bundled up
to in this sense of the
self not being complete
without another, or
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
And so Victorian
fiction in particular
tends to be full of woman
who are in search of the
significant other and
needing to find happiness
and an absence of loneliness
in the domestic. It's interesting that Fay
mentions the story of
Robinson Crusoe - about
a man living on a desert
island - does not mention
the word loneliness.
But because of a shift
in how people behaved
and thought in the
19th century - called
social change - loneliness
became an emotion that
was written about
in stories. Ah, but loneliness tended
to be something affecting
women. They were
searching for happiness
by finding a 'significant
other' - a partner, usually
a man, who they wanted to
marry. How things
have changed! Yes, now Fay also went
on to talk about how
some female authors,
like Virginia Woolf,
looked for solitude - that's
being alone - because
that helped them
be creative. Even today, being alone
gives us headspace and
time to think, as long
as it doesn't last
forever. Anyway, as we
mentioned, we've probably
all been lonely at some
point, and Fay Bound Alberti
told the Thinking Aloud
programme that loneliness
can take many forms. Absolutely, I think that
loneliness is something
that affects all people
but at different times
in their lives. I would
describe in terms of
pinch points - there are
times when we change
[when we become] when we
get married, we become
mothers, we get divorced,
anything that changes
our life might put us
under temporary loneliness.
When it's a problem is
when it becomes chronic. It seems that there are
certain times in our
lives when we might feel
lonely - when we break
up with a partner or
have a baby and feel
isolated, for example.
These are moments that
Fay describes as pinch
points - times in your
life where there are
difficulties and things
slow down or change. We could say loneliness
at these times is
understandable, normal
and temporary. When it
becomes a bigger issue,
it's what Fay describes
as chronic - so,
long lasting. And loneliness isn't
always obvious to other
people, so it's good to
check in with friends
and family to see how
they're feeling and to
ask if they re OK.
Of course, it would be
difficult to check in
on Mauro Morandi, who's
been living on Budelli
Island in Italy for