Reimagining Loneliness: Stigmatisation of Marginalised Artists in Patriarchal Society through Memoir of Olivia Laing’s Lonely City

Abstract

This paper examines the causes of loneliness in female and gay artists in the pre-postmodernism through textual analyses in Olivia Laing’s memoir, Lonely City published in 2016. My argument is that individual loneliness is conditioned neither by personal issue nor by interpersonal relation; however, it transcends both of these entities. The individual negative mentality, in fact, can be attributed to the problematic interplay between structural and patriarchal systems, that stem from dualistic concept embedded in social norms and institutionalisation. This gives the rise for female and gay artists not only to be alienated in domestic and public domains but their wishes to successfully pursue artistic careers are disenfranchised. However, it is noticeable that these marginalized artists tried to convert their isolating sentiments into a productive mechanism by creating artworks instead, which later ignite the social movements to acknowledge the gendered diversity and “the others”, which are deemed to be apart from male-dominant regime. Especially, this gradually reconstructs the chronic structural problem in society as a whole.