Solitude and Society in the Works of Herman Melville and Edith Wharton

The interplay between solitude and society was a particularly persistent theme in nineteenth-century American literature, though writers approached this theme in different ways. Poe explored the metaphysical significance of isolation and held solitude in high esteem; Hawthorne viewed the theme in moral terms and examined the obligation of each individual to the larger community; and Emerson mainta...