You need some advice on how to make the most of your confinement? Who better to ask than a group of strong (fictional) ladies who experienced some form or other of self-isolation years before the unfortunate birth of Covid-19? Read on for a few tips on how to survive confinement from your favourite female characters.
- Start a passion project like Miss Havisham (Great Expectations)
Miss Havisham self-isolated to protect herself from the most contagious and life-threatening conditions of all, love. Miss H. is no self-care guru. The woman spent her days in confinement sitting next to a rotting cake in a slowly decaying dress, and I am almost 100% convinced she never bothered to exfoliate. However, she did have a passion project that kept her going every single mind-numbingly monotonous day of her life: to seek revenge and wreak havoc upon the entire male gender. Why not start a similar project, and replace “male gender” with “joggers” or “your upstairs neighbour”? Or maybe take it down a notch and pick a less Dickensian goal? You could learn a language or try a new recipe every day?
- Go out for walks like Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty, the Disney version)
Briar Rose aka sleeping beauty lived as a recluse in the middle of the forest to escape her fate, the spinning wheel. She went out for regular walks in the forest, sang with birds and danced with a prince. Who knows, maybe if you venture outside for an hour your life will be just like a Disney movie and you will end up falling in love with another pretend jogger, while Parisian pigeons lovingly coo in the background? Or maybe your life will more like a Grimm fairy tale and you will end up getting fined by a policeman because you started chasing a hot jogger, unbeknownst to him, for 2km rather than 1. In this case, you may want to sleep the rest of the confinement off, and hope you will meet your jogger soul mate once it is all over (which is not very likely, considering jogging will be a short lived confinement-only activity for the both of you)
- Forget men and be a DIY queen like Penelope (Odyssey)
“I’ll take a loom over a man any day!!”, was probably uttered by Penelope at some point or other in her life. It is just that Homer omitted to include it in the hundred or so pages of the Odyssey.
Indeed, while her husband Odysseus was away, Penelope self-confined and wove every day to keep her unrelenting male suitors, the Covid-19 of her day, away from her. For three whole year, she wove a burial shroud for her husband’s late father, undid it every night and started again every morning, so that these men would leave her alone. Why not also pick a (less morbid and counterproductive) DIY activity, like sowing or painting, to keep your hands busy, and away from those Tinder/Happn notifications. Like Penelope, this will keep you distracted from the fact that your (potential future) husband (who you haven’t met yet) is currently sailing confined at the edge of the world more than a kilometre away from you.
If you are not a DIY kind of girl, you can follow Belle’s example instead and talk to or sing duets with inanimate objects.
- Help others out like Beth (Little Women)
Beth March was the most kind-hearted and selfless of the March sisters. While her sisters were writing plays, flirting or being brats (looking at you Amy!), she would walk to the run-down shack of the impoverished Hummel family to bring them food, clothes and firewood. If you’re healthy and able, you can follow Beth’s example and bring food or medicine to your sick/elderly neighbours/relatives (then brag about your good deed on Instagram like the real Amy that you are). Full disclosure though: Beth catches the scarlet fever from the Hummel baby, and gets really sick. She gets better though! But then she dies. So maybe be more cautious than Beth. Wear that mask. Put those gloves on. Stay 6 feet away. And, most importantly, don’t let anyone hand you their crying baby. It’s a trap.
- Annoy your neighbours like Bertha Rochester (Jane Eyre)
Mrs Rochester left her country of Jamaica for a tall, dark, and handsome man. He brought her to his cold gloomy English mansion, and then proceeded to lock her up in the attic, indefinitely. Puts this whole confinement situation into perspective, doesn’t it? To make matters worse, he then hired a young naïve governess, Jane, who he fell in love with, all this happening with his wife still (literally) under his roof. While you probably do not have a romantic past with your downstairs neighbour (and if you do, this confinement period may be the right time for you to question your life choices), you do consider his 6 am violin sessions to be as unwelcome, brutal and inconsiderate as Mr Rochester’s take on mental health. What was Mrs R’s solution to this problematic situation? She burned the whole place down. I’ll just leave it at that.
All these women had to self-isolate, just like you, albeit for very different reasons than yours. In your case, it is a global pandemic, in their case it was men, a man, another man, a man again (so, I’m guessing men were the global pandemic of their day), and an evil fairy. They tried to make the most out of it, and so should you. Remember that these moments of isolation and solitude did not last forever for them. Penelope was reunited with her unfaithful husband Odysseus, Belle married the man who held her against her will, Briar Rose lived happily ever after with a prince who didn’t bother to ask for consent…and Miss H. and Mrs R. burned to death….So, be strong, beware of any fire hazards, and don’t go marrying some unworthy dude when May 11th comes around.