This study will describe and analyze the theme of loneliness and its healing in Madonna Kolbenschlag's Lost in the Land of Oz: Befriending Your Inner Orphan and Heading for Home. The study will argue that Kolbenschlag is correct in concluding that the loneliness we all experience is in effect an illusion created by the needs of the ego and the lessons we learn from a society which values independence over interdependence.
However, more importantly, the study will argue that Kolbenschlag commits a number of fallacies in her argument which are based on assumptions about women and men and society. Specifically, the author reveals a common bias among women writers today who see the problems of society and relationships as results of too much emphasis on masculine values and too little emphasis on feminine values.
The author is a feminist who believes that we and our society suffer from loneliness, alienation and estrangement as a result of the devaluing of the feminine principle which is based on cooperation, interdependence, caregiving and nurturing. She is not saying that the masculine principle and its emphasis on independence and self-sufficiency is wrong, only that a society which denigrates the feminine and glorifies the masculine will be out of balance and full of lonely people (the "orphans" of the title). After telling the tale of Macha, a woman who overcame male domination, the author writes:
The Celtic myth of Macha is an awesome metaphor for the wound in our contemporary civilization: a divided consciousness that abuses power and breeds all sorts of social ills, while denying the life-giving "feminine" experience and values in human society. This wound in our consciousness, in our culture, has made orphans of us all (2).
One specific problem here is that the author focuses too much on the effects of loneliness on women and not enough on the effects on men. In addition, it might be argued that she is perhaps a ...