Literary notes about confinement (AI summary)
The term “confinement” in literature has been wielded with a rich variety of meanings, serving as both a literal description of physical imprisonment and a metaphor for broader restrictions. In some texts it denotes the physical seclusion of a prisoner or debtor—illustrated in passages where characters visit inmates in confinement [1], are shut away due to debt [2], or suffer under solitary mental and physical restrictions [3, 4]. In other works, confinement takes on medical or domestic connotations, as when a character is cared for during a period of enforced seclusion following childbirth [5] or when the oppressive nature of limited space is emphasized in social settings [6, 7]. Authors have thus used “confinement” to evoke emotions ranging from pity and despair to irony and even hope, making it a versatile symbol for both tangible and psychological barriers in diverse narrative contexts [8, 9, 10].
- How, partly impressed by this statement and partly from curiosity and pity for the prisoner, she had visited him in confinement.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte - The sisters were put in the debtor's place, and the men were shut up in close confinement.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe - or solitary confinement.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - The worst punishment that human ingenuity has ever been able to invent is extreme monotony—solitary confinement.
— from The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein - A woman, after confinement, feeds for three days on the tender leaves, or cabbage of the date palm ( Phœnix sylvestris ), and then on rice.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 7 of 7 by Edgar Thurston - Just take a few minutes—not half as serious as a confinement—and you'll be all right in a jiffy.”
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis - "Too much confinement," I cried, "why you keep yourself confined all the time!"
— from Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville - At night, when all were asleep, Betty came to release me from my place of confinement.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. Jacobs - His confinement is a hideous vision; and his old life a reality.
— from American Notes by Charles Dickens - “A galley-slave, escaped from confinement at Toulon.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet
