confinement
Bricked in, locked up, or sealed behind their own front gates.
Mary Mallon Keeps Cooking
She gave her word, in 1910, that she would never cook again.
The Toothbrush at Holloway
She trained Emmeline Pankhurst to throw rocks under a fir tree at twilight, and the first one flew backwards.
Play a Strawberry
Who feeds a band one cup of soybeans a day for a month and calls it rehearsal?
The Accountant of Skt.-Adolf-Wald
Issued one pencil a week, he spent thirty-five years balancing the ledgers of a universe he'd crowned himself emperor of.
The Woman Who Wrote From Inside a Wall
A bishop sealed her inside a stone room, and she stayed for forty years — then T.S. Eliot quoted her during the Blitz.
The Woman Who Covered the World in Polka Dots
She sent fourteen unsolicited watercolors to a stranger in rural Japan. That stranger was Georgia O'Keeffe, and she wrote back.
The Duke Who Went Underground
He built the largest ballroom in England and used it to roller-skate alone.
The Woman Who Practiced Madness in a Mirror
Nellie Bly spent one night practicing insanity in a mirror, then fooled every doctor who examined her.