Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907) was the Polish dramatist, the poet, besides the illustrator and the painter, one of the best known artist of the Young Poland movement. His journey to Europe (particulary to Paris) became very important experience in his life. He discovered the value of loneliness, he had to be alone – as an artist and as a man. He was called “a hermit from Cracow” and for this reason his genius was not always appreciated. However, at the end of life, Wyspiański undergoes a significant transformation: he feels a strong connection to community, as a member of the nation and society, as well as a host.
Providing informal care to adults, especially elderly people, may affect many aspects of caregivers’ life, such as: physical and mental health, financial situation, social contacts, etc. Supporting dependent seniors is associated to a higher level of stress, burden and depression as well as higher mortality. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between caregiving for adults and the subjective quality of life among Poles aged 50–69. We took into account not only the fact of providing care to adult people, but also its beginning, continuation and ending between waves. We assumed that subjective quality of life may be expressed by two variables: one describing life satisfaction, and the second one – loneliness. We used the panel subsample from the Generation and Gender Surveys (GGS) carried out in Poland in 2010/2011 and in 2014. We found a negative effect of stopping caregiving between waves on wellbeing of women-carers, which may be related to the loss of a close person. Moreover, providing care for a longer period of time increases loneliness, which confirms that providing support to others may lead to isolation and smaller social networks.
The aim of the article is to present the issue of loneliness of Iraqi women on the basis of selected novels written by Iraqi female writers in the 21st century. The first part of the article, which is preceded by an introduction to the topic, includes general information about the development of novels by Iraqi women writers since the second half of the 1990s and some remarks about their methods of portraying female characters. The second part of the article provides examples of lonely women in their narratives whereas the third part depicts a story of Riyām, the heroine in the novel Riyām wa-Kafā (Riyam and Kafa, 2014) by Hadiya Husayn, in a more detailed way.