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Developing a sense of the plot, cast of characters, and language of
a given diary or collection of letters is the surest way to begin reading
in greater depth. Now we can think further about strategies for moving
into the pages of a personal text, entry by entry, letter by letter,
looking for how this writer gives us a particular lens through which
to see the past by creating herself as a writer at the same time she
portrays others and the world around her. Consider again the observation,
made earlier, that personal texts are fueled by accounts of key events
that occur over time, events which the writer feels are important enough
to express: a marriage, a disastrous storm, a daughter leaving home,
the routine of work. But events are only a starting point. The tale
of events inevitably reveals a pattern of key relationships –
the writer’s friendships, kinships, acquaintances and strangers.
These relationships, in turn, shape our understanding (just as they
shaped the writer’s) of which events are important to tell. A central
strategy for us as readers of a text, then, is to understand how the
writer joins events and relationships together, each giving the other
substance. We can see events and relationships as a kind of dynamic
logic – a dialectic – of personal texts which, over time,
reveals patterns of choice and characterization by writers, giving each
writer a certain style or voice, a distinct way of representing self
and others. It also shows that the meaning of events is not static,
but changes as correspondents change over time.
In certain ways, personal letters reveal the dialectic of events and
relationships more clearly than do diaries. Most family letters are
driven by "news," and so they are rich with events which most
writers try to characterize in detail. Because there is a distinct "other"
being addressed – the recipient of the letter – the writer
openly adapts his account of events to the differences among his various
correspondents, thus giving us different interpretations of the same
event as well as a different sense of the writer’s own intellect
and feeling. For example, medical student Joseph Jones responded quite
differently in 1853 to letters from his father and mother. Each of his
parents had written to express anxiety over the fact that Joseph was
cutting up cadavers as part of his anatomy course; each feared he would
injure himself morally by disrespecting the human body. Jones defended
his study of anatomy (and at the same time inscribed gendered differences
in his relationship with his parents) by arguing substantial points
of science and religion with his father, while assuring his mother that
nothing substantial was at stake. Moreover, letters are especially sensitive
to the absence of the other, and to the distance between correspondents
which letters are meant to bridge. Although all writers aim to bridge
the gap, some emphasize the gap while others emphasize the bridge. This
often made the exchange of letters itself an event worth remarking upon,
as lovers or parents and children blamed each other for neglect or praised
each other for timely and satisfying letters.*
Although the number of letters we have in front of us, and their spacing
in time, obviously determine what we can know of both events and relationships,
you can develop a set of questions for any group of correspondents:
which events – trivial or monumental – do correspondents choose
to share with each other? Are any events or topics ignored or skirted?
Who among the correspondents seem the most intimate and who seem most
at odds? How does each writer seem to value formal respect and careful
language, on the one hand, and humor, exaggeration, and slang, on the
other? Does one individual seem to be the central person in the correspondence,
and, conversely, is there an individual everyone seems to regard as
shy or silent? Which relationships seem most stable over the course
of the correspondence, which most volatile, and how do events in their
lives reveal these qualities? How do all of these relate to the identities
of the various correspondents, in terms of gender, class, age?
Many of these questions can be asked as well of a diarist’s account
of events and relationships. Diarists who begin writing because of dramatic
changes in their lives often write in a way as informative and clear
as any letter-writer penning a letter to friends or family. On the other
hand, the diary is a more introspective form than the letter. This sometimes
means that events and relationships are more difficult to figure out.
But once we do, a diary, compared to a set of letters, often permits
close attention to mental as well as social events and allows for more
examination of the quality of the writer’s relationships with others.
Moreover, a diary is more likely to turn into an extended narrative
akin to a work of fiction or a memoir. Because the diarist herself is
her only immediate audience, she can freely explore different expressive
possibilities, as Steven Kagle and Lorenza Gramegna point out, recombining
events and relationships into a full, satisfying story where "the
frightening can be made to seem exciting or comical and the improbable
hope, possible." For instance, Sarah Morgan, a young Louisiana
woman who admitted being terrified by an encounter with enemy Yankee
troops during the Civil War, nonetheless wrote in a spirited, offhand
way about her adventures – even her flirtations with U.S. soldiers
– when she turned to her diary. New York civic figure George Templeton
Strong, also during the Civil War, publically expressed his assurance
that the Union would stay united, but wrote bigoted passages in his
diary about Irish immigrants whose loyalty he doubted. The point here
is not that diarists fabricate things (though some might) but rather
that a diary is a "safer" place than a letter in which to
write one’s innermost thoughts, with the diarist more likely to
experiment with ideas and views (and writerly identities) he would not
risk in a letter.*
Most diarists and correspondents at least allude to ways that events
and relationships either change or keep their continuity over time.
Although writers of letters usually mark time in obvious ways (one letter
calls for another, and most correspondents tally letters sent and received)
diaries have a more elastic relation to time, stretching one event over
several pages, disposing of another in a single sentence. One diarist
might write to give an even texture to all that happens to her, fitting
events and relationships into a sort of emotional and temporal "middle
ground" throughout the diary. Another diarist, though, might write
in a perpetual state of excitement, making the ordinary seem a tale
of drastic change. Although some diaries may seem like autobiographies
in their approach to time, contextualizing everything in terms of "I,"
it is well to remember that for all of their expressiveness, diaries
do not, like autobiographies, look back on the past. Diaries draw their
energy from the way the writer searches for meaning while in the thick
of changing events and relationships which no one completely grasps.
The diarist searches to give the mass of associations and trail of events
meaning by finding a consistent voice, whereas the letter writer seeks
continuity in the flow of letters, in the personal ties they represent
as well as for the news they bear.
Because diaries more than letters privilege experiments in subjectivity,
key questions to ask of a diarist are those that help us understand
not only the events and relationships captured in the diary’s pages,
but also the diarist’s relative eagerness to explore the possibilities
of diary-keeping. Who is the “other” the diarist seems to
be writing to: a friend, a wiser self, a future self? What other literary
forms does a given diary most resemble, e.g., a letter, a novel, a ledger?
What kinds of events, times of the day or week, and emotional states
seem to motivate the diarist to write? Does the diarist always write
in the first person or does he sometimes distance himself by avoiding
the “I?” Which people in the diarist’s life appear most
frequently in her pages, and why? Do any or all of these features of
a given diary change over its course, and if so, in what way?
Read the following excerpts from two personal texts, written by Dr.
Charles A. Hentz, a southern physician who lived during the nineteenth
century, at different times in his life. Consider how he describes his
situation differently in the two excerpts:
Conclusion
In general, the diary speaks of a young man’s unsureness, his hesitancy
in the face of the challenge of fitting in as a new physician in a place
unlike any he’s known before; yet the diary also reveals hope and
possibility as young Hentz aspires to "acclimate" in
order to do a man’s duty of useful work. In contrast, the autobiography
speaks of certainty, an older man’s uncompromising look
back. Gone are the literary phrases, but gone, too, is a kind of wider
vision. The older Hentz wants us to see one thing: Port Jackson society
was a mess, and the mess was due to drink.
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