Reading
Journal – Session 3 – 8/11/2016
Megan Matchinske – Serial Identity: History,
Gender and Form in the Diary Writing of Lady Anne Clifford
- “For detail her progresses she did, repeatedly reviewing and updating her serial navigations in order to leave for posterity a “telling” record of her habitation and travel.” (204)
- “[Her] diary writing actively creates for her an embodied, temporally responsible, and spatially attentive identity; it marks her experiences (as a woman located within a system of primogeniture) as both meaningful and productive and suggests the costs that such definition requires over the long haul.” (204)
- “[Her] autobiographical form in its peculiar iterative patterning delineates a new kind of personal history, one that is future-oriented, unfinished and peculiarly suited to female needs. Cumulative, activist, and anticipatory, Clifford’s diary entries ask us to pay attention to the formal constituents of time, place, and personhood in the making and remaking of early modern female historical identity.” (204)
·
fought
in court for the landholdings of her father against the legal system that was
not entirely in the right, however her actions were greatly disapproved because
she was a woman
·
autobiographies
provide solace for a woman at odds with most of her peers
o
describes
her husband’s disapproval
o
her
daughter gets taken away from her
·
mostly
concerned with legal troubles, but the diaries continue until her death, even
after everything is settled
·
history
(used to prove her right to the property) and connection to her land very
important for her
·
through
rewriting and reorganizing after new discoveries, her writing is an ongoing
process of archival collection and recollection
·
obsessive
need for serial justification
·
comparison:
of 31 women authors btw 1550-1700, only 4 are serial in format, while the
others tend to be memorial in structure, employing a defense/apology format to
justify the detailing of private experience
·
serial
writing not from a certain point in life looking back and reflecting on lessons
learned and important events, but continuously repeating events and thoughts
without special attention
·
Clifford:
constant and repetitive pronouncements that operate directionally, spatially
and metaphorically in opposition to patrilineal networks that would regularly
deny such connections
·
time
not embraced as sequence (one thing after the other), personal history not an uninterrupted
process
·
linking
together several events in a temporal chain of spatial relationships, she
actively builds/rebuilds her properties, her heritage and herself
·
important
that property and prosperity continue into the future for her actions as a
family historian to matter
·
odd
push-pull btw cause-effect, posterior-anterior, ancestor-inheritor
·
point
of origin is the past, but mostly important for the future
·
contrast
to male writers who do not feel the need to justify their diary writing
·
Clifford’s
seems like a journey through her use of time, while Pepys’s does not
·
location
and movement matter less, his is a self-assured and unified identity born of
gender privilege
It is
interesting to note the differences between male and female diary writing.
While it was not necessarily an activity that was restricted to one gender, the
manner in which it happened certainly was different. Men generally feel more
justified in their existence and their actions, while women constantly have to
justify both, and their way of writing mirrors this. Clifford is a noteworthy
example in the way she defies gendered roles to defend her historically legal
right to her property against a society that does not look too kindly on women
who are acting separately from their husbands/fathers/guardians in any sort of
capacity. Her focus on time and space, past and future, differs drastically
from the other example, Pepys, and offers a different focus on the manner and
purpose of diary writing.
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