I'm beginning to realise something I should have realised a long time ago, i.e. Gran kept her diary as a sort of chore, something to give shape and structure to her days, certainly not as a vehicle for expressing her thoughts on her family, her own life or indeed life in general. I doubt very much whether she ever re-read previous entries, except perhaps to check a date or a name. The justification for her came in the discipline involved in the physical act of writing and the (limited) intellectual act of listing the events of the day in order.
So that's Gran as writer, but what about us as readers? I would like to return to this question on another occasion (I think it's more interesting than it seems at first sight.)
Un peu comme Grand-Mère tu penses ?
ReplyDeleteTout à fait !
ReplyDeleteI think you are probably spot on regarding Gran the Diary Writer, but you need to remember that she took this over from Grandad when he died in 1939 and therefore is likely to have thought of it as a sort of wifely duty as well as housewife's chore.
ReplyDeleteWhat it says about us as readers - well, nosey about what might have been written about us! And then to find we hardly get a look-in is a sad disappointment.
I think it a huge pity that Gran didn't volunteer for the Mass Observation project, but on the basis of what's before us she might have been sacked for tedium.