The Victorian Diary: Between the Public and the Private

Abstract

By presenting a range of diaristic texts composed by canonical Victorian writers, this article illustrates the variety of forms that Victorian diaries take and shows the ways in which these documents can adopt the status of a public and a private text simultaneously. It explains the repercussions of the critical assessments of the diary genre by New Criticism and feminism, which have privileged aesthetically meritorious diaries and those of women, respectively, for the field of Victorian diary criticism. It argues that the more inclusive approach of Philippe Lejeune represents a useful alternative to interpretative strategies that are exclusively preoccupied with the literary form of a diary or the gender of its author. Many diary scholars have been influenced by Lejeune’s work because it highlights the heteroglossic diversity that is characteristic of Victorian diaries, which, in turn, allows for a clearer understanding of the subjective experience of Victorian individuals and the ways in which they negotiated their value within the cultural context of the nineteenth century.