Letters and Diaries in Women's Writing

Letters and diaries have often been linked to women's writing. We see female characters in novels writing their diaries, composing letters to lovers or friends, or even imagining those possible letters they would like to send. Indeed, Ruth Perry comments: ‘Women seemed to have a special affinity for this personal one-to-one format.’ And Elizabeth Goldsmith refers to an observation made by Jean de la Bruyère in 1684: ‘Women, he reflects, have a special facility for epistolary expression, giving their letters a natural quality that men have to struggle to achieve.’

Women as writers are scarce until the Renaissance, as the written word was still the privilege of royalty, the upper class and convents. Writing about women as writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, María Milagros Rivera observes:

According to Nora Catelli, writing remained a private practice for women: ‘Hasta mediados del siglo XVII, en el ámbito anglosajón, tanto en Inglaterra como en la Norteamérica puritana, sólo el diez por ciento del total de autobiografías, memorias y diarios publicados estaban firmados por mujeres, y lo publicado, casi en su totalidad, era de índole religiosa’.