Writing Selves

Elizabeth Pepys may not have had a crush on her “dancing maister” as her husband Samuel angrily recorded in his diary on 12 May 1663, ¹ but we have good reason to assume that she did. Since Samuel Pepys is one of the best-known diarists in English literature, we stipulate (correctly) that most of the events he wrote about actually did take place in one form or another. We have learnt to believe (also, probably, correctly) that there is a connection between the life and the writing of a diarist. The diary is usually associated with a certain degree of immediacy and authenticity, which is supposedly absent in fictional accounts such as the novel. According to Philippe Lejeune, autobiographical writing is set apart from fiction since “the author, the narrator, and the protagonist” of an autobiographical text must be identical (On Autobiography 5). While autobiographies are written retrospectively and already include a certain amount of editing and rewriting, diaries are usually seen as particularly immediate. Thus, Lejeune’s claim that autobiographies are “referential texts” that seek to convey truthful information about a “‘reality’ exterior to the text” seems to be particularly valid with respect to the diary (22).