Anne Lister:I Know My Own Heart

4 Pages 926 Words

In the book, I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister 1791-1840, offers the diaries as a fascinating story of the “everyday” life led by an early 19th century lesbian. The diaries were found in the 1980’s and deciphered by Helena Whitbread. There are a few diaries, but this one focuses on the period from 1817 – 1824, which was the most emotionally developing years of Anne’s life. As well, it is also when she best chronologically details her vivid and sexual relationships with other women. The journals took Whitbread six years to interpret the esoteric cod invented by Anne in order to keep her secret love affairs safe. She also used this type of correspondence when maintaining relationships with other women. Even though all these efforts were made to conceal her sexual secrets, the lesbian content is still very slight, and hard to sift through the tedious details of her daily activities.
Due to the time period of the text, it is important to have some historical understanding about past confines in society for women. Women really had no human rights at this time, since they were not considered ‘persons’ till 1919. Women were the property of their husbands, or their fathers; they were the caregivers and nurturers of society. There gender roles were clearly defined, as were those of men. Like Lister, who was an upper-class woman from Yorkshire, she was expected to play very different roles than those conventional ones in which she participated. Since Lister was considered to be eccentric and forward from those who did know her very well, and sometimes to those who did, it would be an appropriate assumption that Lister defied a lot of the gender roles of this time (Whitbread, 1992). Lister was fairly self-educated, and spent a lot of time traveling, riding, hiking and shooting. Due to Lister’s upper-class status, she was able to get away with most of her oddities, like dressing in gentleman’s clothes and going sh...