Negotiating Domesticity in the Journals of Anna Larpent

Abstract

The seventeen volumes of journals left by Anna Margaretta Porter, married in 1782 to John Larpent, the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays, are a testament to the struggle of a woman who fiercely adhered the principle of wifely subordination while possessing strong scholarly inclinations and a compulsion to write. Analysis of Anna Larpent's journaling habits shows how writing aided her management of depression and disruptive emotions. Silences and omissions could be as revealing as words. Her diaries offer an evocative portrait of a woman's matrimonial experience considered happy by contemporary standards. Larpent's dedication to her family, which included a sister and stepson, help to explain why a traditional household tended to inhibit a woman's participation in intellectual circles and the publication of her writings. In assessing Larpent's degree of self-fulfillment, this article confronts the problem of how to interpret an individual's feelings within the emotional conventions of the past.

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