Sexual Longing in Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s American Victorian Diary

As a genre, diaries are now past their fashion. Literate, but essentially unconscious self-revelation, the hallmark of the diary form, is unlikely in our culture, where we are all psychologically aware at least to the degree that we know every utterance means something, some repression betrayed. In the nineteenth century ladies would faint and would have protracted illnesses of an unspecific nature, and men would openly de- clare their love for one another. More inwardly sexual fantasies could exist for themselves and be written about unanalytically in the common language of the day. At the same time, rigorous convention demanded that literature for publication preclude all but the most allusive treatment of sexual fantasies. In partial response to this conventional split between the private and the public, many literate people kept diaries as links be- tween the most personal fantasy, and formal literary efforts. Though there was always some sense of audience in diary keeping, it clearly was not a psychoanalyst to whom one was writing. As privately controlled realms, diaries may have maintained, rather than challenged or reoriented tensions between inward desires and outward demands, may have aided people in continuing to live under repressive social conventions by posi- tively reinforcing a compensatory shadow world of day dreams and night dreams

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• The Journal of Richard Henry Dana, Jr

  Kinley J Brauer, Robert F Lucid•Journal of American History•1969

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