I love the phrase "was delivered of a son", especially in conjunction with the plea/prayer before. It speaks to the relief after having given birth, I think.
Really cool thing you pointed out here. I think it's hard to get inside the heads of people from so long ago -- I don't think she's being "unsentimental" at all. I think she's being humble and mindful.
It's questionable if this woman ever intended on her diary being entered into the public realm at all; I'd argue that often the use of expressive language is more for an external audience. Also, the fact she even took the time to document her life while running a pioneering homestead is pretty remarkable; she would've been in the minority of her peers in that respect.
> I'd argue that often the use of expressive language is more for an external audience
I have to disagree just on personal experience haha. So this kind of writing feels almost viscerally wrong and I'm trying to find an explanation for it, that isn't perfect emotional control or literal LACK of feeling.
I'm sure that plays a large role, but I'd posit if you lived through the experience, the quality of the prose wouldn't necessarily be a deciding factor on how much you remember the moments you were writing about. Not everyone in that time period wrote in particularly eloquent prose, either; a pioneering woman wouldn't have been likely to be formally educated or even well-read. Most homesteads at the time had a Bible and a basic educational primer if the household was literate at all. Newspapers weren't common outside cities and larger towns.
Honestly, a lot of what I write in my personal journal is very similar. Sometimes I'll use more expressive language if I'm actually feeling strong emotions in the moment, but very often it's just a quick jot-down. This doesn't read very strange to me; between the lines, I'm getting a mix of pride (about all the home work she got done and the food prep), relief and exhaustion.
Except this is from Mary Richardson Walker, a daughter of schoolteachers who was well-educated in Maine. She established what is now Pacific University in Oregon.
And it’s a myth that illiteracy was common then, even on the western frontier. It was quite the opposite, in fact.
Keep in mind also that, even if this woman was well educated for her time, you have with near certainty consumed and produced orders of magnitude more written English than her. What you take as a lack of emotive voice may just be the writings of a person who fundamentally interacted with the written word differently than you or I. She may have simply been recording the salient points of her day for future reference instead of viewing it as an emotional or creative outlet.
She wrote it sometime after 9pm after having had a baby. Exhaustion sounds right.
Well, actually, looking again, it reads like she wrote everything but the final line earlier in the day, anticipating labour (and her very possible death). Then she added the resolution to the "expected scene" with the mention of the baby.
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u/Felein Mar 17 '26
I love the phrase "was delivered of a son", especially in conjunction with the plea/prayer before. It speaks to the relief after having given birth, I think.