The Alice Williamson Diary :: Diaries Journals Literature Civil War Essays

The Alice Williamson journal To read the Civil war journal of Alice Williamson, a 16 form old girl, is to meander through the ad hominem, cultural and political experience of some(prenominal) the author and ones self. Her writing feels like a bullet ricocheted through war, time, death, literary form, femininity, youth, state, freedom and obligation. This investigation attempts to do the same to touch on the many another(prenominal) issues that arise in the mind of the reader when becoming part of the text edition through the act of interpreting. This paper will lay no expressed claims to the absolute meaning of the diary, for it has many possible interpretations, for the journey is the ultimate answer. I seek to ac experience the fluidity of thought when translation, a fluidity which incorporates person-to-person experience with the content of Williamsons journal. I read the journal personally- as a woman, a peer in age to Alice Williamson, a surrogate experiencialist, a g enerator, an academic and most of all, a modern reader unaccustomed to the personal experience of war. I read the text within a context- as a researcher versed on the period, genre, aesthetics, and to some degree the writer herself. The molding of the personal and contextual create a rich individualized textual meaning . I keep my journal hidden the script, the drawings, the color, the lading of the paper, contents I hope never to be experienced by another. My journal is intensely personal, temporal and exposed. When opening the leather bound formality of Alice Williamsons journal a framework of meaning is presupposed by the readers own feelings concerning the medium. information someone elses diary can be, and is for myself, an voyeuristic invasion of space. The act of reading makes the private and personal into public. Yet, for Alice Williamson and many other female journalists of the Civil War period, the journal was creating a public memory of the hardship that would be sus tained when read by others. The knowledge of the outside reader reading of your action was as important as the exercise of recording for ones self creating a sense of sentimentality connecting people through emotions. (Arnold)The activity of understanding Alice Williamsons diary begins prior to reading the first word. The reader begins to identify part of the reading experience based upon their feelings on diaries themselves in the moments of suspension between knowledge of type of text and the reading of the first entry.