An interdisciplinary approach to Maritime women's diaries : Laura Wood, Victoria Ross, L.M. Montgomery

Abstract

This thesis is a study in the historic and literary value of Maritime women's diaries. I attempt to justify the necessity for the study of women's diaries by briefly looking at and categorizing all the published diaries of the region. Women's diaries have been disproportionately under-published compared to those written by men. This reflects both the obscurity of women's writing and the patriarchial bias of historical analysis. The thesis is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on theoretical arguments from several disciplines. To fully understand the value of women's experiences as they have been shaped by Maritime realities, it is necessary to extend research beyond traditional academic boundaries. I discuss the relationship of women's diaries of this region to the emergence of women's studies as a valid discipline of study, and I relate diaries to recent historical trends. I also attempt to place the female diarists of this region in an international context by applying contemporary literary arguments to their journals. I chose three case studies for this analysis : Laura Wood, Victoria Ross and L.M. Montgomery. Each of these three case studies is required in order to present a balanced argument on the differences in diary motivation. To date, these diaries, representing journal literature by women from the Maritime region, have not been analyzed within a context of the literary theoretical frameworks found in this thesis.