English Language and Literature Commons^™

"Self Was Forgotten": Attention To Private Consciousness In The Diaries Of Three Mormon Frontier Women, Genevieve Jane Long

Dissertations and Theses

This study discusses diaries by three Mormon women on America's southwestern frontier. These diaries cover a period stretching from 1880-1920. The study explores how these diarists (in a culture that was and remains highly communitarian and which valued, for women, the primary roles of helpmeet and mother), leave the imprint of individual as well as cooperative consciousness in private writings. As authors, diarists display remarkable persistence in maintaining and elaborating on a daily text. Since diaries are a type of private writing engaged in even by women who--because of education, social class, or life circumstances--do little other writing, women's diaries …