Women in the Arena
Women in the Arena is the celebration of everyday women living extraordinary lives in plain sight. We seek to inspire, encourage and challenge you to reach for the great heights you're made for.
Women in the Arena
Unlocking Women's Diaries: Secrets of Self-Expression with Sarah Gristwood
Ever wondered what secrets women's diaries hold? Join us for an enlightening episode featuring acclaimed author and historian Sarah Gristwood, as she unveils the hidden voices in her latest book, "Secret Voices: A Year of Women's Diaries." From her early journalism days advocating for women's perspectives to her current role as a renowned historian and broadcaster, Sarah takes us on a journey through the profound self-expression and historical documentation found in women's diaries.
Key Takeaways:
- Women's Self-Expression: Explore how diary writing has been a powerful tool for women across different eras, offering candid reflections on their daily lives and intimate thoughts.
- Historical Insights: Delve into the diaries of historical figures like Hester Thrale and Virginia Woolf, revealing honest accounts of middle age, menopause, and more.
- Modern Resonance: Understand how these historical perspectives resonate with contemporary discussions about aging and bodily changes, empowering women today.
- Fascinating Lives: Immerse yourself in the rich, multifaceted experiences of women like Queen Victoria and Joan Wyndham through their personal diaries.
Why You Should Listen: This episode is a heartfelt tribute to the diverse experiences documented by women throughout history. It offers timeless lessons and deep connections to our own lives, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in women's empowerment, historical insights, and the power of self-expression.
Welcome in everyone and thank you so much for joining me again this week. This week's guest is a documented champion of women. My guest this week is Sarah Gristwood, and she is this amazing, remarkable author that is committed to publicizing women's experiences throughout history. As a young journalist, she championed women's voices through news outlets such as the Guardian's Women's Page and is a founding member of the Women in Journalism and the Women's Equality Party. Yeah, absolutely the Women's Equality Party. As a historian, she has consistently explored the question of women and power throughout the ages. She now regularly broadcasts with Sky News, cnn and the BBC, specifically on royal and historical topics. She is also a graduate of Oxford University and a fellow for the Royal Historical Society and of the RSA. You're going to have to explain to me and all us Americans what the RSA is. I want to know more about that.
Sarah :The letters stand for Royal Society of the Arts, but it's longer than that. It's the arts and industry and it's about the interaction of the two. Just don't go there, basically.
Audra:Okay, just don't go there. Basically, it's okay. Okay, um, she's all sorry. She's a graduate of oxford university and she has been shortlisted for both the mar the marsh biographical award and the bin pimlot prize for political writing. Oh, my goodness. She has a recent book and that's what we're going to talk about today Secret Voices, a Year of Women's Diaries. I cannot wait for you to meet her and I cannot wait to get into this conversation. It is my pleasure and honor to introduce to you Sarah. Sarah, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I am so fascinated about the work you do. First of all, the work that you do not only is important, but it is also only too often unsung, meaning that doing the work of documenting history, and doing it accurately, is often overlooked and not nearly as appreciated. What drew you into this particular area of documenting women's voices, which is very, very important because it'll help us shape our future? So how did you start with?
Sarah :that it's always been natural to me. I guess when I first started writing as a journalist it was still there was nothing like the amount of work done in the field that there is today. It was still opening up into slightly new territory. All these years on, I can't believe that no one has gone back in a popular, public way to revisit the question of anthologising women's diaries, because certainly in this country the anthologies out there which were written at the end edited, put together at the end of the 20th century, not the 21st the proportion of women to men is nothing remotely like equal, and this despite the fact that there's so many amazing women diarists out there that in many ways diary writing was regarded as a female form.
Audra:So let's talk a little bit about this art of diary writing and what a delicate and special relationship it is basically with yourself. For those that aren't familiar with the practice, can you explain a little bit more of what this diary writing and these diary entries are?
Sarah :Well, of course the word diary, like journal, comes from day. So ideally it is a daily record in which you can put anything you like, in which you can put anything you like. So in some cases it is as basic as went to the shops, watched television in the evening though I have to say, for obvious reasons I haven't quoted too many of those. Or it can be absolute, your way into a whole discussion of life, your identity, your political views. Now, some women do keep it up very religiously but do keep it quite short and of course those entries gain a kind of magic, mystique with time passing. So I'm fascinated to read from the 18th century had my hair powdered and frizzed, today that operation over. Went into the orchard to pick apples and gave them to the maid to make jelly, whereas I probably wouldn't be fascinated by a modern. Went to the hairdresser in the cinema, you know Absolutely. But, and of course some of these women are recording very extraordinary events in their days. I mean you have only to think of Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President Johnson, of course, lyndon B Johnson describing driving down into Dallas one November day in 1963 in the car behind President Kennedy and how she thought at first that the sound of bangs was firecrackers coming from the crowd.
Sarah :But others, like, say, virginia Woolf, do use their, or did use their, diaries well, partly and quite consciously, to explore their writing craft but also to analyse, to kind of work out their ideas, to work out where their emotions were coming from. So one day she writes about coming back from her sisters at Charleston Vanessa's, and how it's made her dissatisfied with her own life. And that is that, partly because Vanessa has children and she doesn't. What is it? And she works that through on the page. As for you know who and how they write. Of course you know who and how they write. Of course some diarists, from, oh, fanny Burney again 18th century to Anne Frank, have addressed their diary to, for example, an imaginary friend. Anne Frank addressed hers to Kitty, and Fanny Burney addressed hers to a certain Miss Nobody. She wrote, because to whom could she speak freely?
Audra:To nobody. Remarkable is what is going through my mind. Remarkable how did you get access to these very intimate documented thoughts of these women? Because that's what these are. These are documented, intimate emotions, thoughts, actions that they probably couldn't tell anybody but whomever they were speaking to in their diary.
Sarah :Yes, that's right. Yes, that's right. Well, a lot of these diaries have since become out there, are published or, you know, are known from well-respected libraries. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because I do think that these are secret voices, in the sense that the women were using their diaries to voice sentiments that were transgressive in their own day. But maybe we accept them a bit more readily, and I do believe that while in some ways, you know, while at the time, women needed the privacy, the secrecy of the diary form so they could say what they really felt, it's not entirely an inward-looking business, I suspect. I wonder if there isn't sometimes almost a sense of a hand reaching out across the void. I mean, these women couldn't voice their anger, their ambition in their own day, but maybe they wished they could and times.
Audra:if they had expressed how they really felt and said it loudly and publicly, their husbands could commit them as quote unquote mad and put them in an asylum simply for speaking out and expressing their feelings and emotions that may be in opposition to how their husband feels or how society has viewed them on what is proper and what is not. For a young lady, I just them having the only outlet to utilize their voice is in paper and a pen. It just is overwhelming and it also actually chokes me a little bit, because not having the ability to speak about who you are and how you feel sounds like, quite frankly, like a hell on earth.
Sarah :Well as Florence Nightingale wrote in her diary in the years before she was discovered, was allowed to pursue her vocation as a nurse. She wrote my present life is suicide. I lie down each night hoping I won't have to get out of the bed again. But that was she was someone massively famous now, of course, as you know, one of the pioneers of nursing, but, like Beatrix Potter, famous for her little tales for Peter Rabbit and the rest, of course, ladies who had to live this long pupillage, this long almost confinement as a Victorian young lady at home, and they were in their thirties before they actually managed to win free of their families to follow their path.
Audra:In their thirties and in Victorian age, the longevity of human race in general wasn't nearly as long as it is now so 30s could be considered at that time middle-aged, probably what helped them.
Sarah :In fact, they clearly weren't going to do what their families would have preferred and make a highly eligible marriage. So therefore, perhaps they did have a bit more freedom coming their way. But quite often I found, even in the privacy of their diaries, women didn't always speak their anger directly. Quite often, in fact. After all Florence Nightingale's entry, we're talking about despair. Beatrix Potter cloaks it in a bit of wry humour. Before she began publishing the Little Tales, she did some very impressive drawings of fungi. I think there's a new exhibition opening, isn't there in New York? I think I believe you're correct and now these are treated very seriously indeed. But at the time when she went to say she was given an introduction by her uncle to the director of the Great Botanic Gardens at Kew, but the director was having none of it and Beatrix, she wrote in her diary it's very upsetting for a shy person to be treated as conceited, especially when the shy person happens to be right.
Audra:Wow, wow. There's a couple of things, as you were speaking, that came to mind. The first is even in their own diaries, these women felt like they had to muffle themselves diaries.
Sarah :These women felt like they had to muffle themselves. Yes, I think possibly they didn't. I would suspect, psychologically, that they didn't. Often, a lot of them didn't voice it as anger, even to themselves. They thought of themselves, as you know, more or less unhappy, but they didn't feel they had the right to be angry even in their own heads. We can be angry on their behalf now. Perhaps we can be angry on their behalf now, perhaps.
Audra:I will be angry for Florence Nightingale and Beatrix Potter. I will be angry for them because they are the shoulders that we stand upon. Everything that we do is because someone else made it possible. And there are these fearless women that have nameless faces, nameless voices, that we don't realize. We have to thank for our position and our ability today.
Sarah :Absolutely.
Audra:That is just like I said. It's completely overwhelming to think that these women that we know and that we admire and are historical figures and were trailblazers in their own right, felt the very same things that you and I have felt throughout our lifetime. Yes, the same stuff that has been dealt with for centuries. And not even I totally agree, and not even just the despairing young woman.
Sarah :One thing that really struck me was the way there are some dilemmas we think of as modern that women were voicing centuries ago, 200 years ago, and more were voicing centuries ago, 200 years ago and more. Elizabeth Fry, english, so I don't know how well she's known there, but a great prison reformer, really an important figure, a Quaker, and she wrote about her concern that her husband and I think it was 11 children were distracting her from her career, her vocation, and how they didn't like they got jealous when she spent too much time on this prison reform work. That was her life's work, her mission. But juggling work and family, well, that one hasn't exactly gone away, has it? No, but I didn't expect to find it back in the early 19th century.
Audra:I wouldn't have expected that either and that there was these progressive women and I should say I think most women were probably progressive. They're just not all of them felt empowered to act on that. But there are these women that we look at and admire as these historical figures, and then you give us access to their innermost thoughts and they're the same.
Sarah :I know, yes, I agree, that's the magic, that's the, that's the real clarion call, for me too.
Audra:Well, the other thing that that I'm hearing is these women that, and during those time it was considered considered middle age. I know know, 30s sounds like we're babies now, because, believe me, in my 30s I'm yeah. I was practically a teenager in my 30s of their lifetime, where many of us, many of the audiences that listens to me, are in the middle of their lifetime. They're somewhere between their mid-40s and their mid-50s.
Audra:So we are considered middle age. Why I'm bringing this up is because a lot of these women, finally in their middle age, probably got fed up with whatever they were dealing with and couldn't live with the fact of doing nothing or living status quo up to that point. So they went, you know what, forget it and do something miraculous that we all study now. Historically, then we certainly here in our middle age can do anything we want and still be empowered to change the world.
Sarah :And do you know?
Sarah :One of the things that struck me about the extracts, following on from what you're saying, is that we've always thought of women in the past as hating to get older, as it's only now that we can say that, you know, 50 is the new 40 and whatever.
Sarah :But women in the past were very often much more accepting of the different stages of and enjoying the different stages of life than than we expect them to be. I think you you read of them writing about you know how actually it's really rather nice not to have to bother about getting dressed up if you don't want to any longer, about never be sorry for a party of elderly ladies out together, no men around, they're having the time of their lives. And May Sarton, the New England, great New England writer, about how she was sitting around a table with well, she herself, I think, was in her 60s or 70s, you know, someone in their 40s, someone in their 20s, and they were all just enjoying. They were at different stages but they'd all, except perhaps for the one in her 20s, decided that they weren't going to live looking for and waiting for the dream of male protection, but they were happy in their skins, basically.
Audra:So they were learning to be really comfortable in their own skin. Even then, I thought that being uncomfortable in your own skin was this modern invention because of all of this societal pressure. But you're saying that they've been, that that's probably been prevalent for a while. But there are these women that have women decided that they were going to, yes, be comfortable with who they are.
Sarah :Yes, exactly that, yeah. And the other thing is that, forgive me that women in the past I found some of them wrote far more freely about their bodies than I'd quite realized.
Audra:Really that they were more accepting about their bodies, their figure, whatever.
Sarah :Well, again you've got Hester Thrail, dr Johnson's friend, so end of the 18th century, writing in these words about the change of life, writing about, how, she put it, her oldest friend was leaving her. She meant her monthly cycle, her periods, and she wrote about how, when she put it, the first change of life came menage, the start of puberty. A particular mark appeared on her face, almost like a measles mark, and now it had come again. But other than that she didn't really feel any different. But you know, again, I hadn't quite expected to find women from that far in the past. Uh, writing about menopause, about about menage, you know, we tend to think that at least frankness about it is a modern invention. Well, guess what Our grandmothers, our foremothers can teach us a few things there as well.
Audra:They're very wise. It seems that there was a lot of boldness as well, but in the privacy of their own thoughts, because that might have been the only place that they could be bold.
Sarah :Yes, their own pen. Yes, you certainly wouldn't have got newspaper articles about the menopause when Hester Thrail was writing about it when Hester Thrail was writing about it.
Audra:Oh my gosh, no, are you kidding? We just now start to be comfortable and openly speak of it, and I've only now, quite frankly, gotten comfortable with saying, yeah, I'm in the middle of menopause. That's not something I can help. My body's doing it for me. And one of my least favorite, least favorite symptoms of menopause is brain fog. And rather than try and cover it up, I actually tell my coworkers I'm having a really bad brain fog day. Don't blame it on me, I'm not an idiot. I'm just in the middle of menopause. You're just going to have to forgive me. I'm not ashamed of it anymore because I can't control it. Sometimes it comes out and I can't hide it, I can't minimize it, it just is. I think it's amazing that these women were also bold and beautiful and accepting the changes of their bodies and not feeling ashamed.
Sarah :Yes, yes, I agree. Yeah, totally. Virginia Woolf wrote about it as well, Said you know well, what do I think lies ahead? Well, for a start, there will be the change of life. Do I fear it? Because, of course, she had a history of mental difficulty. She said well, you know. But on the one the other hand, it's natural, it comes to all women. If need be, I'll lie out in the sun and read she, or even she with her long history of mental difficulties and we don't know if, whether, to any degree, they were hormonal even she in her diary, could contemplate it frankly and without fear.
Audra:I want you to consider this, because it's something that's been running through my mind as you've been speaking. These women's innermost thoughts, these words, they're so similar to what we have that we have right now, today, on our own words, prior to you documenting this and making it openly available to all of us. If we had greater understanding, do you think that we would be further along, because we would have historical references to look to, to guide us?
Sarah :you, yes, you can't. Your, your, your, our listeners can't see it because I'm nodding. I've been nodding as you're speaking, but yes, I do. One of the things I took away from this book, from doing this book unexpectedly, and one I hope that people who read it might do, is a sense of support.
Sarah :Those of us who grew up particularly perhaps who grew up in the latter part of the 20th century, often felt like frontline troops. But guess what? There is this army of warrior women at our backs. And if I may, a very personal note, um, I think I sent the proofs of this book finally off for printing last summer, on the day before my husband's funeral, so I was putting it together as his health was failing. And obviously some of the women in this book have also been widowed of their own feelings, hearing the voices of other women saying oh, the unexpected anger that comes afterwards. You have to hate somebody because they're alive and your husband is dead. One of them wrote I think it was Frances Partridge about knotting herself into life, still with huge loops, almost like huge crochet loops of thread. She felt that she needed something to tie her down to life after her husband, ralph, had died. And yeah, I found those things very helpful for me.
Audra:And, yeah, I found those things very helpful for me. It would be lovely to be able to it's the greatest thing to being able to have access, to sit and have a conversation with them. I mean, everybody has heard that question once or twice before If anybody you could have dinner with, alive or dead, who would it be? Well, these women have left a way for you to have a conversation with them, because they wrote down their thoughts and their feelings and, surprise, surprise, they're probably just like the ones that you have.
Sarah :Do you know, I love that as an idea when you were saying that I had a sudden vision of a few friends getting around having supper together and fishing out a copy of the book and look, just looking at little bits together, a kind of diary. What a lovely.
Audra:I think I challenge everybody to do that. As a matter of fact, I will do that on my own Post. Send me the pictures yeah. I absolutely will. So, those of you that are local and friends of mine, just wait. You're going to get a dinner invitation and we're going to meet one of these historical women and get to know them, and maybe they'll have insight into our own lives. What an amazing thing that would be.
Sarah :And just a lightener for the pudding course. I can even point you towards some extracts about food.
Audra:Oh yes. Well, as long as we're talking about extracts of things in the book, let's talk about something a little bit juicier. What do they talk about when they talk about sex? Because I know they probably do, because where else are they going to talk about it?
Sarah :Sure, obviously, the talk gets more explicit as you move into the 20th rather than earlier centuries, but all the same, queen Victoria, you don't expect to find her before her wedding. I think it was talking about how wonderful Albert looked in skin-tight breeches with nothing underneath them, or indeed, the morning after their wedding night, how Albert put my stockings on for me and I watched him shave a great delight. And again, it's not what we think of as Queen Victoria, is it?
Sarah :Right no, but moving on, you've got someone like the French a courtesan's a slightly harsh way of putting it, french a courtesan's a slightly harsh way of putting it the French dancer beauty, leanne de Pougy, writing about, you know, lying in bed all afternoon with her husband sitting reading poetry while she and the Duchess and another beautiful woman cavorted on the bed.
Sarah :But the real one cavorted her word, I may say.
Sarah :The real one, um is a woman, or, as she was then, a very young woman, um, end of her teens, early 20s, called joan windham, who was writing, began writing her diaries, the which have since been published in the Second World War, and she writes about everything, about whether or not to lose her virginity, about how, at first, you know, when someone grabbed her and kissed her, it was really rather vile blubbery lips and a hairy chin, but she made up her mind to endure, you know, to put up with it and see, see if it, if, if it got any any more fun, uh, which I'm happy to say it did.
Sarah :She wrote about her first orgasm, about experience of assorted sexual positions and experiments, because she was moving in quite bohemian circles, even one that may be slightly too shocking to repeat here, about masturbation, but I won't go into details. No, her frankness is just staggering. Perhaps that was the Second World War in a way, because there was that feeling that a lot of these young men were fighting, were going to the front or were refugees, and so they'd been close to, they all felt close to death. I mean, joan was writing about the raids and so on which she experienced, so therefore the old rules didn't matter quite so much. But Joan Wyndham's diary is a staggering reading.
Audra:Wow, I'm just thinking on how shocking that would be in World War II. So this is the 1940s, that is. I mean, that is, that is a. Those are stunning statements and stunning thoughts. But you're absolutely right. There were so many extremes happening during World War II that you know the gloves came off. Yes, the masks that we put on our faces, you know the tape we put across our mouths to muffle ourselves, no longer matter.
Sarah :Yeah, I think that was exactly it.
Audra:Yes, I'm really looking forward to meeting these women. I mean, these are women that through no other means could I ever possibly get to know them, but through these thoughts and writings I can. So I'm again going to challenge everybody to have a dinner party. Invite all your best girlfriends over and write and read an excerpt out of the, this book about secret voices, and discuss it. Find out what more that you can learn from them, what more you have in common with them. That would be even more fascinating. Yeah, I'm sorry, say that again, sarah, you cut out.
Sarah :I said maybe each of your guests could take a diarist and look at them, see. Who knows what you'll see.
Audra:So amazing.
Sarah :So amazing. It's like a kind of reading. Actually. It's like a kind of book club idea, isn't it? It is, Think about that.
Audra:Hmm, white, hmm, there might be something thereah. Hmm, maybe we can do this on two different continents.
Audra:hmm, definitely well, see what happens when women get together exactly exactly something good does so I I could speak to you all day about this, because these women are fascinating. And first, before I get ahead of myself, I want to say thank you for doing this work. If I didn't thank you before, I want to thank you now. This work is important and, as we've learned over the last several years years, a lot of our history has been muffled for a long time and the things that we thought we knew weren't completely correct. So this is giving us an opportunity and a window to relearn what we thought we already knew, but now we get the full story rather than the small pieces that we have been educated on.
Sarah :So thank you for doing this work, thank you, thank you for appreciating it. No, I do believe that women's lives in the past were both more nuanced and more adventurous than we often think. I think we often tend to look back and kind of see them as you know good girls, bad girls, victims, whores that's the way that traditional and, to be frank, male-dominated history always used to look at them. But this shows a much, much more complex picture, and one we can absolutely recognize in ourselves.
Audra:I'm so excited to learn about these women, I'm just can't wait. So, again, I'm getting ahead of myself because the thought, sarah, you and I talk, can talk forever and I never get bored because there's the more you speak, the more fascinated I am on your work and these women. Um, I don't want to neglect to tell everybody when your book is out right.
Sarah :it's just come out now in the states as well as in England, so it is now available. I'm tempted to use the usual phrase in all good bookshops do ask yours if they haven't got it, or, of course, on Amazon.
Audra:Please, everybody, go and look up this book. It is fascinating and I want to make sure that I give everybody the title and I don't want to screw it up because sometimes I do that. The title of her new book is Secret Voices A Year of Women's Diaries. These are women's innermost intimate thoughts, and you thought that you were alone. You are not. These women have been dealing with the same issues for centuries. So please go look up this book, sarah. This is my favorite part of the whole show. I know that those that have been listening for a while know what I'm going to ask, but you may not know. So here's the opportunity. I want you to have an intimate discussion, an intimate, lasting thought, directly with the audience, without me interrupting. So I'm going to step away from the mic for a moment and give you an open opportunity to speak directly to them.
Audra:So the mic is yours.
Sarah :Goodness, I guess if there is one lesson from the women's diaries, from these women over four centuries, it's dare to dare, it's don't feel you have to wait for permission, effectively, from society, from anybody else, to do what you want to do, to be yourself. Don't do what so many of us who are now older, who were educated in an older tradition, do, and always look for rules you feel you must follow, because the good stuff happens when you break them. I love that. Good stuff happens when you break them.
Audra:I love that Good stuff happens when you break them, so we all need to go be rule breakers. Sarah, thank you again for being here If the audience wants to reach you besides looking at your books and this book, secret Voices, is not the only book that you've written. You've written several other books, yes. So please go pursue her. Where else can they find you if they want to reach out to you directly?
Sarah :Oh, I have a website sarahgristwoodcom. Twitter. I'm at Sarah Gristwood Instagram. I'm Sarah Gristwood. It's always my name, basically, but I'm there on social media and I do have a website.
Audra:I will make sure that all of those links I'll make sure all the links are in the show notes so I'll make it easy for everybody so they can go out and connect with you directly. Please go look at her books, the Secret Voices. I'm so excited to read this. Like I said, she has several other books, a lot of them focusing on the women from the royal Victorian eras. Please go look those up. It's amazing, absolutely amazing stuff. Okay, thank you. Thank you, sarah, so much for being here and I want to thank all of you and I'll see you again next time.
