While I enjoyed reading the first series of letters assigned for this week, I must admit I wasn't as fully engaged with the writer as I had expected to be. Of course, upon reflection, this might have been due to my state of mind and not necessarily the fault of Lady Wortley Montagu. It was well after my bedtime when I started reading her letters.
However, I'm feeling a bit more partial to her as the reading continues. I think this is in part due to the background info discussed in class on Monday evening. Knowing that she, as one of England's privileged elite, was scarred by the smallpox gives insight into her character and her writings. She becomes a sympathetic character in my mind's eye. As a woman, I can't imagine the daily insecurities she must have lived with every day. How horrible! Yet, she does not seem to use these imperfections and the social stigma they must carry as an excuse to be mean, petty, or generally disagreeable.
So, suddenly she is a person and not just a name on a byline.
And that brings me to her letters. I think it makes a huge difference in knowing that these were not the actual letters gathered from around England, but her imitation of correspondence she sent during her travels. I found this knowledge somewhat changed my perspective on her letters. Suddenly they weren't quite so...trustworthy. They seemed suddenly more a work of literary art than casual letters sent to friends and family. Given the information in the letters and the lack of any true gossip about England, I suspect Lady Montagu's recrafted letters would only resemble the missives she actually sent while abroad.
If this is true, is it a bad thing? I don't think so. Epistle writing is very engaging. It feels very personable and warm. Intimate.
However, I will be paying more attention to the kind of information she does and doesn't put into her writings. I'm not sure what I hope to discover by doing this, but I know I won't be able to help myself.
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3 comments:
I must say that I love what you have to say about the value of writing epistles as a literary genre. Obviously, Montagu was attentive to the qualities of the form -- personal warmth and intimacy being very important -- and chose to write her ethnography/travel narrative in this form. It might be worth thinking about the virtues of this particular choice -- what does it enable her to accomplish -- in comparison to other forms that travel writing can take.
Nice comments!
While it might not be true, the first thing that comes to my mind is a sense of authenticity without agenda. In the other forms it's very easy to attribute the writer's tone and comments to a personal, political, or religous agenda. I think that's much harder to do with a compilation of letters sent to various people. The variety and differences in the [supposed] recepients becomes just as noticeable as the personality of the author.
But that's just my humble opinion. :-)
I agree. Knowing how suspect the reputation of travel writing was, writers must have given a lot of thought about how to convey authenticity most effectively.
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