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Greetings! I'm curious about your reason for supposing that the author of the diary "wrote each entry as if no one else would ever read it". Do you mean that she wrote it knowing that she would give the diary to her suitor, OR, that it would remain hers alone, and no one else would ever see it except her (the author). When a person writes a diary, a letter, a memoir, or some other form of self accounting, there is always some perception about a potential audience who might see what is written. And the versions that a person would write for the same event, would be altered, to fit that perception of "who" might be reading the (written work). Even something that was supposed to be totally "private-never-to-be-seen-except-by-me", is written with that "someone else" in mind, "just in case" it gets discovered. Judging from the short passage, it would seem that she expressed her doubts on paper, perhaps as a "safe" way to "tell him" something that she couldn't express directly to his face--and perhaps she really couldn't, because she is likely to have been considered by him, by her society, as someone of lesser status, lesser intellect, than he was. Was she being pressured into this marriage (by society, family, "others", etc.. What were her other options?) It would be interesting to see the comments written before, and after this passage--perhaps this short excerpt needs more context to make it clearer. I also wonder if the "suitor" broke off the engagement, or did she break off the engagement. And, if he kept the diary--why. I think that there's a lot more to this story, and I hope you'll write more about it when you find out. Joan I. Biddle Ph.D. Sociologist jbiddle2@verizon.net
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