Many people keep journals of their lives for a variety of reasons, but through history, women could write in a diary to express ideas that wouldn't be accepted if she said them out loud. Sarah Gristwood's new book, released today, is called Secret Voices: A Year of Women’s Diaries. It is a collection of entries from women's diaries over the past 400 years. These personal musings include day-to-day events, but often delve into the feelings they experienced. There is joy, ambition, grief, misery, love, and transformation, but the most common theme over the entire project is frustration.
Beatrix Potter was an expert on fungus, but wasn't taken seriously in her day. Ada Blackjack was treated so badly on her Arctic expedition that she was relieved when the last man died. Florence Nightingale's family objected to her desire to become a nurse. Sophia Tolstoy wrote about the abuse she suffered from her husband Leo. The common theme is the inability to do anything about these problems. Gristwood read hundreds of women's diaries for her project, and she shares some of the more notable emotions she encountered in them at Smithsonian.