“My Story for My Better Self”: Love, Loss, and Working Through in the Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Abstract

An approach to the diary as more than a private record, but a psychologically meaningful act and object, is demonstrated by a close reading of the diary of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Attending to both formal and thematic aspects, this study attempts to illustrate the variable uses of diary-keeping, as well as to identify its uses of specific importance to this particular diarist. The more expansive and profound insight thus gained into the poet's life and work points to the potential of a psychoanalytic approach to such uniquely intimate documents. Evidence is offered to support the position that Browning's diary served important integrating functions during a critical period of her life: modulating overwhelming affect, organizing experiences beyond her control, and serving as a concrete symbol of preservation in the face of accumulative painful losses. The diary-keeping was a self-therapeutic endeavor, mediating and metabolizing these losses into a work of mourning as the poet elaborated and memorialized them.