The Letters Speak: Mary Moore, War and the Battle of Colenso, December 1899

Abstract

This study examines the experience of a Natal, British colonial, civilian woman caught up in the trappings and repercussions of war as she faithfully carried out her duties as teacher and headmistress in an Anglican girls’ school in Pietermaritzburg. Throughout the South African War, Mary Moore recounted this experience in her weekly, often daily, letters written from St Anne’s Diocesan College to her mother and sister in Lincoln, England. The letters form a substantial personal narrative, a key primary source for understanding how this essentially nineteenth-century woman made sense of her world in the circumstances of war. The use of personal narrative in constructing historical meaning is a favoured feminist method. It allows for the expression of women’s lived experiences, feelings and opinions, which are often perceived to be hidden from history. Salvaging women’s testimony is crucial to reconstructing a historical record which has tended to be dominated by the more public and powerful role of men. Women’s ‘different’ experience and consciousness are necessary to dispel the myth that mainstream accounts are representative. Discussion of the personal narrative is thus an important strategy in the pursuit of gender justice. It can take various forms: biography, autobiography, diaries, journals, letters and life history - a life story told to a second person who records it. As a method in sociological, cross-cultural and historical research it requires cautious interpretation especially in the oral interview where the researcher’s presence is critical to the recovery of the story.’ The use of the personal narrative is a technique well-suited to writing