Why Don't We Write Letters Anymore? Anne Sexton: A Self Portrait in Letters

I consider the extinction of letter writing one of the great downfalls of technological advancement. I love reading journals and collections of letters. I recently picked up a very nice hard cover edition of Anne Sexton: A Self Portrait in Letters for less than $5 at a used bookstore. Anne Sexton wrote and published poetry in the 1960s. A suburban housewife and mother, she began writing poetry as a form of therapy. Anne, along with other poets such as Sylvia Plath, is often referred to as a confessional poet. This kind of poetry deals with intimate, and sometimes painful, details of the poets life such as mental illness, marriage, divorce, and sexuality.

Born on November 9, 1928, Anne was actually my grandmother’s age. Sadly, after a life long battle with mental illness she committed suicide in 1974, shortly before her 46^th birthday. Her letters paint an interesting picture of the roller coaster ride she lived on. Through her written voice, the reader can tell when Anne is feeling “normal”, manic, disjointed, needy, depressed, and medicated. I have always felt that there is a thin line between genius and insanity. So, the fact that so many famous writers seemed to have suffered from mental illness, most commonly bi-polar disorder, absolutely fascinates me. Anne’s case is no exception.

She corresponded with many different individuals over the years including other writers and, even, a monk. It seems that many of these exchanges started out with an intensity on both sides, but inevitably the “friendship” would slowly dissolve as Anne became too needy. She expected these individuals to be her therapist, poetic sounding board, and lover all via a letter exchange.

Her letters were often witty, passionate, and raw. Anne was a horrific speller, used unconventional punctuation and typed most of her letters. In a letter to Tillie Olson, another writer, she says: I wish my letters could look like a poem…your writing is so tiny and perfect that it looks as if a fairy with a pink pen and rubies in her hair had sat down to write to me. And I…I must look like a rather stout man who sits by a very respectable black typewriter.”

Some of my other favorite excerpts:

“I wish I were nineteen. Not that it’s better or worse to be me at 36 but it gives you so much more time to grow. Inside I’m only thirteen and outside I have wrinkles and a family and many who depend on me.”

 “how does one go to sleep without pills? how does one live with the knowledge that death, their special death, is waiting silently in their body to overtake them at some undetermined time? how can this be done if there is no God? how does one not get struck by lightning when everyone knows it could and just might strike YOU? or tornadoes that suck you right up into a cloud?

Sleep without pills? impossible. take pills! death? have fantasies of killing myself and thus being the powerful one. God? spend half time wooing Catholics who will pray for you in case it’s true. Spend other half knowing there certainly is no God. Spend fantasy time thinking that there is life after death, because surely my parents, for instance, are not dead, they are, good God!, just buried. Lightning? wear sneakers, stay off phone. Tornado? retire to cellar to look at washing machine and interesting junk in cellar.”

* Oddly enough, Anne’s advice on lightning was exactly that of my Grandmother’s … which cracked me up!!

A Self Portrait Rendered by Anne

“Your traveling Button will now walk somehow down the stairs and out of her tears.”

"Lonliness is a terrible thing and to be alone with people can be pretty horrible."

On suicide: “There are those that are killed and the few that kill and then the other kind, those that do both at once.” At one point in a letter to Anne Clark, a friend who was also a therapist, she is again writing about the concept of suicide and then suddenly says: “Sandy and Les are coming over for a drink. I shall now go out to new kitchen and prepare shrimp and cocktail sauce.” What a contrast.

In a letter to her daughter Joy she says: “You went to the library yourself. Gee whiz I am happy … now you will be free in a way you have never been free. I mean now you can go to the library and find a friend anytime … long ago, when I was your age, I loved most to go to the library alone. To me it is one of the most important steps in growing up. JUST as special, I think, as getting breasts and all that kind of thing.”

“I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.”


 “Letters are false really-they are [sometimes] expressions of the way you wish you were instead of the way you are…(poems might come under the same category).”

"Oh, I really believe in God - it's Christ that boggles the mind."

“But you got only praise. But I know, praise can be heavy too. Yes. I understand.”

The collection was edited by Anne's daughter, Linda, and Anne's friend, Lois Ames. Between letters some biographical information is provided to allow for better comprehension of the letters, but I am still left wanting to know more details. I plan to read her biography and then after that I plan to examine her poems. I think it important to have an understanding of Anne the person before delving into her poetry since her style is so autobiographical in nature.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte...Final Thoughts...

*This post may contain spoilers for those who have not read the novel, although, from what I can tell, there does not seem to be many who have never read Jane Eyre. J

Oh Jane Eyre (first published by Charlotte Bronte in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell) even now I am not sure that I completely understand what all the hype is about. The novel did become much more interesting after the first third. I liked the book. It was certainly better than I had expected it to be, but I am still not sure if I can list it as one of my absolute favorites. However, it goes without saying that Charlotte Bronte was a talented writer.

Some thoughts:

1.      Did anyone else have a hard time picturing Jane as just an 18-19 year old girl? She seemed to resonate in my head as more of a contemporary of Mr. Rochester’s generation and I had to keep reminding myself how young she really was.

2.      I really enjoyed the scene where Mr. Rochester posed as the fortune teller! I also liked how interested Jane seemed to be in "signs" and the meaning of dreams and such. For example: “When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbott that she had been dreaming about a little child: and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to oneself or one’s kin.”

3.      It surprised me that Jane would travel back to see Mrs. Reed on her death bed. I am not sure that I would have been able to turn the other cheek and give the woman any satisfaction.

4.      Beautiful foreshadowing for what is about to happen to Jane and Rochester on their proposed wedding day: “It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air torrent thundering through space. Descending the laurel-walk, I faced the wreck of the chestnut-tree; it stood up, black and riven: the trunk, split down the centre, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken from each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; though community of vitality was destroyed-the sap could flow no more: their great boughs on each side were dead … as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree-a ruin, but an entire ruin.”

5.      If you were Jane, what would you have done upon the discovery of Mrs. Rochester? Would you have escaped in the night to nothing and no one or would you have stayed with Mr. Rochester, your love, although marriage was no longer an option? “What is better?-To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion … fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern climate … to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress … or to be a village schoolmistress, free and honest, in the breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?” I would have stayed with Rochester.

6.      Grace Poole…uh, how the heck did this woman retain her own sanity while being cloistered on the third floor providing care for a lunatic such as Mrs. Rochester? Wasn’t she scared out of her mind that she was going to end up dead herself? I don’t blame her for her propensity to drink gin in the evenings!

7.      Did I find any more similarities to Rebecca as I read on? Well, Grace Poole is odd, but she is definitely no Mrs. Danvers. There are many obvious plot differences and the more passionate love story of Jane and Rochester. Thornfield burns to the ground like Manderlay, but ultimately, Daphne du Maurier’s work felt much darker…it was much heavier on the “eerie” factor…much more suspenseful. Some of this was no doubt because Manderlay itself became a character, taking on a life of its own, while Thornfield remained just a setting and because Jane Eyre simply contained a much more hopeful tone than Rebecca.

8.      Did I find that Jane returned to her former feisty glory? Not exactly in the bold way that I had hoped for, but a certain fire laced with grace remained. Actually, I quite liked it.



Charlotte Bronte
1816-1855

 Favorite Quotes:

“The waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.” – Jane Eyre

“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.” – Jane Eyre

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Like I have said before, a few of the selections on my project reading list are future classic hopefuls, in other words contemporary books that people may still be reading 50 or 100 years from now. I recently added The Book Thief by Markus Zusak to the list under this very premise and I am very glad I did. I will not bore you with another plot summary of this book, but I must say the following:

First of all, the narration in this book is genius. Who knew Death could be so insightful, so sensitive, so humorous…so human?  Death as the narrator is not creepy at all, but really rather beautiful.

Second, Zusak’s use of descriptive language in this book is simply dazzling. He describes things in ways I had never thought to describe them before and yet it seems as if there could never have existed any other possible way to depict them properly.

Here are some of my favorite examples:

1.      “The buildings appear to be glued together, mostly small houses and apartment blocks that look nervous.”

2.      Describing Liesel upon her arrival on Himmel Street: “Coat hanger arms.”

3.      “The soft-spoken words fell off the side of the bed, emptying to the floor like powder.”

4.      “They could hear nothing, but the manner in which Hans Junior shrugged loose was loud enough.”

5.      About Max: “Everything was so desperately noisy in the dark when he moved … he felt like a man in a paper suit.”

6.      About Rosa: “One or two gasped at the sight – a small wardrobe of a woman with a lipstick sneer and chlorine eyes. This. Was the legend.”

7.      “His eyes were the color of agony, and weightless as he was, he was too heavy for his legs to carry.”

8.      “As she crossed the river, a rumor of sunshine stood behind the clouds.”

Third, this book provides a different perspective than many examples of Holocaust related YA literature. The reader understands how WWII also brought hardship to the German people under Nazi rule. Granted, the hardships could not compare to the horror facing the Jewish population, but I think it is important to know that the Germans also went hungry and faced loss, etc.

I am not Jewish (in fact I have non-Jewish German ancestors and my grandmother has always been quite proud of her German heritage), but I have always felt like I carry a small piece of the souls of those Jewish people who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazi party with me somehow. I have dark hair and eyes…it could have been me. It is so important that we never, ever forget.

“On June 23, 1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison, on Polish soil. The first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to pacing, then slowing down, slowing down…

Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear…

Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye…

They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.” - Death

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (21- )

I think that Wilkie Collins is an admirable mystery writer. I am glad that I read Collins’ The Woman in White. I really liked The Woman in White! And yet, at the end I was a little disappointed. I was swept up by the first ¾ of the book, but then found that the last ¼ dragged on for me. I feel like Collins went to great pains to tie up every lose end possible in the story which I felt was somehow detrimental to the novel as a whole. Nothing was left to the reader’s imagination. There was no lurking shadow of suspense like I still felt at the end of Rebecca. Collins purposely uses the various narrators to bring the reader very close to the mystery and yet doesn't seem to give the reader enough credit for being able to use that technique to solve some things on their own. I was also not fond of the story line at the end that revealed Count Fosco, as I understand it, to be some sort of a mole inside a secret European society. Perhaps this is because I was unpleasantly reminded of certain contemporary authors’ more recent obsessions with these sorts of societies in their writing.

Another observation about English novels from the 1800s: I am bothered by the gentlemen of a certain title or class in this society, like Sir Percival - who appeared to rely on the earnings of his family estate to survive financially, as they frolic aimlessly through life. Why did society not require these men to have a real occupation, especially when they were sometimes facing financial ruin? How could these people occupy themselves day in and day out, year after year? No wonder they designed intricate plots of conspiracy and matchmaking and such…they were no doubt bored out of their minds half of the time.

Favorite Character: Marian!! Her section of narration was also my favorite. She was certainly a woman before her time. I can understand why Count Fosco was so attracted to her. And, I have to say that Mr. Fairlie also entertained me despite his nervous condition having gotten on my nerves.



Wilkie Collins 1824-1889



Favorite Quote: “I left yesterday to decide … and yesterday has decided. It is too late to go back.” Miss Laura Fairlie

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1-14)

* Ok, I know we are not supposed to be making our first read-along post for Rebecca until the middle of January, but in order to stay organized (in my weird OCD mind) while I participate in three simultaneous read-alongs, I feel as though I need to make the first post for each novel as I finish the first allotted section for that novel. I plan to finish Rebecca tonight, but I won't post the final post for any of the novels until the indicated time. So...let this serve as a spoiler alert if you have not yet finished part one of the novel.*

Fourteen chapters in with Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, published in 1938, and we still do not know the name of our narrator, the second Mrs. de Winter. I find this very irksome. Perhaps this is so the reader has to focus on Rebecca while the second Mrs. de Winter fades into the background. Here is what we do know about the narrator:

1.      Her parents are deceased.

2.      She is apparently around the age of 21 when she marries Maxim de Winter who is 42.

3.      At the time of her marriage, she does not appear to have much self confidence or social refinery.

4.      She does not resemble the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca (which is apparently what attracted Maxim to her).

5.      She and Maxim never really discussed Rebecca and the mystery surrounding this woman is becoming a little bit of an obsession for the second Mrs. de Winter.

6.      She appears to like dogs.

This is really not a lot of information. What do we know about the elusive Rebecca? Well, not a whole lot more as it turns out. She was apparently beautiful, tall, and blessed with dark hair and fair skin. She was a marvelous hostess and lady of the house. She died in some tragic sailing accident in the bay near Manderley. It also appears that she could be rather odd…rambling around the boathouse at night, sailing alone at night, and threatening the mentally handicapped Ben. He reveals the following interesting information:  “She gave you the feeling of a snake. I seen her here with mine own eyes. By night she’d come … I looked in on her once … and she turned on me, she did … she said you’ve never seen me here … if I catch you looking at me through the window here I’ll have you put in the asylum.” Hmm...

And, how creepy is the house manager, Mrs. Danvers? I was completely freaked out by her performance with the narrator in Rebecca's old bedroom in chapter 14. I am wondering what role she is really playing here and in the past with Rebecca. If I was the new Mrs. de Winter, I would have had her replaced despite her efficiency. I also would have asked to decorate my own morning room and not live in the wake of Rebecca’s preferences. Oh, and who the hell is this Mr. Favell?? I did find it rather amusing that he calls Mrs. Danvers “Danny.”

I certainly am interested in getting to the bottom of all this mystery and yet I find that the book is moving along a bit slower than I expected it to. Is anyone else experiencing this feeling?



Daphne du Maurier
1907-1989

 Favorite Quote from the first half of the novel: “A large parcel arrived one morning, almost too large for Robert to carry. I was sitting in the morning-room, having just read the menu for the day. I have always had a childish love of parcels. I snipped the string excitedly, and tore off the dark brown paper. It looked like books. I was right. It was books.” – Mrs. de Winter

I liked this scene so much because I too love to receive parcels, especially those that contain books!

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

In choosing my reading list for my “classics” project, I wanted to explore not only standard adult and children’s classics, but also a few contemporary books that I hope may be read years into our future … “pending classics.” Eat, Pray, Love fits into this category for me. Eat…Pray…Love…three ways in which we are nourished. Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, her honest yet humorous voice is nourishing. It reads like a novel even though it is a non-fiction selection. In some ways this is a chronicle of a spiritual journey, but the reader does not ever feel “preached at.” The book is well written, smart, funny and insightful. It causes one to contemplate one’s own life journey.

Liz really starts this journey on her knees, on her bathroom floor, praying to God. I have been on that bathroom floor. I find myself identifying with this woman immediately. If only I could back out of my life for a year and travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia looking for my authentic self. After being depleted by a divorce, an ill-fated love affair, and depression Liz begins healing in Italy. She will spend four months there contemplating pleasure: the pleasure of eating delicious food with no feelings of remorse or guilt, the pleasure of learning a beautiful language for no reason other than just because. I took five years of French in school and thought it was the language of love, but I was mistaken…Italian is that language. There is something very seductive about Italian.

Although Liz is certainly keen on Italy and has an amazing experience there, she feels as though there is something about herself that does not quite fit with the city of Rome (where she actually lives during her stay). One of Liz’s Italian friends proposes the following interesting concept: “Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people’s thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be-that is the word of the city. And, if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don’t really belong there.” What is your word? I am still contemplating mine…

Next, Liz travels to India to an Ashram to contemplate devotion, mostly through the art of meditation, for four months. There she meets Richard from Texas…a brash man who says what he thinks when he thinks it. He doesn’t have a whole lot of tact, but he is full of interesting insight. I especially like the advice he imparts on Liz regarding the idea of soul mates: “Your problem is you don’t understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit … but a true soul mate is a mirror … the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life … they tear down your walls and smack you awake … but to live with a soul mate forever … too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave … your problem is, you just can’t let this one go." I think Richard is her true Guru; not the woman whose Ashram she is visiting.

Finally, Liz travels to Bali in Indonesia to search for the balance between worldly pleasure and spiritual devotion. There Liz spends time with an old Balinese medicine man: Ketut Liyer…a man who seems like the little, old grandpa for the entire world; a man whom I would love to meet. Although I was fascinated by all of the people Liz meets while traveling, Ketut is my favorite character in this story. I love his mind, his insights, his toothless smile, his broken English, the was he pronounces "Liz" as "Liss." She also meets Felipe and eventually falls in love. This is the first time that Liz is able to indulge in a relationship without completely losing herself…her identity. She is no longer broken and can give of herself as a whole, balanced woman.

Although the book is almost always better than the movie, Eat, Pray, Love the movie lands a close second. I read the book and watched the movie at the same time and recommend anyone do the same. The movie brings the different cultures and people from the book alive in a very enhancing manner.

Favorite Quote: “We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That’s our privilege. That’s the joy of a mortal body. And that’s why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

Blubber by Judy Blume

Judy Blume was the “rock star” of children’s/YA literature when I was growing up in the 80s. I read quite a few of her books, but I don’t recall having read Blubber, published in 1974. I purchased the book for my daughter who, like the young characters in the book, is currently involved in the 5^th grade experience.

Let’s take a look at some of the principal characters:

Linda – Although she is not the chunkiest kid in the class, Linda’s classmates bestow upon her the name “Blubber” after one innocent, but ill-fated oral report on whales.

Wendy – The class bully who orchestrates each new plot of terror against “Blubber.”

Jill – The main character of the book that does not seem to necessarily agree with what is happening to Linda, but who would not dare to risk her current social standing by not participating in the harassment…until one day she does take a stand and the tables are swiftly turned in her direction.

Blume does a decent job of showing how arbitrary peer relationships and acts of bullying can be at this age, how the most benign and seemingly simple things can land a child in the midst of horrendous harassment, and how transient and ever-changing friendships and social standings can be. The reader comes away knowing that sometimes these changes can be a positive thing. However, I was disappointed in how the teachers and parents handled the situations of bullying in the book. Granted, their reaction was quite realistic. Most adults tend to shrug this stuff off because they know that life does get better, that in the great scheme of things what happens in middle school hardly matters as an adult, and that children have been picking on each other for hundreds of years in school. Still, I wish just one of them would have really taken a stand. Bullying is a serious matter for the child who is experiencing the pain and humiliation and is not able to stand back and have the same perspective one can have as an adult.

It will be interesting to see how Alexa relates to the book. I know that she will not understand some of the more outdated cultural references in the story like I did, but I think that the theme itself is still extremely relevant today. Perhaps I will share some of her thoughts when she reads it. I really wanted to like this book, but honestly I am on the fence. I guess there just wasn't enough of an anti-bullying stand.

Most disturbing part of the book: The girls are lined up and sent to the nurse’s office to be publically weighed each fall and spring! Can you imagine? Did this really happen in school in the 70s?

Favorite Quotes:

“You can tell a lot about people by staring into their eyes.” – Tracy Wu

“My teacher is Mrs. Minish. I’m not crazy about her. She hardly ever opens the window in our room because she’s afraid of getting a stiff neck.” – Jill Brenner

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, first published in 1953, has sat on my shelf for a couple years now, unread. Most likely this is because I have not read much in the genre of science fiction and I had a preconceived notion that I would not enjoy it. I was wrong. Right away I was surprised by the language of the novel. Bradbury’s prose was insightful, striking, lovely…exquisite really. Secondly, I was surprised by what I found to be the true premise of the novel. Yes, this is a tale that deals with the censorship of books; however, I feel that Bradbury is more specifically asking us to consider the importance of critical thinking in any society.

Guy Montag lives in a fast paced (cars routinely travel at up words of 100mph with the possibility of a ticket for traveling under the minimum of 55mph), homogenized future world in which books no longer belong because they do not promote happiness. Books produce thought and thought is supposed to be the root of all unhappiness. Accordingly, at some point society simply stopped reading, reading books became illegal, and burning of books began. Montag is a fireman, but firemen no longer put out fires (all houses have been fire-proofed). Instead, firemen are in charge of burning books and the houses that contain them. On the way to one fire, the fire chief says: “Here we go to keep the world happy, Montag!” In another conversation Chief Beatty states: “You ask why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed.” When exposed to an impromptu, illegal poetry reading by Montag, his neighbor Mrs. Phelps becomes very distressed and Mrs. Bowles exclaims: “You see? I knew it … I knew it would happen! I’ve always said poetry and tears, poetry and suicide and crying and awful feelings, poetry and sickness … now I’ve had it proven to me.” Could this really be true? Is thought really the enemy of the happiness we all pursue? Do books really betray us as Beatty points out: “What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and they turn on you.”

Or is Montag accurate when he thinks: “There must be something in books … to make a woman stay in a burning house … you don’t stay for nothing.” Of course, you can guess on which side of the argument Bradbury and I lie. We hear Montag wonder: “How do you get so empty … who takes it out of you?” Without independent thought, the world becomes a society left numb and empty from their Seashell ear buds (IPods?), their interactive living room walls (Wii, the Internet, reality TV?) who no longer interact in person (e-mail, texting, Facebook?). Hmm, how was it that Bradbury was able to envision 2010 so clearly from back in the early 1950s? Of course, I enjoy the benefits of our current technology and indulge in the therapeutic benefits of entertainment for entertainment’s sake, but critical thinking (and books) still exists to provide a necessary balance…for now…

Favorite Quote:

·         “… how many people did you know who refracted your own light to you … how rarely did other people’s faces take of you and throw back to you … your own innermost trembling thought?” – Guy Montag

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

I think that Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was the perfect choice for me to begin my reading project. I feel sort of the same way about starting my blog as Anne felt about starting her diary: “It’s an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because I have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I – nor for that matter anyone else - will be interested.”

As I began reading, the first thing that jumped out at me was what I thought to be various inconsistencies in Anne’s writing. I am not sure if this is due to an issue with translation, editing that her father may have done, or even editing that Anne herself may have completed. I have read somewhere that at some point Anne went back and began re-writing portions of her diary when, during her stay in the annex, she had decided that she wanted to become a serious writer and had begun to hope that she could publish the diary after the war.

Although Anne Frank is most notably a young Jewish girl in hiding in Holland during the profoundly horrific times of the Holocaust and WWII, I was struck by how first and foremost Anne is simply a teenage girl. And that, I feel, is the true value of the book, any inconsistencies aside. Since studying to become an English teacher, I have built a sense that literature can be used as an amazing tool in the classroom for teaching the concept of tolerance…more specifically the idea that we must learn to accept our differences, but also find the similarities in those differences. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl suites this purpose well, in my opinion. Specific setting and circumstances aside, Anne could be any adolescent girl…Jewish, Christian, Muslim, white, black, from the 1940s or the new millennium. Anne states the following on November 7, 1942: “It is only that I long for Daddy’s real love: not only as his child, but for me – Anne, myself.” Isn’t this validation, this idea of truly being heard what all teenagers, and for that matter all humans, are searching for?

Throughout the diary, Anne struggles with standard adolescent issues such as body image, raging emotions, finding her own identity as an individual and relationships with the opposite sex. Anne also experiences the typical problems that many teenage girls encounter at some point in their relationship with their mother. Granted, these feelings may be exasperated by living confined to such close quarters with such limited contact with the outside world. On January 30, 1943, Anne writes: “I’m boiling with rage, and yet I mustn’t show it. I’d like to stamp my feet, scream, give Mummy a good shaking, cry, and I don’t know what else, because of the horrible words, mocking looks, and accusations which are leveled at me repeatedly every day, and find their mark.” Then on December 24, 1943: “each day I miss having a … mother who understands me.”

 

But here I must stop and discuss the following “creep-out” alert as by this point Mr. Dussel has already joined the group in the annex. Anne and her sister, sixteen year old Margot, were initially sharing sleeping quarters, but upon his arrival it is Anne and Mr. Dussel who are arranged to bunk together while Margot is moved to a cot. I found this arrangement of a thirteen year old girl sharing a room with a fifty four year old man very strange and almost appalling actually. Why wouldn’t Anne and Margot continue to share the same room while Mr. Dussel took the cot??

It seems that by the end of 1943, seclusion has taken its toll on Anne. She appears to be having bouts of anxiety and depression (which good god who wouldn’t be?) and she writes about being given Valerian pills. I was unsure what these were, but internet research revealed that Valerian is an herbal remedy often used for anxiety, depression and as a sleep aid. She just seems to be on a natural roller coaster ride of emotions and to top it all off, she has quite suddenly become infatuated with Peter, the young son of the Van Daans who also share the annex with the Franks. I think Anne best sums up this point in time in her entry from March 12, 1944: “When shall I finally untangle my thoughts, when shall I find peace and rest within myself again?”

During the spring of 1944, the diary reveals the blossoming relationship between Anne and Peter. I enjoyed this period in Anne’s life, perhaps because I already know how her story ends and it made me glad to think that, even at fourteen, she was at least able to experience this sort of relationship with a young man once before her life was to end so abruptly. Her connection with Peter certainly seemed to slow her bouts with anxiety and depression. I think I also enjoyed her writing during this time because she seems to be growing into such an amazing young woman despite her circumstances. She is more confident, independent, and yet more thoughtful and introspective. She knows that she wants to be something in this world, to make a contribution through her writing, and to be more than a housewife.

In her April 4, 1944 entry, Anne says: “I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing.” Little could have Anne imagined how prolifically she would indeed continue to live on after her death in a German concentration camp in the spring of 1945.

Favorite Quote: “You only really get to know people when you’ve had a jolly good row with them." Anne Frank