Women and the History of Samuel Pepys's Diary

Abstract

Through focusing on the lives of women, this article examines silences and obfuscations in Samuel Pepys's diary and in the histories we tell about this most famous of Restoration sources. It begins by considering how the ways we read the diary today remain influenced by Pepys's decisions when preserving his papers. While his diary has increasingly been studied for what it reveals about early modern sex and/or women's lives, historians have faced difficulties in assessing and representing this content, partly because of measures devised by Pepys. Knowledge of his methods, together with close reading, can help us attend to what this source omits and elides. Historiography has often followed Pepys's lead when discussing his diary's sexual content, and it has also followed his lead in researching his kin. His father's family has been tracked over generations; meanwhile, basic facts about his mother and her family have remained unknown. The article traces Pepys's maternal kin, comparing new evidence with the diary's representation of social status and kinship networks. Pepys's diary is a vital source on the seventeenth century, but fully exploiting that source requires factoring in Pepys's methods of writing and preservation, and attending to what has gone unwritten.

Review of periodical literature for 2022: (iii) 1500–1700

“…Gender and power relations were the subject of three articles this year. Loveman provided a fresh perspective on the writings of Samuel Pepys, shedding new light on the lives of women connected with the infamous diarist. Taking ‘silences and obfuscations’ (p. 1221) as her starting point, Loveman traces Pepys’ maternal rather than paternal kin, and provides a close reading of the diary's sexual content.…”

“…Loveman provided a fresh perspective on the writings of Samuel Pepys, shedding new light on the lives of women connected with the infamous diarist. Taking ‘silences and obfuscations’ (p. 1221) as her starting point, Loveman traces Pepys’ maternal rather than paternal kin, and provides a close reading of the diary's sexual content. Most revealingly, her treatment of the language of sex equips readers of Pepys’ diary with the tools needed to avoid confusing consensual sex recorded in the diary with evidence of sexual coercion, violence, and abuse.…”