“A DISGUISED AND HIDDEN NATURE THAT SUITS NOT WITH THE WORLD”: ENCODING THE LONE SELF AND A FRAGMENTED SELF/PORTRAITURE IN THE DIARIES OF ANNE LISTER

Abstract

This thesis examines the fragmented and lonely Anne Lister, a Regency Era diarist and lesbian from Halifax, England, who used diary writing to express and encode her public and private selves. With a focus on the genre of diary and the different means of expression available to Lister, I analyze the various ways she constructed these "split" or "fragmented" public and private identities. I approach Lister’s fragmentation by analyzing her diary through the lens of women’s life writing and autobiography, specifically the diary’s form and structure and what it afforded Lister as a space to understand and articulate her multiple selves. I then examine the various means and purposes Lister used to construct and fragment these identities through acts of verbal and visual encoding using her crypthand code, her coded speech, and her performative acts of gender.

Anne Lister used her writing, specifically her diary, as a tool to understand, construct, and ultimately separate the parts of herself she both needed to protect and wanted to project. This act of splitting the self and existing separately in, as well as between, the public and private spheres created and expressed a fragmented identity in Lister. Her encoded acts protected her private lesbian self, however, in taking precautions, Lister revealed a vulnerable and lonely self/portraiture formed by her own constructions of self and the self as perceived by others.

This study extends the literature on women’s fragmentation in life writing and contributes new perspectives to the scholarship on Anne Lister concerning her construction of self, her gender performativity, her lonely existence, and the intentions for her crypthand.