"It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity"
About this Quote
Diary-writing sounds like solitude, but Webb needles the genre until it reveals an audience: the self, split into speaker and listener. Her phrasing is coolly inquisitive - "curious to discover" - as if she’s running an experiment on her own interior life. That’s the sociologist showing through: even private confession is treated as a social relation, complete with roles, expectations, and performance.
The sharp turn comes with "to whom one writes". A diary isn’t just a storage device for memories; it’s an address. Webb implies that the act of writing manufactures a second presence, a reader who may not exist yet but is felt anyway. That reader could be a future self, a moral judge, an imagined confidant, even posterity. By calling it a "mysterious personification", she suggests the self isn’t a stable core so much as a character we create to make our experiences legible. Identity, in this view, is less something you have than something you narrate.
The subtext has bite: diary sincerity is never pure. The minute you write, you edit; the minute you edit, you curate a self that can be recognized - and forgiven, admired, or corrected. For Webb, a Fabian-era thinker steeped in institutions and measurement, the private page becomes another site where modern subjecthood gets built: not by revelation, but by drafting. The mystery isn’t who you are. It’s who you’re trying to convince.
The sharp turn comes with "to whom one writes". A diary isn’t just a storage device for memories; it’s an address. Webb implies that the act of writing manufactures a second presence, a reader who may not exist yet but is felt anyway. That reader could be a future self, a moral judge, an imagined confidant, even posterity. By calling it a "mysterious personification", she suggests the self isn’t a stable core so much as a character we create to make our experiences legible. Identity, in this view, is less something you have than something you narrate.
The subtext has bite: diary sincerity is never pure. The minute you write, you edit; the minute you edit, you curate a self that can be recognized - and forgiven, admired, or corrected. For Webb, a Fabian-era thinker steeped in institutions and measurement, the private page becomes another site where modern subjecthood gets built: not by revelation, but by drafting. The mystery isn’t who you are. It’s who you’re trying to convince.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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