Not Alone By Not Alone Eyes bleary, I could not put down Volume 1 and have queued up Volume 2. I submit that Ruby was likely not all that unusual amongst her peers, and that since she has come alive to us in these pages, its entirely possible that there were many others like her during that time. She reaches across the decades to me, at any rate, and sad to say, her situation is truly not all that different from many women TODAY. The diary was her safety valve, and in it she records her rants, since she could not express these feelings to others. So cut her a little slack, will you? She DID change her mood and her mind over time, as (if were honest with ourselves) we all do. Even towards the husband. Having endured a 20-year marriage with a man who bore great resemblance to this husband of hers, not a few of her rages felt like an eerie mirror to my own. Its not as easy as you seem to think it is to either cope with some of this stuff, OR to up and leave. ITS NOT THAT SIMPLE. And until youve walked the proverbial mile in her shoes, Id say back off. I finally left, but not without deep emotional pain and a severe lowering of economic condition. But some never reach escape velocity, even in todays day and age, so have a care before you summarily judge. People near to you may be suffering this very condition, WITHOUT YOUR EVEN KNOWING IT. Particularly familiar was her vow at one point not to converse with him or to rise to the baiting, snide remarks, and criticisms in which he clearly indulged. On one vacation with the aforementioned, I did similarly vow at a certain point NOT to initiate any conversation whatsoever, and to confine all of my responses to anything further that he said to oh, wow, uh-huh, or a very neutral really! after which the entire vacation went far more smoothly. There ARE people out there who criticize relentlessly and think themselves ever so brilliant and smarter than everyone else. Unfortunately, those who have a brain find it difficult to stifle making even the simplest observations, and soon one forgets the vow and happens to spontaneously say something even quite innocuous, only to be attacked for either the content or the form of that utterance. No wonder this woman turned to a diary to vent her rage and frustration, to have her conversations, and to reading books, books, and more books to escape the intellectual isolation, the loneliness, and psychological battery. Add to this the stress of the environment in which all of THIS was taking place, and its a wonder the woman kept her sanity at all. The diary may have been the only way she managed to do precisely that. As for the careful recording of the times of each of the air raids, some may find this reading tedious or boring, but again, in the aggregate it DOES effectively convey the relentlessness of the bombing, doesnt it? So she was both writing a diary and a chronicle, yes? As for EDITING AWAY any of it, to do so would destroy the value of the diary entirely as an historical document. IF we wish to keep its value as a primary source and a true account of exactly what the author wrote, then to edit it to sanitize or make it more palatable for a modern reader would be a travesty. ow.ly/sXkJv
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 11:39:52 +0000
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