Paper short abstract:

The paper seeks to reveal women's gendered experiences recorded and shared retrospectively using the diaries written before almost hundred years. Women's diaries as sources of autobiography are accommodating women's stories and women's strategies for writing the self.

Paper long abstract:

Women's diaries as sources of autobiography are accommodating women's stories and women's strategies for writing the self. The paper is a case study of two diaries written before almost hundred years and found only this year. Both diaries are written by young Latvian women (Emīlija Vecvagare and Margarete Grosvalde) starting from 1917 and 1919, time of establishing an independent state of Latvia as well as other Baltic countries. Great importance makes the fact that both women were working women which was not a typical case for average women at that time and they both holds a position of secretary in politically important institutions (Interim Government Office and Latvian Embassy in London). If we use retrospective reassesment of those texts they provide a rich insight which is two-leveled, the first level is a narrative of an eyewitness of different political, historical and diplomatic events, the second - intimate level showing a personal life of a young woman. Covering almost the same time period we can follow the alarming events in Latvian domestic and foreign policy, government changes. Both had written a lot about personal feelings, relationship and life events in their diaries, we are silent observers of love stories, fashion news, etc., for which Catherine Delafield proposes a term 'hidden interiority' of a woman diary as a form of self-representation and performance and challenge to recover her self-worth. Finally, the physical appearance and preservation of the diary as integral issues in the process of its production as well as contemporary analyses.