In the Presence of Audience

Book excerpt: Martinson examines the diaries of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Violet Hunt and Doris Lessing's fictional character Anna Wulf. She argues that these diaries (and others like them) are not entirely private writings, but that their authors wrote them knowing they would be read. She argues that the audience is the author's male lover or husband and describes how knowledge of this audience affects the language and content in each diary. She argues that this audience enforces a certain 'male censorship' which changes the shape of the revelations and of the writer herself.