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Legacy 18.2 (2001) 240-242



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Review

To Read My Heart:
The Journal of Rachel Van Dyke, 1810-1811


To Read My Heart: The Journal of Rachel Van Dyke, 1810-1811. Edited by Lucia McMahon and Deborah Schriver. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. 440 pp. $59.95.

When she began writing her journal in May 1810 , Rachel Van Dyke was a seventeen-year-old school girl living in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She did not write in a hard-bound journal [End Page 240] like those used by many adolescent girls today; rather, Rachel Van Dyke wrote journal entries that she grouped into twenty-three numbered four-by-six-inch fascicles, each approximately forty to forty-eight pages in length. Although the first fascicle has not been located, the twenty-two fascicles that remain and that have been edited by Lucia McMahon and Deborah Schriver into this large volume provide contemporary readers with fascinating insights into the daily life of a young woman who not only described her world but also expressed her opinions on friendship, gender roles, religion, education, and other subjects. As McMahon and Schriver explain, "Her commentaries reflect the culture of the time and have special value as the expression of a nineteenth-century young woman seeking to understand her own role as an emerging adult" (1).

The journal of Rachel Van Dyke represents a significant publication because it disproves a common stereotype: the concept of the journal (or diary) as a very private text, one intended to be read by no one other than the writer herself. Although this kind of text has traditionally been viewed as a "private" rather than a "public" text, scholars who study journals have verified that actual journals can often function as both public and private texts. In fact, for many nineteenth-century girls such as Rachel Van Dyke, the journal was not the intensely secretive kind of text envisioned when most present-day readers imagine diaries with little locks and keys.

Like many other chroniclers, Rachel Van Dyke decided to share her journal with another journal writer—her teacher, Ebenezer Grosvenor, to whom she refers as "Mr. G—." The editors explain that before giving fascicles of her journal to Mr. Grosvenor, "Rachel reviewed her entries and wrote editorial comments and notes to him in the margins" (1). He wrote comments (and editorial corrections) back to her and, on occasion, exchanged volumes of his journal with her so that she could read and respond to what he had written. This exchange results in Rachel Van Dyke's journal becoming a more complex text, one that contains "an overlay of Rachel's critical comments on her original entries and a running dialogue between Rachel and Mr. G— that reveals additional dimensions of her personality, a rich relationship between teacher and student, and a developing romantic friendship" (2).

As a year-long record of her daily life, the journal of Rachel Van Dyke is interesting reading, to be sure. As the record of her coming-of-age experience, marked not only by her romantic friendship with Mr. G— but also by growing introspection as the result of departures and deaths, the journal carries the weight of an emotional journey. Van Dyke's journal is also significant because she uses it as a place where she can speculate on her reasons for keeping a journal. Initially, she believes her journal will serve only a utilitarian purpose:

It is not because I have anything worth remembering to relate that I write this journal or because my thoughts and actions here set down will hereafter be of any service to myself or to others. No: it is merely to improve myself in composition—to practice expressing my sentiments without difficulty in easy familiar language (26).

As her self-awareness grows, partly in response to life circumstances, partly in response to Mr. G—'s questions and comments, Rachel's journal entries become more thoughtful and introspective. Additionally, after giving Mr. G— a number of early journal fascicles to read, the exchange of journals...

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