Correspondances et journaux de femmes: une fonction mémorielle?

Abstract

Correspondences and diaries pertain to the domain of private, possibly intimate archives. What role do women ascribe to their private diaries and correspondence? We will examine the case of three women who wrote profusely in their relation to famous men: Juliette Drouet (1806- 1883), Victor Hugo’s companion for fifty years, who wrote 22 000 letters to the great man; Catherine Pozzi (1882-1934), a literary woman, letter and diary writer, whose passionate and intellectual relationship with the poet Paul Valéry left deep traces in her and his works; Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), the famous intellectual, Sartre’s partner and a writer of letters and diaries. What do these three cases reveal of women’s attention to archives of the self, of their care for conserving them and of the uses they made of them?