Review of Emily: The Diary of a Hard-Worked Woman

Authors

Alice Hall Petry, Rhode Island School of Design

Date of this Version

1988

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly SPRING 1988. Copyright 1988 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

Diaries are among the most unpredictable of literary genres: they can be fascinating, vivid renderings of what life was truly like during key periods in history, or they can be oddly flat, even tedious affairs-especially when they deal with the daily routines of obscure lives. Some diaries, such as Emily: The Diary of a Hard-Worked Woman, manage somehow to be both. Emily Louisa Rood, born in Michigan in 1843, was raised in middle-class surroundings and thus accustomed to some of the finer things in western life, including her own home and her own horse and buggy. But after bearing a number of children to the alcoholic Marsena French, a clothing store clerk turned doctor, Emily suddenly found herself divorced after thirty-one years of marriage and stranded in her adoptive state of Colorado with no alimony, no child support, and no marketable skills beyond housewifery and a little practical nursing.