The Dutch participants of the workshop were taking part in an "Internationa­li­seringsproject" funded by the Netherlands Organi­sation for Scientific Research (NWO) "Egodocumenten, zelfre­flectie en culturele verandering: Neder­land, Zwitserland en de Europe­se context, 1600-1900" ("Egodocuments, Introspection, and Cultu­ral Change: the Netherlands, Switzerland and the European Context, 1600-1900"), Huizin­ga Insti­tuut. Re­search Institute and Graduate School of Cultu­ral History.

Summaries

Dr. Hans de Valk (Institute of Netherlands History, The Hague) and Drs. Gerard Schulte Nordholt (Institute of Netherlands History, The Hague/Faculty of Arts and History, Erasmus Uni­versi­ty Rot­terdam)

Egodocuments from the nineteenth century (1814-1914): how to collect them and how to use them. The results of the Dutch Egodocuments Project

In 1999, a joint project was started by the Faculty of Arts and History of the Erasmus University (Rotterdam) and the Institute of Nether­lands History (The Hague), aimed at collec­ting Dutch egodocu­ments from the nine­teenth century. This project is about to be continued and finished as part of the Vernieu­wingsimpuls-project of dr. Arianne Bagger­man, endowed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Re­search (NWO) and the Faculty of History and Arts, Eras­mus Univer­sity Rot­terdam "Controlling time and shaping the self: educa­ti­on, intro­spec­tion and prac­tices of writing in the Nether­lands 1750-1914".

In the first part of our paper, we discussed in a global way the background, actual status and progress of the project and presented some preliminary quantitative results. For practical and heuristical reaons, the project was divided in two main parts: manuscript and printed egodocuments. A syste­matic search for manuscripts in about a hundred archives, libraries and other institutions, yielded some 700 documents: diaries, autobiographical texts and others. Looking for prin­ted egodo­cuments, a combined bibliographical and electronic search in digital catalogues produced more than 5,000 docu­ments, among which some 1,750 travel accounts (excluded in the manuscript search).

Taking a look at the corpus of documents without the travel accounts, it is clear that retrospective documents prevail in absolute numbers. Considering the differences between manu­script and published documents, it is equally clear that many of them have been written in view of being printed and publis­hed, while diaries generally were kept out of the public eye. Furthermore, the results of the research justify the conclusi­on that writing egodocuments in the nineteenth century was essentially a male habit. Looking at the authors' years of birth, a marked increase of authors born towards the end of the century had to be expected, but there is a sharp peak in the beginning (1810-1820) too. Writing egodocuments also can be characterised as a typically urban habit. More than half of the authors whose place of birth is known, were born in an urban environment, and half of these in their turn in the three biggest cities of the Netherlands. Of the authors of printed egodocuments whose profession is known, almost one quarter belonged to the protestant clergy; teachers and sol­diers abound as well. As for the manuscript documents, here soldiers, civil servants and entrepreneurs make up the top three.

In the second part of the paper, some ways were discussed in which a corpus of this kind could be used as a serial source for different types of historical research, even if the texts are as heterogeneous as their authors.

There are several levels of studying and analysing egodocu­ments. The first and apparently most simple one is looking at concrete persons and their situations. We can arrange the texts and their authors according to period, place, age, gender, profession, the nature of the documents, their purpo­ses and so on. A second level of interpretation concerns more conceptual, abstract questions about the mental universe of writers of egodocuments, about their ideas and their thinking, about their explicit and implicit conceptual horizons, their moral and aesthetic values, their unspoken preconceptions and suppositions. the subjects the authors dealt with and left out. And how they coped with time as is adressed in other sections of the project "Controlling time and Shaping the self."

One might think of a third, epistemological level of inter­pre­tation: after all, the analysing historian is an "ego" him or herself, so what we do have here in fact is one ego re­searching another. This is one of the major reasons that egodocuments are such unique hermeneutic corridors, which truly make them into highways to the past – and vice versa.

 Four main groups of 19th century egodocuments could be discer­ned: (1) colonial autobiographies, travel journals and dia­ries; (2) war memories (Napoleonic wars, the short war against Belgium in 1830); (3) autobiographical writings by professio­nals, such as schoolmasters, medical doctors, politicians, journalists, businessmen and a lot of clergymen; (4) last but not least, the religious conversion stories,  a surprisingly large group of texts, apparently full of platitudes.

The contribution of women to the corpus of egodocuments is relatively small. If women did write, the chance to see them­selves printed was much smaller. Of the four groups menti­oned, we find the highest relative share of women authors in the last one: writing spiritual, pietistic conversion stories, who thus might be called the most "emancipated" genre.

Drs. Jeroen Blaak (Faculty of History and Arts, Erasmus Uni­versity Rotterdam)

A woman writing about reading: Jacoba van Thiels's diary (1767-1770) and the discourse on the female reader.

In critical studies, women's diaries are considered sites where the self is fashioned, according and in opposition to cultural definitions of gender. This ambiguity, being in between contrain and resistance, is considered to be characte­ric for early modern women's autobiographical writing. Do diaries written by early modern Dutchwomen show the same ambiguity? The number of early modern diaries written by Dutchwomen is small. Only 21 are still extant, most of them dating from after 1750, and they do not contain thorough critique of patriarchal norms. Yet gender issues did find there way in these diaries, albeit in more subtle ways. This is the case in the diary of one 18th century Dutch woman, called Jacoba van Thiel (1742-1800), and the way she wrote in it about her reading.

Jacoba van Thiel wrote extensively on her reading in the diary she kept between 1767 en 1770. In this period, Van Thiel, a woman in her late twenties, was living with her sister and brother-in-law in the small town of Overschie, near Rotterdam. Her diary was a spiritual one, ment to, as she herself wrote at the start, register her sins and God’s mercy, and help her follow the ways of the Lord.

All in all it cannot be said that Van Thiel deviated much from the reading that was thought to be appropriate for women. This goes for the sort of books she read and for her ways of reading. Yet less overt, tensions inherent in patriar­chal ideology do surface in Van Thiel's diary. Contemporary moralists encouraged women to read so that they would become more knowledgeable and be better equipped for fulfilment of their roles, but they were not expected to display their intellectual abilities in everyday life. The many religious books Jacoba van Thiel read, must have made her well-versed in theological matters, but, being a woman, she was not supposed to apply this knowledge. In her diary, however, she could do just that. Her discomfort is best seen in the negative com­ments she wrote on sermons.

Drs. Willemijn Ruberg (Leiden University)

Letter writing and gender identity: 1750-1850

The letter as a genre has always been associated with women. Women were supposed to have a more natural style than men, whose writing style was thought to be more solemn and stately. Furthermore, women were seen as the ones who kept the family together by corresponding. This association of women with letters could have negative as well as positive effects. On the one hand, the natural style, which women were supposed to command, had been seen as the best writing style since Gel­lerts theory on letter writing (1751). The most famous exam­ples of excellent correspondents were women like the French Madame de Sévigné and the English Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Their letters were models of letters written in the best natural style. On the other hand, women were thought to spell badly, and always write post scripts, marking their infinite need to talk and their slovenliness. Furthermore, the letter was considered to be a less serious literary genre, so female letter writers were hardly ever seen as artists, like nove­lists. In reviews of published correspondence, female corres­pondents were sometimes also judged on their character and behaviour. A lack of proper feminine behaviour, as displayed in their correspondence, could lead to a negative assessment of letters written by female authors. 

Besides reviews of published correspondence, all these opini­ons are found in treaties on composition and writing, letter books and contemporary literature as novels and sati­res. My own research focuses not only on these sources, but also on manuscript letters that are kept in family archives. These manuscripts point to the function of correspondence as a maker of gender identities in a number of ways. Firstly, both boys and girls were taught letter writing in the same manner. Letter books for girls, however, prescribed for girls a more modest style than for boys. Secondly, adolescent boys learned Latin by writing letters to each other in that language. By writing on typically male topics, as playing chess and smo­king, they moreover acquired a male identity. Adult men also often wrote in Latin, whereas Latin was not accessible to women. Women wrote a mixture of Dutch and French more often than men did. Thirdly, my research suggests that women were not always the ones who wrote letters to keep the family together. Men often sent congratulations or letters of condo­lence, as heads of their families.

The focus on correspondence as a social practice has shown that letter writing was important in the creation of gender differences.

Dr. Lotte van de Pol (Freie Universitaet Berlin/University of Utrecht)

The Childhood Memories of Three Eighteenth Century German Princesses.

In this paper I want to compare and analyse aspects of the autobiographies of Wilhelmina of Bayreuth, born Princess of Prussia (1709-1758), Catherine the Great of Russia, born Princess Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst (1729-1796) and Wilhelmina of Orange, born Princess of Prussia (1751-1819). All three princesses were intelligent, well read women, who conversed with the greatest minds of their times. They were experienced writers and each had an exciting private and political life, with a particular traumatic event to tell. All three memoirs were written in French, all were unfinished. Editions were first published in the 19th century. These have been both discredited and widely used as historical sources.

I will concentrate on the depictions of their childhoods, that is the years before they were married (1709-1731, 1729-1745 and 1751-1767). For princesses marriage was an early and sharp break in their lives, often meaning following an unknown husband to another country. The way they in later life imagi­ned and depicted their girlhoods, can tell us much about the workings and functions of memory and the writing down of memories. These childhoods memoirs tell also of shared expe­riences such as the emotional importance of governesses, the  disciplining of the body, and the all-importance of their value and position on the marriage market. The disparity between submission and passivity as a child and the autonomy expressed in the writing of an autobiography is not only much greater than, but of a different nature from the experience of women in other spheres of life in the eighteenth century.