Mary MacLane and the Mythology of Journaling: What are we writing for?

Lucy Hindmarsh

A practice as old as written language itself, journaling has remained an ever-steady pillar of literary practice. Often viewed as a solitary endeavour, a writer may find solace in the act of putting pen to paper, tapping quiet musings into their notes app or frantically scribbling on the back of a tear-stained napkin. 

Generally, we accept that as the most personal of writing practices, journaling can take any form with the (potentially misguided) universal understanding that nobody else will ever read it. This is the fundamental appeal for many who feel privacy is what allows them to be authentic without the looming eyes or opinions of others. 

But what does being authentic look like? What happens when a piece of personal writing unexpectedly falls out of the hands of its creator and sparks social or historical interest in and of itself? And in those moments, when that privacy is breached and the words we thought were ours to keep are suddenly on display,  do we still hold value in personal choice when it is suddenly ours to dissect, or is the nature of authenticity shifted by the public's gaze?

Enter Mary MacLane. 

Dubbed the ‘’Wild Woman of Butte”, MacLane is considered a pioneer of the confessional writing style and is remembered for her unabashed, blazing account of her own life. Born in 1881 in Winnipeg, Canada, MacLane and her family moved to Butte, Montana, following her father’s death.This would provide the backdrop for the start of her literary career, where she would write her first published work, The Story of Mary MacLane in 1901, aged only 19. The book is composed entirely of her own musings and tellings of her daily life and larger questions about the world. 

Whilst the book received immediate critical acclaim, it also provoked controversy for its unfiltered discussions of love, ambition, and identity. Others simply dismissed it as a work of narcissistic indulgence, disliking her self-assured style that stepped far out from her permitted line as a woman at the time. McClane declared herself “I am a genius—a genius in my own right” and as “fundamentally, organically egotistic”. She persistently pleads for a life beyond the confines of her own, calling upon the devil as a giver of opportunity. She repeatedly begs him, “Fame if you please, Devil. [...] Let it come, kind Devil,” which further upset conservative audiences. 

Yet, despite this vibrant defiance of societal norms and litterings of embellished accounts and description, MacLane’s writing would prove to be inspiration for writers such as Hemingway and Stein, and undoubtedly many other personal writers for years to come. 

Even if we pick apart the accuracy of MacLane’s writing, her personal style should not be seen as frivolity or egoism to wade through. It is precisely her mythology that tells us what we want to know about her as a person - and more broadly, what it was like to be a young woman living in Butte at the time. If we are to treat personal writing as a valuable resource in helping us understand the past, we should revel MacLane’s challenging of the notion that history is only preserved through objective accounts. She reminds us instead that personal truths, however embellished or inexact, hold their own kind of historical weight, different to that of a textbook or documentary, that lies solely in its author’s voice.

Whilst Mary MacLane’s story may seem buried by time alongside her, the principles on which she writes are worth reflecting on now more than ever. 

It is only natural that, in a world increasingly flooded in fake news and egoistic world leaders, we may feel aversion to any voice displaying unmarred self-assurance or a level of embellishment we cannot trust. This may extend to ourselves when we speak or write, for fear of facing this same distrust or misunderstanding from our peers. The centring of social media and the ever-looming threat of a digital footprint has bred this culture of scrutiny that reaches beyond what we present online or in public and rips into the core of how we view ourselves in private. 

This shift is also reflected in modern journaling practices that see us organise our lives away in bullet journals or regulate our mood through gratitude diaries. Whilst we clearly still value writing as a tool for reflection, the act of journaling has come to centre self-improvement and functionality rather than raw self-expression. Yes, we might still journal, but we are encouraged to curate rather than confess, to think before we feel and to reject creativity in the name of appearing ‘rational’.

MacLane, however, did not write under the constraints of contemporary opinion or trend. She did not sacrifice writing for herself first and foremost at the expense of being heard. She wrote because she was assured of her own exceptionality, and because she had a story to tell. In an era defined by heightened self-awareness and fear of how we are perceived by others, Mary MacLane serves as a pertinent reminder that the voice is as important as the story itself. So, whether you write for your voice to be heard, to make the history books or  simply to keep a record of what it meant to be you, writing about oneself will always be a tool for defiance, for preservation and for self-love - regardless of how inexact its truth might be.