I have very mixed opinions on my new friend, Jonathan Pearson.
I hate to be harsh towards the man, because I’m not quite sure if he ever intended on his diaries being read and even if he did, who could’ve predicted how an individual would react to them two-hundred years in the future. He wrote some scathing reviews of both his professors and classmates – something I hope none of them actually read. Yet his views aren’t unique to the time – women still couldn’t vote in any sort of election, African Americans were still enslaved or at least considered to be lesser individuals compared to whites, and religious prejudice was real. Painfully, we must admit that only one of those things has been fully rectified by 2021 but still, it’s annoying to see in print.
At the same time, Pearson struggled.
Jonathan Pearson is very much an intellectual, and I very much relate to him. While many of my classmates spent their freshman year galavanting around, I was studying in my dorm. I am in no way as religious as he was, but I take my academics seriously, as did he and somewhat struggled when I saw the behavior of my peers. Pearson also struggled with his mental and physical health, which put a hold on his studies as he moved from what is now Colby College to Union. I can’t imagine being forced to stop attending college – something I greatly enjoy – just to sit and hope for a recovery that may or may not come. Of course this would wreak further havoc on his mental health, and the added stress of his family’s financial situation would not have helped.
While I don’t think the direction I’m planning to take with my section of the digital edition has changed since I last wrote, I feel as if while working I’ll need to be as objective as possible despite some of my critiques. As a historian, there’s two components to research: viewing the record from the time it was made and from the era it is being observed. Each is reflective of the time it is mirrored to. My guess is that he didn’t see anything wrong with scrutinizing women who were dressed to the nines, but we now understand that as being objectifying and therefore wrong. As I move forward, I hope to include a modern view on the problematic elements of his diaries while still representing them in the time they were written. While I will not excuse these elements, it’s important to understand them in a historical context.