To Write A Love Letter Is To Write An Autobiography

The writing advice my cohort and I received from an honours English tutor early this Martinmas semester was to ‘write a letter to someone you love’, something she suggested would simultaneously improve our self-knowledge and writing abilities. To a class of eighteen, frankly reluctant students, these instructions were received doubtfully. Although many of us spend our days endlessly, laboriously writing, we are unaccustomed to the style, and substance, required by a love letter. 

Once a revered skill, formal letter writing has vanished from the daily lives of so many. Letters have codes, conditions, and specific syntactical formats; they are not only intricate in their content, but also their style. To write a love letter inadvertently exposes the inner sanctum of the author’s mind, both in writing capability as well as feeling. When attempting to translate our affection or desires into intelligible language, we author the most accurate and poignant portrait of ourselves that we can offer. 

This can be traced backwards through a long literary tradition of letters embedded within prosaic and poetic fiction. As early as the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer exploits the epistolary form as a clever stylistic technique in his translation of the tragic love story of Troilus and Criseyde. Cressida’s real feelings cannot be revealed in her letter to Troilus, whom she is about to betray, ‘for feere’ (tl: for fear) of discovery. This informs the reader, if not Troilus, of her unspoken machinations. More than a plot device, however, it is also the only time the reader hears Cressida’s voice unfiltered through either Chaucer or Troilus’ narration. Criticised and scrutinised by readers and critics in every version of this tale, Chaucer’s use of ‘love’ letter here suggests an unprecedented sympathy for the character and inadvertent unveiling of Cressida’s own role in this tragedy — Cressida’s fear and vulnerability lie buried only shallowly beneath the semantic layers of the letter. 

Jean Honore Fragonard The Love Letter

 Four centuries later, in Jane Austen’s version of London society in Sense and Sensibility, letter writing directly (and wrongly) reflects tangible attachment. Willoughby and Marianne Dashwood’s exchange of hand-delivered notes can only have one interpretation by the other characters: that they are secretly engaged. When it is discovered that there is no engagement and that all but one of Marianne’s hopelessly romantic love letters to Willoughby remain unanswered, she is subject to ridicule and derision from those around her. Marianne’s ability to love without restraint or ‘check’ is delineated by Austen most powerfully in her tender letters. As is common in Austen’s depiction of sisterly affection, the letters become sites of shared reading between Marianne and her sister, Elinor, granting the elder understanding of Marianne’s behaviour and innocence in this affair. Not only can love letters reveal an autobiographical subtext, they also become vital character references in an age of restricted emotional and marital liberty, such as the nineteenth century. 

More modern fictions and films that place importance on epistolary communication (Love, Rosie, Dear John, or You’ve Got Mail) all initiate romance from letter writing (electronic mail) rather than from physical consummation or interaction. These are considered highly unrealistic and romantic stories — immediate communication and interconnectedness in the modern age have removed the days or weeks of waiting between letters, and thus, rendered them useless. The delicate laments and confessions that litter these modern rom-coms are, just as Chaucer’s Cressida and Austen’s Marianne were, derided for their feminine sentiment and exaggerated imagery. 

Perhaps the quixotic nature of these love stories is what dissuades some students from love letters and open self-expression more generally. Writing about emotions exposes one’s fallibility in the face of rejection. However, writing can force what is within to surface, allowing the author to turn over and inspect their interior worlds in their own hands. Returning to the ways love letters have been used historically in literature, particularly for women, may rectify their reputation and teach women and girls to write letters, even just as an entryway to a plethora of other writing forms, for self-definition.

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