Mr and Mrs Pepys

These are my thoughts...
Analysis
Writing for himself (much as I do), but knowing that he has a readership of one (much as I do), Pepys keeps his diaries in such a good state that he must have known others would be interested in the future. However, one gets the impression that this was Pepys special form of analysis.   


I am reminded of Gwendolen in 'The Importance of being Ernest' when she says "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."


Would Pepys have written a blog today?  I think only a secret blog to be opened after his death.  Would he have been worried about the impact on his immediate family and contacts?  Not one bit.


Psychologists have reflected that good literature is like psychology, though less ugly.  Pepys writes in an age where people just died.  Nothing could be taken for granted.  Perhaps this helped him to live in the present.  Perhaps this is something we should learn from him.  


I recall D.H. Lawrence saying,
"We have lost the art of living; and in the most important science of all, the science of daily life, the science of behavior, we are complete ignoramuses. We have psychology instead." (privilege to meet him.)


But then a quote from Thomas Szasz, (author of the Myth of Mental Illness),
"There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography."


Pepys reveals himself as a hypocrite.  He criticises his employer Lord Sandwich for entertaining a mistress, while having extra-marital sex with a number of women.  He also gives such a detailed analysis of his sexual predication as to open himself to the accusation of being a pedophile.  However, he does not use his wife's physical aliment as an excuse for infidelity.  He does not appear to need an excuse, but does experience guilt.


Mr and Mrs Pepsy have a deep, firm commitment to each other. But their relationship is not that characterised in the Victorian era as romantic love.  Elizabeth had a separate and secrete life from Pepys.  They spend long days apart.  Pepys  is a taskmaster in this area.  And yet they are committed to each other to the day Elizabeth dies.  They do not have children, but Pepys does not seem to allow this to affect their relationship, and Elizabeth seems equally strong.


Pepys has a humanist outlook on the whole.  He does not and can not believe in God, though he prays regularly in repentance, and exhibits the benign superstitions of a non-believer. Pepys' positive, accepting and 'present' presepctive on life is an inspiration.