I am a lover of historical correspondence.  Reading letters penned back in time is like living that part of history with someone in the hopes of gaining a better perspective of his or her life.  The journals of women as they endured the Oregon Trail, the diaries of Louisa May Alcott and the love letters to Josephine from Napoleon are some of my favorite examples. 

However, I've always had a nagging feeling (that I do my best to suppress) that I am a voyeur in to their private lives.  Did they intend their private moments to be an open book, per se?  Alcott and Napoleon aside, did the Oregon Trail pioneers realize that strangers would read their desires and disappointments? 

When is reading private correspondence, diaries and journals considered just plain eavesdropping? 

I bring this up because of this interesting article I just read called Flaubert's Flame by David Waller.

As it states, the author recently discovered correspondence between Gustav Flaubert and Gertrude Tennant, a London socialite, while conducting research for another person's biography and mentions that he will publish the more intimate letters in a separate book. 

Intimate letters.  Sounds private to me. 

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During the course of my married life, there was a period of time where my husband and I were separated due to immigration policy and procedure.  I met and married him in Paris and when I became pregnant with our first child, I wanted to come back to America and be close to my mom for help and support.  Since I wanted my husband to come with, and come with legally, necessary fees and papers were filed at the embassy there and the immigration center here.  It took ten months for the paperwork to go through and the Visa to be issued.

During the painful separation, correspondence de la coeur carried us through our time apart.  We wrote letters daily to each other in order to fill the always-present physical emptiness.  We both saved every letter and they are in my scrivener's desk, not five feet from where I'm writing this article.  We reread them from time to time and recapture the passion of the just married.

But those letters are private between me and my husband and I intend them to stay that way.  I would not want anyone else happening upon them and intruding on my heart's most passionate affair.  Quite a contradiction I'd say because,

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Isn't that what I'm doing to others?  It seems to me that the women's journals, Alcott's diaries and Bonaparte's professions of love were written with the same intention.  Private correspondence that they had no idea would become public. 

But I continue to read historical correspondence, with a twinge of guilt, and do my best to avoid intimate details in the text if I come across it. 

I'm such a voyeur.