Sexual Infidelity: Personal
Although Samuel Pepys went to great lengths to record his diary in a secret code, he was anything but bashful about using that code to go into scandalously fine detail about many his many extra-marital affairs and sexual conquests. Pepys had a sexual appetite every bit the equal of his appetite for chronicling it. The details of his personal infidelities—while certain fascinating and offering an unusually prurient interest in text written in the 1600’s, they really only set the stage for the more important infidelities of state which also fall under his close scrutiny.
Sexual Infidelity in the Court of the King
Of far great historical significance are those portions of the diary of Pepys which offers a front-row seat to the bawdiness that characterized the court of King Charles II. Of particular interest is the increasing political tension resulting from the love triangle placing the Queen at one end, Lady Castlemaine at the other and stuck between the King himself. Whitehall Palace thus a kind of entertaining little subplot of the diary that mingles affairs of state with affairs of the heart. Or, perhaps more accurately, another organ of the body altogether.
Gender Roles
Or, more specifically, the diary of Samuel Pepys offers a startling and raw glimpse at just how far women have been liberated since the middle of the 1600’s. If one takes as a given that Pepys is expressing a conventional view toward women’s place in society even if his predatory sexuality leans perhaps toward the less enlightened end of that spectrum, the life of the average female in England during the reign of Charles II was anything but pleasant. And that is putting it very politely. The plain fact of the matter is that Pepys views women as essentially being good for one thing unless they can cook and clean in which case they have exhausted all their utility.
Personalizing the Grander Events of History
If the truly breathtaking misogyny and the equally overwhelming attention to all bodily functions associated with being human can sometimes seem to overwhelm the diary thematically, it is worth noting that even the most conservative and repressed of individuals are likely to be truly impressed with the author’s attention to historical detail. Fortunately for the rest of humanity, Pepys was there with his observer’s keen eye and his diarist’s urge to record when one of the defining disasters in British occurred: the Great Fire of 1666. It is not overstating the fact to suggest that much of the dramatic glue holding the official accounts and factual records associated with that devastating event was supplied by the diary of Samuel Pepys. That event is the most awesome spectacle of history being made personal by Pepys, but it hardly stands alone. Pepys not only witnessed history at the highest levels, he was also a participant if only on the fringes in some cases and if his secretly coded writing can be said to possess one overarching thematic thrust, it is the one puts events too great to fully appreciate into a more accessible personal framework.
