Rural working-class women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are rarely heard from as writers. The letters and diaries of such women that are available give virtually no information about culture, politics, or the arts, and they practically never contain an opinion. Instead, they provide minute, repetitive observations, with occasional flashes of insight. The women wrote not to make distinctions but to assert a pattern. Their writing contains a strong sense of the presence of other women in their consciousness, while men are apt to be blurred or peripheral. Frank discussions about death, sex, birth control, the weather, health and disease, and the price of food are common to this literature. (Examples from women's letters and diaries are included.) (TJ)