The Posterity of Hiding: A Psychoanalytic Reading of The Diary of Anne Frank

Focusing on Anne Frank’s diary, this essay brings to the foreground a reading that has continually been blue pencilled, unwrapping the way Anne’s localised position as a Jew in hiding is connected with her psychic process of exploring her desires as well as her voice as a woman. As this analysis reveals, Anne’s relationships in the Annex and her psychic development are in fact symbolically linked to her being chained in hiding, away from the social realm. Peeping at the world through a key hole from her marginal standpoint, she experiences a different process of growing into womanhood, whereby she reclaims the legitimacy of her voice and challenges basic conceptions of gender and sexuality