This essay reexamines the literary and political significance of the diary as a narrative form by analyzing the inserted diary texts in George Orwell’s 1984, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Virginia Woolf’s “The Legacy.” Traditionally marginalized in literary history, the diary has often been dismissed as a private or auxiliary form of writing rather than a serious subject of critical inquiry. However, this study argues that the diary is not merely a medium of self-reflection, but rather a subversive literary form capable of political intervention and narrative disruption.

In each of the selected texts, the diary serves as a crucial device through which characters assert agency, confront dominant ideological structures, and articulate counter-narratives. Winston’s diary in 1984 challenges the totalitarian regime’s  absolute  surveillance  by  creating  a  secret  space  for  autonomous thought. In Joyce’s novel, Stephen’s diary marks a narrative shift to the first person,  signaling his emergence as a self-conscious artist  resisting imposed social  norms.  Woolf’s  protagonist  Angela,  through  her  posthumous  diary, reveals suppressed desires and critiques the male-dominated political discourse embodied by her husband.

By foregrounding these diary texts, this study highlights the diary’s dual function  as  both  a  personal  record  and  a  form  of  public  discourse.  It underscores   how   the   diary   can   capture   interior   transformation,   social awareness, and resistance to power. Ultimately, this essay seeks to restore the literary status of the diary and reposition it as a potent vehicle for political imagination and narrative experimentation. Through this reframing, the study invites further exploration of the diary’s potential to renegotiate the boundaries between the private and the public, the marginal and the central, within literary texts.