Anne and Margot

Anne and Margot’s relationship in the diary is a changing bond between sisters: Anne often feels alienated from Margot and outnumbered by the alliance she sees between Margot and their mother, but moments of shared trust and companionship complicate that estrangement. The diary records the relationship not as a settled rivalry or easy intimacy, but as something Anne repeatedly interprets and reassesses while seeking recognition within her family.

Family closeness and exclusion

Anne describes feeling further from both her mother and Margot even when they praise her. In one entry, she contrasts the warmth she sees between the two with her own preference for being sentimental alone, and says the family’s picture of the four of them getting along does not match how she feels. Her sense of exclusion is sharpened by what she sees as unequal responses to mistakes: Margot breaks the vacuum cleaner and receives a mild correction, whereas Anne is sharply reprimanded when she tries to rewrite a difficult-to-read shopping list. The incidents leave Anne feeling that she does not fit into the family’s affectionate self-image.

The distance is not limited to a single dispute. Anne says that Margot’s and her mother’s personalities seem alien to her, and that she understands her girlfriends better than her own mother. Although the diary records tension among the family members rather than a continuous quarrel between the sisters, Anne’s account places Margot within a closeness with their mother from which she feels shut out. Her frustration is bound up with a broader wish to be treated as a person whose judgments and feelings deserve attention.

Resentment and the need to be seen

A dispute over a book makes the perceived imbalance particularly concrete. Margot has set aside an illustrated book, and Anne picks it up to look at the pictures. When Margot returns and asks for it back, Anne wants to continue looking; their mother intervenes on Margot’s behalf, and their father joins in without first understanding the disagreement. Anne gives up the book, but says she is sad rather than angry. What hurts is not simply losing her turn with it: she feels that her parents have hurried to defend Margot as though she were the injured party.

Anne’s account links that small domestic episode to a lasting sense of comparison. She says she has become indifferent to her mother’s rebukes and Margot’s moods, while still loving them because they are her mother and sister. Her feelings about her father are more vulnerable: she longs for him to love her as Anne herself, not merely as his child, and feels a painful contrast when he praises or favors Margot. She explicitly distinguishes this longing from jealousy of Margot’s intelligence or appearance. The conflict therefore concerns recognition and fairness as much as sibling rivalry: Anne wants to be taken seriously rather than fixed in the family role of clown and mischief-maker.

Renewed companionship and reciprocal trust

The diary also records a striking change in tone. Anne reports that she, Margot, and their mother are once again “the best of buddies,” and says things are nicer that way. One night, Anne and Margot lie side by side in Anne’s bed, cramped but enjoying the closeness. Their conversation turns to their private writing: Margot asks whether she may read Anne’s diary, Anne agrees to let her read parts, and Anne asks to read Margot’s in return. Margot grants permission.

The exchange matters because it differs from the one-sided judgments and misunderstandings Anne has described elsewhere. Each sister offers the other access to a private record, with Anne setting a limit on what she will share and Margot reciprocating with permission of her own. Their conversation also touches on the future: Anne asks what Margot wants to be when she is older, but Margot does not tell her, leaving Anne to suspect that it may have something to do with teaching. The moment is intimate without resolving every distance between them; it shows the sisters capable of curiosity, discretion, and mutual confidence.

A relationship preserved in revision

Anne’s changing account of Margot belongs to a diary that Anne herself later reworked. After hearing Gerrit Bolkestein call for accounts of life under occupation, Anne began editing her diary into a second version, selecting and revising material while continuing to keep her original diary. This means that the surviving literary presentation of family relationships is connected to Anne’s deliberate work as a writer, not only to the first recording of events.

After Anne’s death, Otto Frank selected material from her original and revised diaries to make a shorter published version. He omitted some passages about Anne’s sexuality and some unflattering passages about his wife and the other residents of the Secret Annex. Later, after the diary’s authenticity had been investigated and established, a complete scholarly edition presented the different versions and the results of that examination. An expanded edition for general readers added material from Anne’s two versions to Otto Frank’s selection. These editorial histories matter to the account of Anne and Margot because the diary’s frank record of affection, hurt, and perceived favoritism reached readers through successive choices about what to include.

Significance

The relationship’s movement between grievance and closeness resists a single label. Anne can feel that Margot and their mother stand together against her, yet she can also share a bed with Margot and invite an exchange of diaries. The contrast reveals how family intimacy may coexist with sharp differences in how its members experience the same household. Anne’s writing gives particular weight to her demand to be seen as herself, while also preserving moments when sisterhood offers a form of companionship and trust.