Fiction, History, and Time

[sartorias]

A couple of recent conversations (including a letter conversation with Mrissa about history and social customs)plus some interesting links made me think about exploring the connection between history and fiction beginning with time.

Comments

[bunn]

One problem I find I am running into, trying to write Rosemary Sutcliff fanfic (specifically, second century Roman Britain at the mo) is that quite often readers have an idea of how that culture worked that isn't backed up by the historical evidence. They will say things like 'oh, but they didn't have... I dunno, semaphore, or sponges, or stirrups - or, wolves just don't behave like that (referencing modern North American wolves, not second century British ones

[sartorias]

I think that this, too, is where the art comes in. I think it's great to bolster a given time and place with a ton of research (especially if it's fun!) but if there is a question, opt for Sutcliff's [alternate] history. That way the Sutcliff fans are going to enjoy the story more, and not feel jolted out.

There is an entire subgenre, called Regency romance, that is largely built on Georgette Heyer's own alternate London. It doesn't take much digging to discover where she chose to paper over awkwardnesses, or interpreted words, events, and custom through her own particular lens, but her world is so detailed that readers want that world, and not necessarily a faithful evocation of the time as it probabl was.

Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen and the Regency

[jordan179]

There is an entire subgenre, called Regency romance, that is largely built on Georgette Heyer's own alternate London.

Which is in turn largely built on Jane Austen's impression of Regency England. Here we have a different problem: Austen, who wrote fiction set in her own time, understood perfectly well how things worked and people thought, but

(1) did not always explain it in a way which someone from two centuries later -- why should she? She was a contemporary writer writing for a contemporary audience; and

(2) wrote from a particular point of view: that of a highly intelligent, in some ways idealistic and in some ways cynical unmarried gentlewoman, which is of course who she was; and

(3) advocated specific ideas, which were sometimes the ideals of her own particular class and generation, and sometimes her own personal obsessions, whether we tend to agree with them or not.

For instance, how many modern readers of Pride and Prejudice understand that the entail of an estate could only be set aside by the agreement of the

Re: Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen and the Regency

[sartorias]

Though not disagreeing with most of your facts, I disagree that Heyer is based on Jane Austen's view of the Regency, especially as Austen makes it clear in her books that she thinks very little of London life, or the haut monde. Heyer's books seem to be to derive directly from the silvery fork novels of the 1830s and on, romances set in high life, wherein the haute monde and their attitudes and goals are held up in a heroic light.

Modern Readers and the Real Regency

[jordan179]

What modern readers most especially don't get about Jane Austen is that she was advocating a (mildly) radical position regarding love in marriage. At the time, the assumption was that one should marry for money, with "love" entering into it only in that one should at least avoid marrying someone one was likely to hate. Either love would blossom after marriage, or the couple would produce an heir or two and then settle into a routine of amicable cohabitation, perhaps seasoned by discreet adultery.

It was precisely the hypocrisy of the latter arrangement which Jane found reprehensible, which is why she insisted on marrying for love. Things could be worse: a wife with a truly hateful husband might find herself essentially beaten and raped at regular intervals, with little or no legal recourse (this is precisely the behavior that the modern concept of divorce for "crulety" was invented to address). As long as he didn't literally kill or at least noticably maim her, no outsider was likely to intervene

Re: Modern Readers and the Real Regency

[sartorias]

Austen didn't invent marrying for love. That battle was being fought from the later 1600s on. (We have Mary Wortley Montague running away as a teen to marry her lover, then getting mad at her daughter later for marrying for love, but reconciling.) I agree about radical invention, but I think that was her writing novels from the female point of view. Previously even when women wrote novels they seemed to stick to the standard (male) stereotypes. Austen abandoned all the well-established character stereotypes of the eighteenth century.

Hypocrisy as Survival Strategy

[jordan179]

People lived much closer to the edge of ruin then than is common today. Yes, even than is common right now in the middle of a Depression.

If you were deemed a coward, you might be exposed to all sort of insult by bullies, and bullying was then not uncommon among adults. If you were deemed a slut, likewise, and to rape as well (good luck proving it if you were a woman of bad reputation!) Your children were likewise so exposed.

If you were thought of poorly, for any reason, good luck getting financial credit. There were no credit reporting agencies at the time, and being "creditable" meant that bankers personally thought that you both had the means and the morals to be a good lending risk. And they could and did take into account all sorts of personal sins or even eccentricities with which no modern banker would bother.

Thus hypocrisy. If you were a cowardly man, you swaggerd and boasted and lied about your bravery, so that no one would suspect your cowardice. If you were a light woman, you held your nose high and sniffed and

[whswhs]

In point of fact, it was not until the 1970s or 1980s in the United States that evidence of a woman's "unchastity" (meaning her having had sexual relations with anyone other than her husband) stopped being introduced in rape trials, and I believe this was because of statutory change. Until then the inference was that a woman who said yes to one man would say yes to any man

[bunn]

True: a really good writer can make you want the world they described, rather than the world as it really was...

Le Guin is another writer whose worldbuilding always seduces for me : I suspect most of her low-tech civilisations are too idealised, even when the protagonists are not having a good time, stuff like random septicaemia, death in childbirth, cancers, epilepsy, random violence probably don't pop up as often as they should do, and yet you don't want them to because the world described is such a real place. It doesn't need more realism just to make the point.

[marycatelli]

the irony is that people who research what they don't have and then try to reconstruct their thoughts from it. . . like a crit that told me that unless both my characters are literate, I can't have a letter between them ("professional letter writer" was an occupation) or saying that the Sun King would not have had that name a few centuries earlier because the medieval times were not heliocentric (solar imagery for kings long predate heliocentrism, and the center of the universe was not a good place in medieval thought). . . etc. etc.

[bunn]

Oh, so true! Some people just seem to go looking for problems that are not real problems...

Reconstructing thoughts and beliefs from stuff people don't (or do) have is a hazard in archaeology and history as well as historical fiction, of course. Perhaps forgiveable in one's own fiction, but making such dodgy deductions and using them to critique another's story sounds like a very irritating pastime!