historical fiction & the historical mind

I don't feel like people try with historical fiction anymore. There's little respect for real history--the way things truly were. Characters often seem only haphazardly placed in centuries ago without really interacting with their setting, without it really reflecting in their character, in the make up of their mind or the patterns of their relationships. The setting, in the end, often only dictates what they wear and what they're fighting against.

I'm speaking obscurely I guess because I'm talking both about historical dramas in film and historical fiction in literature. Literature is always worse; in historical dramas they seem only to butcher costuming instead of the entire historical world, and the historical mind(s) a book is trying to recreate.

I can't remember which book it's from (and I'm kicking myself for not underlining it), but there's a quote from one of the books I got for christmas, either Domestic Affairs¹ or Good Wives², that says something like "the modern concept of equality is nearly incomprehensible to the premodern mind" which I think is one of the most important statements about people and relationships in the premodern world and is, of course, the most overlooked.

Historical fiction heroines are generally raging feminists who want to run around in trousers because they're not actually historical characters at all; they're modern characters, looking back on the past with a very narrow, unfinished view of it, which is supplimented with extremely modern feminist ideology, if only to make some shallow statement to pleasure our superiority complex over those in the past.

I don't want to go into an argument about oppression and gender at the moment, but I can assure you that women of the past did not have this notion of equality and how they were being denied it.

Not, even, did the lower classes, or the serving classes. If you really want to talk about oppression, or the complete lack of equality, forget about the roles of women, but take a look at the serving class, from roughly the Middle Ages to the 18th century, before capitalism started influencing the way the servant class viewed their roles. Those in the service were more or less regarded as children--adult, male and female alike--under the moral and religious guard of their master and mistress, who looked after their comings and goings, dictated their days, nights and even the conduct of their Sundays off.

I've gone on a small tangent, but the sentiment remains--no one seems to be truly recreating the historical mind in either historical drama or fiction. There is a small argument to be made that a character steeped fully in history, who is so achingly premodern as to be almost abstract, will not be able to connect to a modern reader, that they and their motives, actions, and reasonings might be so confounding and contrary to the reader's mind that the reader will be unsympathetic and ultimately uncaring.

If this is something an author is running into with their historical work, then perhaps they're writing about the wrong thing. Or, more likely, they're creating a modern dilemma in a premodern world. In that case, the proper setting needs to be found for their dilemma, and what is chafing must be abandoned, otherwise historical fiction turns into complete fantasy and should not be entitled to the label of 'historical fiction'.

However, we have always been human. We will always have the same desires, heartaches and needs. There is a universal ache of a purposeless life; a shared fear of the unknown, either in death or in countries uncharted and unexplored; an ubiquitous want to be accepted by our peers; and--the ultimate--the endless, relentless desire for sex. Those are the things that can be pulled forth for historical fiction from the premodern mind, and fully understood, fully sympathised and embraced by the modern reader.

But it's likely that I'm one of the few readers and writers who care so deeply about this representation of lost times and the people in them. In that case, I can only plead that you realise just how misrepresented much of history is in books and film and that, if you have any questions about accuracy, please come to me. I'll do my best to set you straight.


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¹Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence Between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth Century Britain by Kristina Straub

²Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich