As posted earlier, Lynne Connolly discussed the nature of class in the Historical Romance. What does that mean for the audience? Why are there more earls, marquis and dukes than anything else? How accurate is the social history that’s being written in historicals? These are all valid questions and Lynne, being a writer of historicals, has to think about these questions when writing her books. As a student of history, I like what she’s saying. People behaved differently in Regency times than today. Victorian social norms are seen as stodgy, straightlaced and old fashioned today, but there are many books written in 19th century England.
There are authors out there that get it right. There are authors out there that get it wrong. Research, whether for romance or a thesis is essential as there’s always someone out there that’s going to call one out on something that is, by definition, wrong. It’s not an easy task, as evidenced by Lynne’s post, to get the facts right and make everyone happy. Authors are readers too, and deserve to read something that appeals to their sense of historical accuracy as well as a great story that entertains.
I’m not sure what brought about Lynne’s idea to write what she did, but I do applaud her. And yet at the same time, there’s the fact that I am reading a romance novel. I’m not disparaging the genre, but with it does come the understanding that I’ve got the book in front of me because I want to read about the characters rather than the history. That historical setting provides a backdrop for a story and Syb has teased me a time or two about some of the historicals that I read because since I’m a history buff shouldn’t I turn my nose up at these things?
The answer to that is no. I’m not reading a dissertation on the guerrilla tactics and their motivations in Spain against Napoleon. Nor am I reading a social commentary on the aristocracy of England as compared to everyone else in the Industrial Revolution. The crux of what Lynne is saying is, as most historicals go, the situations would never have happened and people wouldn’t have behaved as they did in what is billed as a historical. And besides that, we definitely should care that the hero wouldn’t be speaking as he does to a servant or a worker he meets on the street.
And should the humble reader care? That’s up to personal choice. When it comes down to the bottom line, I don’t read historicals for the history. It’s the fantasy really, that probably dates back to the fairy tales. Or at least the doctored fairy tales that have the happy endings. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but the other point made by Lynne is that historicals published in America are by and large written by Americans, and the audience can’t really tell the difference between the way things actually were and our modern conceptions of how life and society ran itself 200 years ago. In another country. That had a social stratification and rank system that was eschewed by the founding fathers, at least to some extent. But then Americans can’t be of the mindset that life in the US is not defined by social structure and class different, because it is there. The one thing that Americans don’t do enough of is travel to the places they read about to see how life works (and by extension might have worked).
While I could go on to complain about the lack of valid historical education in America and the unwillingness of legislators to fix the real problems of the education system. . .uh. . .well ok, so maybe it is a lack of education on the part of Americans. It’s not up to the schools to teach everything, it should be up to the individual to find out on their own what they want to know and extend beyond the state mandated curriculum. The author’s editor can read a book with mistakes and inaccuracies and still send it to press, and the reader then takes that as history. The mistakes are on the part of the reader who made a choice to believe something inaccurate and not find out the right information. The choices made by editors are far more difficult, but is it up to the writer or the editor to make sure that the history is always accurate?
Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of changes for this, though the internet has provided access to sources that previously weren’t available. This can help both authors and readers understand, say, the relationship between the English and the Scottish between 1100 and 1900. This post on the AAR board delves into it though I will admit that I didn’t read the whole thing. I am glad the discussion is there, but is the accuracy there in the discussion? History is not black and white facts and figures that only one person got right and there’s a single go to source.
Perhaps this is all based on a false conception of history itself. History is not just facts, dates and people. History majors in college must choose not only what period they want to focus on but then a theme. Social, economic, military, cultural, political, urban, gender, the list can go on and new themes are added all the time. There’s revisionist history, conformist history, structuralist, Marxist, etc, and so many different points of view, areas of bias and the plain fact that what is written as history was done by the winners. The fact that there are various historical interpretations and the history taught to your parents or your children is different than what you were taught comes as a shock at times to people.
What comes out of this idea are books that are inaccurate, not because of lack of research, but lack of understanding about what exactly history is. If Americans want American characters written correctly by Brits in contemporary novels, as well as historicals, then Brits have the right to want British characters written by Americans to have the same level of accuracy. Readers shouldn’t read a romance and accept the story of a Duke as a spy or a Lady who has her maid as a best friend as a historical truth, because it obviously wouldn’t happen. The social strata in historical times defined what people did as much as the subtle social strata of the present day does.
So where can this leave the humble romance writer? Hopefully with a good fact checker, as the editor has more than just content to worry about. Use of historical aspects can kill a story, and it has for me more times that I like to admit. However, a well written romance with good characters can help me to ignore the inaccuracies in a historical. But then maybe I’m a weird reader. I’ve never written a letter to an author berating them for any historical inaccuracy because that’s not what I’m reading their book for. I want the fantasy of a happily ever after and perhaps I secretly wish for that elusive excellent, accurate historical setting. Perhaps my hope someday to get a story about a Cit, or a solider in the lord’s army or even a businessman who does well enough but isn’t a magnate will be written and sold. Until then, I will live with the lowly servant getting the duke in an era when the few dukes were old and marriages were arranged more often than not.
But Lynne? Can we have that story about the Cit? 😉
An interesting take on the issue. Though I am one of those readers who does look up things I find in a book that may seem off, I recognize that I don’t read a historical romance for the same reason I read a historical fiction. Though I having BA in history I have learned to be less anal on what I believe to be the historical fact in a romance, especially if the story is compelling but they usually arn’t if the history is suspect. I want authors to place their characters in settings that make sense and that the characters act ect like those of that period. The problem is authors spend so much time researching their books using less then 5 % of that information so there are those who info dump information that does nothing to the action of the story but shows they did reseach. Not to say that I don’t take an author to task for taking the easy way out for their conflict using overused plot devises like handfasting (trial marriages of a year and a day) or solving Anglo/Scottish border problems by having an English woman marry a Highlander. Those of us who read more than a 100 historical romances a year expect something a bit more historical or we would read contemporaries, they just need to keep the info dumps to a minimum. And for those authors such as Virginia Henley who take real historical figures and create a fictionalized accounts of their life with some poetic license, as long as the h/h are acting in the period I have little problem with them not telling the whole historical truth.
Agreeing that good writing can gloss over some of the meta-inaccuracies in historicals and make a very good read. My personal “beef”, if you will, is with the glaring anachronistic word or physical institution that gets inserted into an otherwise fine fantasy of the Marquis and the milkmaid.
Mary Balogh writes well and some of hers are on the keeper shelf. But she had one using the word “handicapped” in the sense of physical disability in the early 19th century. It is only attested as that use from the early 20th century. In the early 19th century it was a horse racing term for added extra weight to the horse in a race.
Another writer doing the same era had a character in an interior dialog referencing the Royal Ballet. That august institution was founded in 1931 and did not receive its royal charter until 1956.
It’s these sort of thing that throws me out of the world the writer is building. Maybe I’m just being a cranky-pants. I still have trouble with clan setts in medievals too.
It’s an interesting issue and obviously not black or white in terms of interpretation. It really does come down to what the reader chooses to read, believe, digest and take out of any book. I think that everyone has their personal pet peeves when it comes to what does end up in plots and characterizations, whether it’s accurate or not. I want to read about characters that are true to period, sure, but then I don’t know if I could handle an entire book set before the War of the Roses with dialogue in Middle English.
I’m sure too much of what is written is intended to be more relatable than history buffs like to read about, but a romance should be about the romance of the main characters rather than the general setting, right? I will admit that if something is so glaringly inaccurate or the use of a modern word doesn’t fit with the setting, it can ruin a book for me. But usually those books that have great characters and plots also have a good historical setting that maybe isn’t truly accurate, but gives the right feeling for a well written story. That’s my point of view at least.
I’m with you Lawson. I don’t care about historical accuracy all that much when I read an historical story, mainly because I read for the characters like you do, but also because I never liked history in school, I never paid much attention, and it still does nothing for me. Yes, I know the highlights of history through the ages and that’s all I need. But most inaccuracies are so subtle to the average reader, even those like me who don’t care, that we’d never know the difference.
Example — Jean, your mention of Mary Balogh using the term handicapped, for the normal reader who doesn’t know as much about history like you do, that woudn’t even jump out at them. I had someone point out to me a couple of years ago an author had Big Ben tolling in the background but Big Ben did not exist in the year the story took place. ???? I have no reason to know when Big Ben was built and I really don’t care. What the author did was give me the flavor of London along with other descriptions she used. Now, maybe I can say that because I’m not British so I don’t know English history all that well. Well, it would be the same for me if an author took license with the Boston Tea Party to fit her story. Go for it, I say. I want an author to use her imagination and give me the best story she can. If she has to do something different with history to do that, by all means, go right ahead.
Now, if the inaccuracy is something like, as a friend recently mentioned when we had this exact same discussion, a man zipping or unzipping his pants before the zipper was invented, yeah, that might take me out of the story for a second or two, but it wouldn’t last because I”m not going to go look up when the zipper was invented. It’s not that important to me. So an author got it wrong. Doesn’t ruin the story for me.
Something that will pull me out of the story and ruin it – another example, I reviewed a book several years ago where the author had the hero three sheets to the wind in a medieval story. That definitely pulled me out. Now, I didn’t look that little bit of slang up either, so I guess it’s possible it was used back in those days, but to me it’s a modern phrase and shouldn’t have been used in that book. There were several like that throughout. If it had been just the one, I might have overlooked it, but three or four different ones doesn’t work.
I realize an author has to balance this type of thing out because there are history majors and buffs out there. But that’s why I don’t read historical fiction. I don’t like to read real history with real historical characters so that an author has to stick to historical facts for her story. She’s limited in what she can do. I want fiction to give me just that, all fiction to give me a story with characters I will moon over and put that book on my keeper shelf. I read for purely entertainment purposes and nothing more.
Then why do I read historicals? I can still enjoy a good historical, it gives the book flavor and texture and a beautiful backdrop. And I like a Duke falling in love with the milk maid. That’s fantasy and that’s what we long for when we read, that could it happen to me syndrome. I guess that’s why I also go for paranormals so much, because the author has free rein to do what they please to give the reader a story.
Sorry, I know I’m all over the place here. I wrote as things occurred to me! But we can debate this issue until we turn blue, it won’t make an author’s job any easier and we’ll still debate it no matter what because of the different ways we look at reading and history. Yes, I have my certain issues that I do find here and there, but they’re few and far between, and as long as I get a good story, alpha hero and all, I’m happy.