Historical fiction, or hist-fic, as I like to call it, is one of the most consistent and successful genres of literature and film. From the historical fiction novel to the TV period drama, societal fascination with the past is overwhelming and often gears towards the sensationalised, sexy, romantic, and the insane. I personally, love this type of media, and will unashamedly admit to having watched Downton Abbey six times, start to finish, and if a book about a long dead queen pops up on the shelves at Waterstones you know it is already on my TBR list. However, whenever I am watching and reading these delightful pieces of entertainment, I will usually end up researching the true stories, working out how accurate they are, and often, finding myself disappointed if they’ve glamourised, sexualised, or anachronistically empowered someone. Maybe it makes for a better story, but when reading the truth, I often think that historical fiction makes our public or popular understanding of these histories and these women worse.
On the one hand, I enjoy and appreciate stories about historical women, and it is important to continue to do this, on the other hand, many of these stories write a twenty-first century woman into the past. Take most depictions of Anne Boleyn for example, these sexualise and empower a woman who was actually quite pious, and then she had her head chopped off by her husband, her story is tragic, not idyllic.
When I asked this question over on Instagram there were a few mixed responses: some pointed out that gratuitous sex and violence often creates a warped idea of the real events and people, especially regarding the over-sexualised costumes given to many historical women; others decided that it was absolutely bad, and only a source of entertainment; some argued that representation is representation, regardless of inaccuracy; but many argued that it really depends on the exact source, it can be good, and it can be damaging, with a general consensus that if it’s by Phillippa Gregory then probably the latter.
I conducted a quick Google search to see if there was any sort of definitive answer, there was a resounding gap, criticism yes, of inaccuracies, but no real engagement with how these forms of media affect or influence popular understanding of history, despite their dominance in media. Even if they aren’t history, they often act as such. So, why not fill that gap?
This series will look at examples of historical fiction, and consider, are they good or bad? Now, this isn’t to denounce any of it, fiction is fiction, but I think it is important to establish where the history ends, and the fiction begins.
To do so, it is useful to have some parameters, boundaries to discuss. These will be: (1) accuracy, yes it is fiction, but if they account for a real person, the accuracy of the narrative, or perhaps simply plausibility, is important; (2) sensitivity, hist-fic often deals with controversial, or sensitive elements, does it deal with these well and period appropriately, or does it fall guilty of things like the gratuitous sex and violence we mentioned earlier; (3) entertainment, because this is the point, but how well does it entertain a modern audience, and can it simultaneously maintain accuracy and sensitivity; (4) feminism, let me be controversial, women’s history does not need to make historical women empowered. Sometimes, the most feminist thing a historian, or an author, can do is to tell the complete unadulterated truth, of a women’s victimisation, or her faults.
Each article, or review of hist-fic within this series will consider these four factors and ask, do they make it good? Maybe that’s an arbitrary question, and you’re welcome to disagree, but it is important to engage with women’s history at every level, even a fantastical one.
Coming soon:
Madame de Pompadour and The Doctor
Queen Charlotte and her children
A woman at war: Cecily Neville
Why Bridgerton is good for Georgian and Regency history
Edith Pretty’s glamorisation