Downton Daze Introduction

Today, as many of you may know, is the premiere of the second season of ITV’s smash hit, Downton Abbey. How fortunate for the UK…and unfortunate for the rest of the world, who must now wait until networks in their own countries pick up the broadcasting rights. You can be sure I’ll be hounding the PBS website until January, when they tell me they shall finally be broadcasting.

Until then, for those of us without immediate gratification for our Downton fix, I’m devoting the next several months to trawling through period appropriate costumes, music, poetry, and other relevant media here on my blog. I’m calling this temporary change-over ‘Downton Daze’ and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I’m going to.

Starting off our series will be Cinematic Sundays, a review series of various TV and movies set in the 1900s. Next we’ll have Musical Mondays, where I’ll be featuring various popular tunes of the period, as well as several of the more well known composers. Poetry Promenade will probably float throughout, as I love poetry and I have a lot of poems and poets I’d like to feature, and Fictional Fridays will round out our offerings by discussing written fiction around the Great War Period. I’ve got a stack of books beside my bed just waiting to be read, and I can’t wait to bring them all to your attention. I’ll also be highlighting a lot of great websites throughout the internet world who are also covering Downton and the world it embodies.

Historical fanaticists, take note – I’m more of what you would probably call a popular historical type. I will mainly be reading the kinds of history texts you can buy at your local bookstore, not the more academically minded University press offerings. I apologize in advance for any misdirections on my part and will gladly and joyfully take suggestions and feedback.

So, without more ado --

Cinematic Sunday No. 1 – Manor House, BBC, 2002

Those of you who read this blog already know it is my life’s dream to be able to dress up in period clothing and teach people stuff. What would be only slightly better than that is to dress up in period clothing and teach people stuff on national TV.

Adding to a series of shows that included Colonial House, Regency House Party, Pioneer House and 1940s House, BBC and PBS put together Manor House, a show where 21 members of the general history loving population (like myself) signed up to dress, work, and behave just like their Edwardian counterparts might have done in the years leading up to the Great War.

One family, the Oliff-Coopers, were the ‘Upstairs’ while 15 other cast members formed the ‘Downstairs’ of this historical reality show. The show was filmed at Manderston House in the North of England, where all 21 members of the cast lived just as their counterparts would have nearly a hundred years before. Guiding them on the show were carefully written rule books, patterned after commonly followed advice books of the period, which outlined standards of dress and behavior for each person and their station.

The Upstairs had a pretty easy run of it, so most of the show’s drama focuses instead on the doings of the Downstairs. It turns out living as a maid in the 1900s was a lot harder than some of the cast members anticipated, and partway through the series several members of the cast actually handed in their notice because they were tired – of the long hours, of the regulations placed on the staff, and of the feeling, very strange to our modern sensibilities, that they had suddenly become so much less than the people they were serving upstairs. I don’t usually go for reality shows, but BBC’s production was well-made and very, very accessible. As someone who’s said a number of times that I was born in the wrong period, shows like this always help me put in perspective that, while time travel would be extremely fun, it does help to have been born and brought up with those expectations and social norms.

View the show’s companion page here at PBS! Be sure to check out the page’s ‘You in 1905’ feature – according to their estimates, I would have been running a lodging house with my family. I wouldn’t have married and would have lived a somewhat miserable existence in a shabby dormitory. How’s that for prospects?

You can watch the entire series on YouTube or check it out from your local library. (There's also a companion book that goes with the series.)

Happy watching!

The Created Nature of History

Coming home after being up at school for three months has taught me something I have never previously noticed-- I can't stand public libraries.

It's not the general work environment, or the people who work there, or the noise level. It's nothing anyone else would notice, but in going inside four different public libraries in the past week I've realized that I can't stand the lack of academic history books in the general collection. I wanted another book on the history of Persia, and all I found were coffee table, New York Times best seller list, highly readable but heavily slanted quasi history books about why the middle east is the way it is and the history of modern Iran. I didn't want modern Iran, I wanted classical Iran!

And this lead me back to a subject that we talked a lot about in Post-Colonial Literature, about the created nature of history. The powerful always decide how to slant a story, what words to use to make them appear in a favorable light. I didn't have to read the books on the shelf to know what values the librarians at these libraries were holding up -- it was the absence of books about other subjects, like Arabic poetry or the history of the medieval middle east, that told me a lot about what these people consider valuable. Never mind that there was a whole bookcase of volumes on the medieval European world. Apparently nothing west of the Caucus mattered until the Europeans got there and 'discovered' it.

My friend and co-conspirator on MechKnight, Simon, had an interesting request for me several weeks ago, one that ties very much in with this 'created history' subject. He was beginning a new story in the MechKnight canon and wanted a saint to be a filler character that the main narrator, Monica, could write letters to:

Initially, I was going to pick a saint pretty much at random - I fancied using the name "Catherine" and having Monica not really remember WHICH Catherine. Or, maybe Saint Monica herself - but that might have been confusing. And then I had a very cool idea.

Saint Audemande of Vinceaux.

The impression I got from Jane's words was that she was a woman who might appeal to a young girl as a suitable role model [ed-- I included Aude as a random self-referential bit in This Blessed Plot]
The questions (finally!) I had were;

i) Is she the sort of person who would be canonized by the Church? That is, is her life an example of holiness? She doesn't have to be perfect or an uber example of it in Song of a Peacebringer - because that story is the REAL tale and, as both you and I know, the pious traditions and the actual truth of the lives of Saints are often at odds. But is she a good woman trying to do good things and be holy?

I told him, of course, that Aude doesn't turn out to be a very holy person, or at least the sort of person that the church is in the habit of canonizing (getting married to Muslim, forsaking her faith and all that) but I brought this created history bit into the story. Depending on who's telling her story she can be different things to different people -- One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

"What will we be remembered as, do you think? As great lovers? Lalya and Majun come again?" Aude proposed, wondering aloud.

"No...though we will have been so," her husband promised in a mischievous, promissory tone. Aude decided then and there she loved that tone. "History seldom stops to take such details down. I have written much of history -- nothing was ever exactly as I wrote it. You... you will be remembered as a great beauty -- which you were, of course,” he added. Aude chuckled. “And I will be remembered as a poet, a historian, a leader of men. But our stories will never be told together exactly as they were. Among your people yours will be a tragic, cautionary tale, a beautiful maiden stolen away by a vicious Saracen lord to be his concubine. Captured in battle, perhaps -- a spoil of war until your death.”

“Of grief, of course,” she added. “When I was too young to die.”

"Of course. And my people...” Nasir considered this closely. “To the Muslims you will be a wicked enchantress, who used her magic to ensnare me, and unman the great leader of armies. You will steal me away from my duties in stories, lead me astray...and then perhaps poison me in my sleep. Or stab me in the heart after I attempt to rebel; the authors are still deciding," he said with a smile. Aude gave him a playful jab in the ribs, smiling herself.

Aude and Nasir, being the historians and storytellers that they are, realize and recognize the created nature of history, and also recognize that their story will be different from the actual events regardless of who's telling it.

I hadn't written this last part when Simon asked me this question, so, theoretically, Aude could be the saint Monica wants to write to. She could be the martyred Christian maiden carried off by the vicious and lacivious Arabs that makes such a great Church story.

I guess it all depends on what book you're reading. And clearly, my library doesn't have a copy of the text that reads the story the opposite way.

Keys to Writing Good Historical Fiction

Okay, we've covered how to write a good review. Now we have to get down to the writing task, and I'm going to talk about something that I know a little bit about: Writing good Historical Fiction.

Now obviously the best people who write about historical things are the people who were there. No one, repeat, NO ONE, will write the Regency like Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackaray did, because -- big surprise here -- they lived it. C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brien will draw close seconds, but no one can compare to the originals.

But we love writing historical fiction. I love reading it. I'm not just talking about novels, I'm talking about fanfiction, too. Jane Austen fanfics get published all the time. And there are some things to consider when we consider those fanfics and our humble little offerings.

There are two things standing between the Jane Austen section at ff.net and the publishing house at Scholastic.

One is volume of content.

The other is research. Yes, research, ladies and gentlemen, that lovely word that sends college students scurrying to their corners and high school teenagers screaming to their teachers about how hard the class is. Nothing ruins a historical peice faster than to find that someone has not done their research-

I hate to rain on an otherwise very promising and enjoyable passage, but paper bags weren't invented (or in wide use, sources seem to differ) until the early 1850s. Their pastries would have simply been wrapped in paper and then placed in a basket one of the woman probably had brought. Ah, the good old days before the epic paper or plastic bag decision. Anyway, small note, doubt anyone else besides me noticed, still a very cute passage.

Yes, that is an actual review by me, and yes, I did actually go and look up when paper bags were invented because it bugged me. And I'm not the only one. So here are a few things to consider when writing in a historical context.

• MONEY- It will make a big difference to your story whether people are carrying around Bank of England notes or gold bezants. Find out what people were using for money -- a 'gold coin' isn't going to impress your readers as much as florins, guiders, and guineas are. Especially if you can find how they convert to today's money.
  
• MODES OF TRAVEL- Nothing breaks up a good history more than "The hero left town, and using his horse, traveled across all of England to arrive with his battalion the next night on the opposite coast."A horse does not travel that fast. Find out how people are going from point A to point B, and how long it's going to take to get there. Edith Wharton makes a big to-do about the Brown Coupe people take home from the Opera, and John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath wouldn't be the same without the beat-up car they drive around in. Transportation is everything.
• CLOTHES. A skirt is de rigeur attire for women from William of Normandy to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, but skirts have changed a lot in that time frame. Find out what your people are wearing, down to their shoes and underwear! (This just in -- people did not always have Hanes.) This is the fun part, because you, the author, get to look at lots of pictures! You can watch movies, too, but any period film before, say...the advent of Technicolor film is bound to be a little iffy on period accuracy. The more recent (and big budgeted) the film, the more accurate the costumes will PROBABLY be. There are no guarantees. Your best bet is still books. This is also a really good way to immerse yourself in the culture -- how women and men are dressing will tell you a lot about acceptable behavior. For instance, you can't run in a floor length skirt. Believe me on this one -- I've tried.
  
• MUSIC- Find out what the favorite tunes were. The mood alters significantly if you're playing Flo-Rida as opposed to Frederic Chopin. If you can find it, listen to it while your writing. I'm in the middle of a story about the Crusades and I've been listening to Gregorian Chant, Provencal chansons, and the Kingdom of Heaven Soundtrack until my headphones were tired. Music is evocative -- use it and muse it.
• PASTIMES -- People did not always have monopoly for rainy days. When you were bored, you could not always pull up a game of solitaire on your computer. Chess is a good standby, but there are other games. Cards have been popular since the 1400s, but Poker and Go Fish were not always the games of choice. Find out what people did when they weren't talking to each other and moving the plot along. Who knows -- they could do this activity AND move the plot.
  
• RANK AND POSITION WITHIN SOCIETY. Believe it or not, doctors were not always as respected as they are today. In the 1700s, for instance, many 'doctors' (or physicians, as they were then called, were quacks and the real medical know-how came from men called barber surgeons. Find out who's who, and why.
• FORMS OF SPEECH AND DEPORTMENT. Somehow I can't see Mr. Darcy greeting Charles Bingley in a ballroom with a hearty "Yo, Whaddup, dawg?" and pounding it like some young men would do today. It's just not done, to use the Wharton phrase. People today do not talk the way people did hundreds of years ago -- you need to remember this and implement it. If you use a phrase with your friends, chances are you DON'T want to use it with your characters. If you have trouble with this, go to the original source. Maybe you don't know how people talked during the Civil War, but I'm certain Mr. Mark Twain does.
• POLITICAL STRUCTURES. It makes a big difference in a story if there's a monarchy or a democracy or a communist Soviet in place. Find out who was ruling who (and how they were doing at it) before you begin writing.
  
• CURRENT EVENTS. Nothing warms my heart more than to see small and often stupid references to things that would have been going on in the world at the time. If you're character is in a bar during the 1910s, how's the war going? (Props if you asked yourself which one.) Have we whooped the Kaiser yet? How are the Bolshies doing? Have those darned Irish stopped making a fuss about independence already? (Those were the three conflicts I can think of from 1910-1920, anyway.) If it's set in the 1830s, are your characters discussing how wrong they think it is that a woman (Victoria) is in line for the throne and will probably get it? Things like this really set the scene for the rest of what's happening, and they set the tone of your characters actions.

Finally, and very importantly, that Elephant in the Room,

• GENDER ROLES. We live in a very different world from the heroines of Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton, even Sylvia Plath, and unfortunately, women have not always been able to run around in combat zones (they're still not really, actually) and run businesses and represent people in Congress. Additionally, men were once upon a time very concerned with how they dressed and being 'fashionable' and caring about exactly how you looked was not always considered 'gay' as it sometimes seems to be labeled nowadays. Find out how people were expected to behave. Were women allowed to read at this point in history? Were men allowed to date a girl without asking her dad first?
  

Hopefully this list has given you some ideas to think about, perhaps not for a first copy of a story, but maybe for a revision or editing of a previously published work. This is what separates the published authors from the unpublished ones. It's called Research, and it is hard work.