I’ve been reading romance novels for over twenty years now — yes, I started too young — and although I now read more contemporaries, my nostalgic favorites are the historicals I started with. So, the topic of historical accuracy in fiction is of deep interest to me:
"Historical authors Celeste Bradley and Nicole Byrd will be presenting their workshop ‘It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to’ — a debate on the necessity (or not!) of historical accuracy in the romance novel. As one who watches from the sidelines, I won’t be presenting my opinion on the subject here. However, I am deeply interested in learning about your views on the matter.
"How do you feel about historical accuracy in the novels you read?"
My rule of thumb is that if the reader can spot the error, the entire effect of the fictional "world" the author is trying to create evaporates. This can occur even when the error is minor, but is appalling when the error is so huge that it shows a lack of care by the author in performing requisite research. An example of both:
- When I read Regency historicals — a hot "trend" in the romance novel world right now — I cringe every time a married lady has "Mrs." tacked on to her first name and married surname. The people of the British Regency era were sticklers for manners, indeed the fictional genre owes its start to Jane Austen’s comedies of manners set during the British Regency (ca. 1811-1820), and a woman of that time would never be called Mrs. Anne Smith. In historical usage, "Mrs." is attached to the husband’s full name — in other words, Mrs. Anne Smith should be titled Mrs. John Smith. This is a small error, but an annoying one for a reader who catches it.
- The most appalling error I ever came across was in a medieval romance that abused the seal of the sacrament of confession not once, but twice in the same novel. Two separate plot points depended upon two different priests violating the sacramental seal. The first time I gritted my teeth and plowed on with the novel because the violation was part of the "back story" (information from before the book opens that must be mentioned for the overall development of a character but doesn’t necessarily affect the present action all that much); the second time, the plot resolution depended on another priest — a bishop, if I remember correctly — violating the sacramental seal. At that point, I was so outraged that the book metaphorically thudded against my wall. That it didn’t do so in actuality was solely because I like my walls more than I did the book.
Frankly, I think if an author is going to take the trouble to write a book, the story should be as historically accurate as her research can make it. If dramatic license must be taken, note should be made of the deliberate inaccuracies in an afterword. To include dramatic license, but to attempt to leave the reader ignorant of it — i.e., "It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to" — only makes the author look ignorant, at best, or careless, at worst, to a knowledgeable reader.
It’s even worse for alternate history fans like myself, when a book just blithely ignores historical realities, which, given the genre, is an absolute horror. Eric Flint’s 1632 series is one I found highly annoying because it is so historically ignorant. Inquisition being cruel and developing secret police tactics, the Americans go on doing their best to spread republicanism and no one smacks them for it, even when they are subverting their own titular king, everyone speaks modern English or German, etc.
Harry Turtledove is even worse in his Worldwar Series. No logistics problems whatsoever, Germans able to build a nuke (Heisenburg was incompetant to the point of it looking like he was deliberately sabotaging the effort in reality), R&D of tanks able to take on the equivalent of Abrams, Spitfires shooting down the equivalent of F-15 Eagles, etc.
Ok… I’ve never ever read a romance novel. There’s just too much sci-fi to read to take the time. 🙂
But if I were to read one romance novel, to widen by horizon and all that, what would be a good one?
To the uninitiated in historical accuracy, such as myself, this is very rarely a ‘spoiler’ issue, so long as there aren’t flagrant breaches pertaining to periodic settings etc.
The old romances are my absolute favourite, and by that I mean to say, those that are often viewed with derision nowadays, such as Jayne Eyre, Little Women, Sense and Sensibility, Emma etc…though if you could recommend a modern (as in relatively recently written) romance …I just might add it to my ever increasing foot long Amazon wish list!
God Bless.
I’ll do some thinking and try to put up a list soon. In the meantime, my all-time favorite is Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer, set during World War II.
Morning Glory it is.
That’s a great choice. And I’m not just saying that because I can get a used copy on Amazon for $0.01 …
Um…. ok… yes I am. 🙂
I’ve been working on this writing thing for years 🙂 On one hand you can argue that they’re writing to their audience. Which implies their audience is stupid and can’t comprehend cultural differences beyond their own tiny little world, or that the author/publisher just THINKS their audience is stupid. Nobody wants to be treated like an idiot. On the other hand… no one wants to be talked down to 🙂 I think it’s a fine line. I also get annoyed when I’m watching tv shows that take place during a certain time period, or reading books or watching movies or whatever… and I hear them say words that I know didn’t come into circulation until later, because I’m a werd nerd. I don’t think writers have a “duty” to be as accurate as possible, but I think it helps maintain the illusion if you dont have ten different things that’re each going to pop out at three or four different people out of the thousands that may read your book. I think in the end, like good customer service, it ends up doing more for loyalty than cutting corners.
Unfortunately, I love history and got into Regencies through Georgette Heyer. Nobody else is the same.
There are just so _many_ inaccuracies! Names are my pet peeve. A good period name sets the scene so well, and an implausible or impossible one jerks you out of the story altogether. I don’t demand that everyone speak forsoothly, of course, but a nod here and there to real manners and habits of the time does wonders. However, misuse of slang (especially indications that the writer doesn’t know what a word actually means) or misjudged tone is also a big killer.
And if a writer must have decadent characters doing decadent things, they should be decadent and wicked _according to the time_, not according to other romance novels. Also, it’s okay to have some characters do normal period things which modern people see as being bad and have other characters criticize them — but they should criticize them as a person of that time would, not as Oprah would.
Nobody expects perfection. But a reader has a right to expect the storyteller not to be relentlessly unhistorical and annoying. If someone must be unhistorical, they should at least do it with style.
(For example, Samurai Champloo on Cartoon Network. The creators were quite open about the show not being historical, because they wanted to mix hiphop and Tokugawa samurai, and so it was less jarring to have equally jarring scenes and music all the way through. But they’re rigorously attentive to detail even in their unhistoricity.)
I am with you on another front. I was reading a few of the “Left Behind” books years ago but I couldn’t take it anymore for two reasons. One the theology was terrible and two whenever they talked of anything to do with engineering they got it wrong. GAAAAAA!!!!
You’d be amazed what throws you out —
I choke on medievals with goldenrod in England. Or worse yet, chocolate, including cocoa, or smoking. Native to North America, anyone?
And my mother complains about rhododenrum hedges in Regencies. They were brought to England in Victorian times.
Then I don’t read many Regencies, but I remember one where the park was filled with nannies and perambulators. Or maybe baby carriages — but which term you use is moot. Baby carriages were a Victorian invention.
Btw, some of you may know that Japan’s comics industry not only caters to men, boys, and girls, but also to women. Love comics are still popular there (though frankly, they’re obviously popular again over here, and probably would have stayed popular here past the early sixties if American comics companies hadn’t failed half their audience). One prominent one is Harlequin Romance comics, which feature anime adaptations of translated Harlequin romance books.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=6749
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050601/nyw186.html?.v=7
And now they’re coming to the US from Dark Horse.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. 🙂
Actually, women’s comics are usually well drawn — sometimes a little too banally pretty, that’s all. Dark Horse is a good company, too, so feel free to subscribe, or pre-order through your local comics shop. I’m just torn about whether this is cool or the end of the world.
http://www.cuppacafe.com/comics/
Scans of some Harlequin comics (in Japanese)
Wow, Maureen! That’s really cool!
I guess it’s because I’m a “visual” person, but for some reason, the idea of romance comics is so much more appealing to me. I’ll have to look into that. 🙂
Mary – the potatoes in pre-1492 Europe get me every time. Come on, people, didn’t you ever have to read those charts in grade school about “What Common Foods Came From The New World”? Have your unlikely Irish bardesses throw something else in their ubiquitous stews.
Um. My nearsighted eyes didn’t spot it last night, but one of those tiny little scans turns into a sex scene. A fairly non-explicit one, but nevertheless.
I would say this was what I was worried about — but there are already American comics which go that far, and almost certainly translated manga, too. Still, it’s not like we need more.
On the other hand, as I indicated above, love comics were an important part of the American (and British) comics market back in the day, just as love pulps were. But love pulps could be largely replaced by romance book lines, whereas love comics just went away. (Which sounds more like market competition from books, lack of interest by editors, and a refusal to shift from the old-fashioned short stories to long form/serial comics, rather than ‘women just didn’t read comics anymore’, which is the traditional explanation.) Romance fans have a right to be excited about romance comics.
http://www.geocities.com/mbrown123/youngromance1.html
Jack Kirby’s Young Romance comics
http://www.comics-db.com/pages/DC_Comics/Y/Young_Love/
Covers from a large chunk of DC’s sixties Young Love comics (click on the name)
http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=1963&si=126
Postwar love comics covers (looking like love pulps)
Marvel and DC now both want to use their old love comic heritage, since shoujo manga have shown the way. But they’re more than a bit ambiguous about it. As you can see from DC’s recent project:
http://www.dccomics.com/features/romance/
I haven’t read any real American love comics (few survive!) though I’ve read some British ones in an academic book. Yes, some gender attitudes are problematic. But I can’t believe they all were. (Some love pulp stories are fairly solid, though Sturgeon’s Law is of course in force. And many of the old love pulp covers are just plain charming, which is why the original cover paintings and reproductions sell.)
http://www.philsp.com/data/data241.html
Ranch Romances was “the last of the pulps”, lasting from 1924 to 1971. Other magazines were called things like Love Story, All-Story Love, Sweetheart Stories, and the like. I feel there’s a fairly solid marketing line between love pulps and “true confessions” pulps, but others disagree.
One of the few survivors of the old girls’ comics is Marvel’s 1944 heroine Patsy Walker, who survived by becoming the superheroine Hellcat. (Which one page points out was like Archie turning into Spiderman, but….)
http://underworld.fortunecity.com/blood/201/marvel/hellcat.html
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2855/patsy2.html
I’m wrestling with willful suspension of disbelief when contemplating the American classic movie The Blues Brothers. Why would a Catholic orphanage owe property tax? They lost me right there…I do find a small bit of comfort in finding out that Calumet City is, indeed, in Cook County. But $5000 property tax? Of course, maybe the ‘penguin’ wasn’t a real nun and it wasn’t a real orphanage and Jake and Elwood were being taken. One can only ponder…
You noticed —
That one managed to not throw me out of the Blue Brothers movie (though just this moment it occured to me that they could have had to pay a water bill or the like).
My sister the costumer can’t watch The Adventures of Robin Hood for the costumes, and my sister the fencer can’t for the fighting.
I agree, of course, but you’d have total fit, I guess, if you attended a morality play in, say, 14th century Cologne, wherein the lowly shepherds exclaimed upon seeing Baby Jesus “By St. Nicholas, it’s a boy!”
Whoa Maureen, you’ve seen Samurai Champloo and read shoujo manga? Coolness… (yes, I’m a anime/manga fan)
I would reccomend you to watch ‘Emma’ a new Japanese anime about romance set in Victorian times. I haven’t seen the first episode yet (though I’ve already downloaded the fansub version) for lack of time, but I’ve heard is really good. I’ll post my impressions here when I finally see it…
I review romance novels. Some are wonderful (Carla Kelly’s regency novels) some are abominable (anything by Fern Michaels). Recently I saw one that had chocolate candy in Italy during the Renaissance. No way!
I, too, LOVE history and so am always noticing historical accuracy or inaccuracy.
Sorry, I am not one for Romance fiction, but in the broader fictional context… it makes or breaks a novel.
One of the main reasons that I love the twenty BR. CADFAEL mysteries (by Ellis Peters)is their historical accuracy. Besides plots, the good writing and character development is that they are in chronological order… and one can actually learn some history while along for the ride.
Then, there is the DaVinci Code, and we all know of the historical factual inaccuracies there, eh?
As for the Left Behind series… one more reason I couldn’t get past the sixth or tenth or fourth book was that they just seemed to have turned to filling pages… after all, there are zillions of dollars that can be made, in Jesus name.
YMMV.
In Brother Cadfael, at one point a marriage ceremony is performed, between a woman and a kidnapped boy, and the boy consented because — the priest performing the ceremony as not a priest. So the marriage would be invalid.
Pre-Council of Trent. Perfectly valid. (Except for his having been kidnapped.)
Again, a baby is born but very weak, and they not only do not have water on hand, they do not send for it — but for the priest. He doesn’t come, because he has to finish his prayers, and so the baby dies unbaptized.
Anyone can perform a baptism. In days of much higher infant mortality, this was common knowledge. A major responsibility of midwives was to baptize babies that might die.
If you want to read an excellent historical fiction trilogy with just one small sci-fi-like stretch, try Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, starting with Quicksilver. The historical accuracy is AMAZING!
Thanks Joy. I’ll have to check that out. I enjoyed Stephenson’s Snowcrash, so I chances are good that I would like Quicksilver as well.
I’m pretty interested in the historical accuracy topic myself–which is why Nicole Byrd and I are holding the above workshop in the first place. “It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to” isn’t a seminar on how to trick the reader because we underestimate their intelligence. It will be precisely what is happening in this very message board–a debate. Did someone miss that little detail in the description?
I am a professional fiction writer with seven single-titles on the bookshelves. Fiction–which verges on “fantasy” in a non SF/F way. I write romantic fantasies for modern women–and men, if they’re interested. This question is one that comes up for me on a daily basis. What to use? What to lose?
And anyone who throws Georgette Heyer at me as an example of accuracy–well, I love the books, but really, people. She was another fiction writer, as was Jane Austen. In my research I discovered that Jane Austen had a niece who tried to write a similar sort of novel. She sent it to her aunt, who replied that the girl had it all wrong and no one in the peerage would actually behave that way.
Now, if a person living in that time could not portray it correctly, how is a person of our time supposed to be entirely correct? The fact is that we cannot and there is no real point in trying for absolute accuracy. Even historians cannot completely agree on some of the smallest details.
The world of the American Regency romance novel never existed except in the minds of American romance writers–or even British ones such as Georgette Heyer. There simply weren’t that many hot young dukes around!
For example, the morals of the time tended to reflect those of the monarch–the Prince Regent, George IV, who was a player of the highest order–not those of the later Queen Victoria as most writers perceive. Georgette Heyer’s own Edwardian upbringing and bias showed at every turn and most romance writers are thoroughly steeped in their Heyer.
I could go on forever, but the fact is, we are making the whole thing up, based on whatever we can ferret out via reference books and the internet and what other writers have done before us. Reader expectation means more than accuracy most of the time. The point of the discussion ought to be, how much is enough in a world where everyone with internet access imagines themselves an expert?