More after the jump.

So I’m not horrified to have someone call me historically inaccurate. I only shoot for historically accurate for some values of historically accurate. I certainly don’t want to feel like I’m in the position of defending my books as historically accurate for all values thereof.

Some people read historical romance because they want to be completely submersed in the mores of the time. They want to leave behind all the baggage of 2010. They want to live in a world where dukes reign supreme, where a girl has five hundred servants, where class differences are sharp enough to cut to the bone. They don’t want those views questioned, because that will pop them back to the present.

These people are annoyed if a lady and her maid have a friendly conversation—that wasn’t the norm back then! They refuse to read stories about lords who marry courtesans—that wasn’t the norm back then! They don’t want to hear about genteel young ladies getting ruined—that wasn’t the norm back then!

These people aren’t wrong. They are just stating a preference: when they read historical fiction, they want the views expressed in that fiction to adhere closely to those in historical times, because that’s what they like to read about. (They don’t always state their preference that way, but that’s what it comes down to.) They don’t want their historical romance to reflect modern sentiments. They want the historical dose pure and unadulterated.

So, lemme fess up. The “historical accuracy means no modern morals” crowd is pretty much going to hate my books.

I have said before that while I try to make sure that my books are historically accurate in the sense that the events could have happened, my books are not, and will never be, historically average. In fact, I lean towards the opposite—historically extraordinary.

I do that on purpose: I use the past as a crucible to explore the present. I write my books to feel relevant to the struggles of today, not to escape them. I acknowledge the norms of the time, but I don’t let them win. I write women who triumph. I let the romance be sex-positive. I write fairytales of meritocracy set in a land where aristocracy exists to be subverted and brought to its knees. That reality disagrees with the morals I import from 2010 just means that I have all the more conflict in my books.

This tendency of mine is most apparent in Unveiled, because frankly, Ash turned out to be the most extraordinary hero I’ve written. We’re not talking lady-and-maid having a friendly conversation extraordinary. When most people get in a fight with reality, reality wins. But there are a handful of people I would back against the crushing weight of reality. And when I realized that Ash was one of them, I tried to give him a sprinkling of the qualities that truly extraordinary people share.

Who do I mean by “truly extraordinary”?

Example:

British Empire: How can I help you, er, whatever your name is…is that pronounced ‘Mohandas’?
Gandhi: We would like some self-determination, please.
British Empire: HA HA HA. We are the mighty British Empire! Bow before us. Good-bye, Mohandas!
Gandhi: So sorry to hear that. Have some non-violence.
British Empire: Here now, what’s this? We can’t fight that with our army.
Gandhi: Take that with a grain of salt. In fact, have a lot of salt.
British Empire: …you know, Gandhi-ji, you have a point.

Or:

Jim Crow: Stand there. Live there. You can’t have that as a profession. And don’t argue! I am in control of the entire world, and you can’t even vote, so how could you possibly stop us?
Martin Luther King: Well, it’s wrong and immoral.
Jim Crow: That makes me feel strangely awful about myself, so I’m going to burn crosses in retaliation. Also, bomb your house.
MLK: Have some reason. Have some nonviolence.
Jim Crow: Your rational response seriously undermines our assertions that blacks are an inferior race, and that pisses me off.
MLK: Here. Have a dream.
Jim Crow: …
…That sucks. My shame just outpaced my anger.

Or:

Snooty Law Firm: I see that you graduated third in your class from Stanford Law School. I am unwillingly impressed.
Sandra Day O’Connor: I would like a job.
Snooty Law Firm: We do need a legal secretary.
Sandra Day O’Connor: You should treat people on the basis of merit, instead of external criteria.
Snooty Law Firm: Don’t be like that. Our clients would never forgive us if we hired a female attorney. Besides, your husband can support you.
Sandra Day O’Connor: That’s all right, dear. *has extremely satisfying career in public service instead.*
Decades later
Snooty Law Firm: Justice O’Connor. How…er, how awkward to see you here at the Supreme Court.
Sandra Day O’Connor: Why don’t you sit down and tell me what your problem is? I have some really great cinnamon tea.
Snooty Law Firm: What? You’re not going to abuse your authority?
Sandra Day O’Connor: Somewhere along the way I picked up the notion that you should treat people on the basis of merit.

(Historical characterizations subject to nitpickery, but these exceptions shouldn’t be cited to as precedent.)

Ash does not change reality quite as much as these people did, but I drew on their qualities. And that means there are times in the book—many times—when Ash is explicitly faced with the norms of the time, and cheerfully, happily tosses them to the wind. This is, after all, a book about a dude who is the heir to a dukedom who goes after a woman who he thinks is a bastard nurse.

And so yes, I am fine with people calling it historically inaccurate. If you go into this book expecting Ash, my hero, to act like the pattern-card of a proper English gentleman, you are going to be severely disappointed. If you are the kind of person who shrieks in horror when the daughter of the house has a conversation with her maid, you are going to absolutely hate Ash. He knows what all the rules are, and he takes a sly pride in breaking every single one. Deliberately. He knows that it Shouldn’t Be Done, and he figures that’s a pretty good reason to try it.

And so I bring to you a summary of the first few chapters of Unveiled (don’t worry, it’s non-spoilery).

Ash: You’re a servant here on the estate?
Margaret: *cough* …Yes.
Ash: The estate where I have effectively infinite power, and where you’re a bastard who has nothing?
Margaret: *gulp*
Ash: Lucky for you, I think that the whole notion of social class is an antiquated delusion and consent is sexy.
Margaret: Whaa…? What planet do you come from?
Ash: This is what happens when you go from dirt-poor to nouveau riche to duke’s heir. No respect for ancient customs, that’s me. Wanna have dinner? Let’s invite the housekeeper.
Margaret: That’s wrong on every possible level! Classes can’t mix. If you don’t believe in class, how on earth do you judge people?
Ash: Meritocracy. It’s hot. Try it out.

I’m not exaggerating all that much.

So there you are. Admissions made: I import modern morals into my historical romances. In my mind, that’s a feature, not a bug.

(I edited the post to move where the jump was, because it was causing problems on my main website. Go figger.)

There are some fundamental vocabulary problems at work here. That is because people do not use the same words to mean the same things.

Thus:

When people talk about a “historically accurate book,” they can mean any of the following:

1. an attempt to recreate a period piece, in which the author mimics the formal sentence structure and word choice of Regency-era works.
2. a book, set in historical times, where the author gets all of the major (e.g., plot-dependent) details right, and the vast majority of the minor ones.
3. a book, set in historical times, wherein the author demonstrates that she has done her homework by including as much detail as possible.
4. a book, set in historical times, wherein the characters adhere firmly to the strictures of their time, without any deviation, no matter their (otherwise historically accurate) motivations.

I have heard books decried as “not historically accurate” or “wallpaper historicals” for failure to meet any of the above 4 qualifications.

I attempt to write books that are historically accurate as per definition 2. My personal taste does not run to books written to definitions 1, 3, and 4, although there is clearly a market for those books as well.

Right now, apropos Sarah F.’s post on Dear Author, there is a massive discussion ranging on twitter about historical accuracy. I think 95% of the disagreement is that those who are claiming historical accuracy is less important are talking about books of the 1 and 3 variety, and those who are in favor are talking about books of the 2 variety.

Some examples:

• I got to hold–hold and handle–the rolls containing the oaths of office of all city officials. I wanted to see what form the oaths took. These were 200 year old pieces of parchment. Yes, actual parchment, not paper. It was amazing.
• There was a massive book containing nothing except parking tickets circa the 1840s, which, while printed on thick paper, gave me a wave of nostalgia for present times: Dear John Sheppy, you left your wagon in the street for two hours, and caused an obstruction; appear at the Council House and pay a fine of up to 40 shillings.
• There was the book of informations laid in the Petty Sessions. Petty Sessions deal with small crimes. You know the type; hitting your wife, assaulting a constable, stealing pigeons, running away from apprenticeships and the like. Out of around 800 informations laid in the book I looked at, 4 were dismissed; the others were convicted. The punishments were usually either the paying of a fine and/or imprisonment; the normal term was about 7 days, but they went up to 6 weeks hard labor (that one was for exposing ones person), and were as low as a fine of 5 shillings for being drunk in public. Of the four instances where charges were dismissed, two of the defendants had obvious indications of wealth: One had hired a lawyer (there was a cross examination listed in the book), and the other made note in talking of his defense that he had “his gig waiting” during the supposed assault on the constable. Of the other one, one was accused of animal cruelty, and the other of breaking a window. For that last one, the court clerk, clearly knowing what to expect, had already written “convicted” on the line, and had to cross it out.See? That first line–C-squiggle-squiggle-loop–is the law hand abbreviation for “convicted.” I saw a lot of those. If you squint, you can read the line just above it, which shows his defense (or, as they spelled it, defence): “It was accidentally done.”
• While we’re at it, I’ve always known that the Oxford English Dictionary, which gives the first use found in print, for various phrases is off, particularly for slang. That’s because most words are used in speech long before they are used in printed publications. This is particularly true for words that would have been considered obscene at the time: it would have been illegal to print them.But my margin so far has been around 10 years, maybe 15, depending on the word in question. I’m going to have to rethink that. The phrase in question is “bloody hell,” and the OED attests it first from 1886. But here we are in 1838, and the constable claims he’s been told to go to bloody hell. Now, I note that this is not quite the same thing as using “Bloody hell!” as an exclamation. Nonetheless–all the bloody hell naysayers should take note.

  Incidentally, I liked this court reporter best. His handwriting was legible and not spidery, he wrote fast (meaning that we got much more story when he wrote, instead of a few lines), and he didn’t stint from using language like “bloody hell,” unlike the lame reporter in the beginning who started to write “exposing his naked parts” and then crossed off “naked parts” and substituted “person.” Once I figured out that “afs–” was his abbreviation for assault, we were all good. I imagine from his handwriting that this dude was cute. (I know. He was probably 75 and bald. Awww.)

  I’ve blurred out most of the document because the rest of the tale is pretty darned good–it’s obvious that the defendant knows how to tell a story, and who knows? I might end up using this in some altered form!

• There was much, much more. But this was seriously awesome.

Caveat: I say all this as someone who really, really tries to get things right. Which is why I’m in England on a research trip right now. And I know that sounds sexy, but what it means is that I spent two hours today taking literally hundreds of photographs of the period maps in Bristol’s City Museum, and I will spend the vast majority of tomorrow at the Bristol Records Office, reading the City Recorder’s notebooks and notes from the Petty Sessions for the years in question. It’s why I spend hours with the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Historical Thesaurus in front of me when I’m in the revision stage, checking hundreds of words; and why I ask Franzeca Drouin to look over my manuscripts for a second eye to accuracy once I’ve given it my very best shot, because I know I still miss stuff.

(Caveat the second: In my upcoming book, my heroine wears night-rails not made from linen. But she has them specially made for a particular purpose; in fact, she usually wears linen. As I found a few records of night-rails of non-linen-fabric for the super-wealthy, this fell into the category of historically possible attire, although it’s not historically average. She could have done so. She was motivated to do so. It fit the story for her to do so.)

In any event, Kalen makes the following assertion:

To me, it seems ridiculous to even bother writing “historical fiction” (be it romance, mystery, whathaveyou) if the “historical” part is optional.

I don’t think that the “historical” part of my books is “optional.” I work very, very hard at it. But I also don’t think that the history is the point of my books, either. Or, rather: I think the past is a vehicle for the present.

When Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, he wasn’t writing an indictment of Puritan hypocrisy. When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, he wasn’t trying to villify the people who ran the Salem Witch trials. And I am not trying to say that I am the next Hawthorne or Miller. But neither Hawthorne nor Miller were “ridiculous” even though they weren’t always historically accurate, and were not striving for historical accuracy. It would be bizarre to condemn The Crucible on the grounds that it was a wallpaper historical courtroom drama. That’s because Hawthorne and Miller weren’t trying to write period pieces. They were using the past as a safe space to discuss the present.

I write in the late 1830s/early 1840s. I do so not because I am completely enamored of early Victorian times, or because I think it is sexy or because I think that it has pretty clothing (because, actually, the clothing of the era is quite ugly). I’ve explained this elsewhere in greater detail, but I write in a time period where everything is changing: the notion of society, the meaning of community, even what things have value. Towns are breaking up; the industrial revolution is hitting hard, and nobody knows what tomorrow will look like. It’s a time of enormous uncertainty.

In other words, it sounds a lot like modern times.

Today, we know that the industrial revolution wasn’t as horrible as some feared (Mr. Milan, who is a Luddite, will contest this). We know that the democratization of society and the erosion of class boundaries was a good thing. We know that giving women more freedom worked out okay. It didn’t destroy the family. It didn’t lead to anarchy. My readers know that; I know that. And so the historical setting is a safe place to explore what it means when society, culture, community, and even basic notions of value all change drastically, with that unknown future hovering on the horizon, waiting to swallow your child’s inheritance.

I do a lot of research–hundreds of hours for every book. When departing (or even appearing to depart, which is the bigger problem) from history, I agonize over the questions for weeks. I care about being historically accurate, to the extent that it is consistent with the story I am trying to tell. But I’m not ashamed to admit that if it comes down to a question between the accuracy of the history, and the theme and message and feel of my book for the modern reader, I will pick the theme and message and feel of my book every single time.

I’m not writing period pieces. And that’s not ridiculous.

Imagine my wince of pain when the infinitely wise Franzeca Drouin pointed out that the OED does not list “breath-taking” until Mark Twain uses it in . . . 1880.  Ow.

Or, to use more historically inaccurate language: Fuck.(*)

A frantic search ensued for synonyms or near synonyms.  As the search drew on, I would have settled for things that might have looked like synonyms if viewed in extremely dim lighting.  And I was tempted.  I was sorely tempted.  Historical accuracy be damned; how many readers were going to notice that the word “breathtaking” is not period for 1844?  But down that road lies a million different historical inaccuracies, and once you start down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny and turn your books into historicals breathtaking (ha ha) in their wallpaperishness.

Finally, I checked google books and found this.

Whew–breath-taking, figurative sense, 1831.  There are a few more in the 1830s to 1840 range.  And I am content, sitting at 1844.  This just goes to show that the OED is not omniscient.  Almost, but not quite.

*heaves giant sigh of relief*

–

* Fuck, of course, has been in use as a noun and a verb for ages–”I’m eager for a fuck” is period even though it sounds ridiculously modern to my ear, as is “he fucked her.”  But fuck as a general expression of dismay is not.  Alas.

But here’s a question.

Why is it, in historicals, that all carpets are Aubusson, all vases are Sevres (or, more precisely, “precious Sevres”), and all gowns are made by Worth?

I mean, I realize these are excellent manufacturers, but not all purses have to be Prada and some stiletto heels are made by manufacturers other than Mahnolo Blahnik.  The only thing more cliched than a Sevres vase is a precious Sevres vase, and the adjective is only applied to make the reader wince when it is tossed against a wall in a fit of pique–presumably, because the man doing the tossing has been trying to get a hold of a vase by another manufacturer and is furious at the stranglehold monopoly that Sevres keeps in Regency times.  Damn those vase cartels!

I want options!

All righty then–it’s back to my broken Grecian urn–which is my non-Sevres vase.

It’s entitled Women, Property, and Personhood (not the title that’s showing up on the Conference List), and it’s a short look at the legal development of property rights in England (and only England, sorry, Scotland has its own courts of equity and I’ve never researched anything from them), with a particular look at how they pertain to women’s property rights and personhood. As this is a writer’s conference, the focus is on plots rather than particulars of the law.

You are probably thinking something like this: “Oh great. I would rather be bludgeoned to death with a baby seal then attend, at 9:45 in the morning no less, a workshop that delves into legal details from three centuries ago. Well, look at it this way: This workshop is 55 minutes long. The subject matter could fill a small room chock full of microfiche. If I tried to convey a great amount of legal detail, (a) I would run out of time before I hit 1400 A.D., (b) you would all fall asleep, and (c) there would be no guarantees I would get to material that would be useful to you.

So what I’m doing, instead of conveying vast amounts of factual detail, is giving a very broad overview of how people thought about property throughout history. I’ll explain how these give rise to a number of rules, and I’ll hand out a common checklist of “ways to figure out if you may be making a legal error.” The last half of the workshop will be hands on–we will examine wills and devises from actual romance novels, and I’ll show you how to use my checklist to figure out whether they can (or can’t) hold up, and if they can’t hold up, I’ll explain ways that the author could have achieved the exact same plot points.

In short, it’s designed to be useful for writers, to facilitate your plots (rather than to pull them to pieces), and to be more fun than you ever imagined law could be. Which, believe it or not, is pretty darned fun!

So come, and win various and sundry prizes, such as CDs containing scans of complete legal treatises (some of which are not available on Google Books), and never-seen-before-dare-you-to-wear-them buttons promoting the coolest, legally-accuratest Regency-set trilogy that 2009 will see!