Writing culture and religion into historical fiction, by Gillian Polack

The Jewish New Year is today, so I’m going to celebrate it with a post that contains things Jewish. And I’m going to put other things in it because I can. I was on four panels at a science fiction conference today – this makes me obstreperous.

One of my panels was on fairytales and folk culture. Someone asked me what the Jewish tradition said in relation to the concepts she knew from her popular culture. The example she gave was grouping things in threes. My first thought was “We’re both Australian, I do what she does on this. Why has she assumed I do something different?” I thought this was not a kind thing to ask, so I asked her what she meant by Jewish tradition. It came back, in the end, to the same thing. She thought there was one folk culture.

Judaism has many, many cultures. My culture is Australian Jewish or Jewish Australian (depending on the mood I’m in when I get out of bed in the morning) and my Jewish language is English. I am notorious for using threes in my fiction. In my novel about haunted Canberra, I have three friends for instance, at the heart of everything. I explained this, but I also asked her what her Christian tradition was. She instantly gave her branch of Christianity and worked within that. She had the power to reinterpret the question (after a few minutes thought) whereas I was expected to stick with a universal. That’s one reason I asked what she meant by “Jewish tradition” – she didn’t mean my personal background. She meant a universal. The bottom line is that there is an assumption underlying questions of certain minorities. I’m expected to answer for all Jews, but I’m a sadly limited human being and can only answer for the cultures I know.

Where does history fit into this? Firstly, I wanted an excuse to give you a picture of Montpellier’s mikvah (ritual bath). I took the picture in 2011, and the research trip was helped by ArtsACT. The bath doesn’t appear in any of my fiction yet, but Montpellier itself is in Langue[dot]doc 1305. I happen to like this picture. 

Medieval Mikvah, Montpellier Picture (c) Gillian Polack, 2011.

This brings me to “where does history fit” #2. The Serious Answer.

I am a Medievalist. That’s why I have a picture of a mikvah on my computer. It’s possible to answer that set of questions for the Middle Ages. In fact, not only is it possible, it’s essential for writers to do so.

So often we say English vs French, when the English people can be from Cambridgeshire or Cornwall and have very little folklife in common and the French could be Normandy or Aquitaine. Some of the people might be Jewish. In the south of France, there were Moslem French people, and Cathars. There are books written on these cultural variations in the Middle Ages. We can find out quite a bit about them. They have their own identities. Many Cathars and Jews died protecting their cultural and religious identities.

It’s so important not to say “medieval people” as if they were all the same. There is no single “medieval person.” When we construct one for our fiction, we construct from a variety of sources and, ideally, create an individual who represents their place and their time and not the stereotype. There is a medieval notion of “Everyman” but this doesn’t make all people into that one theoretical being.

If there isn’t a single universal modern Jew, then there wasn’t a single universal medieval one. What’s more, medieval Jews and Christians shared a whole heap of culture, just as I do with the others on that panel. Three religions on that panel today, and we all wrote groups of three into our stories. What unites us is at least as important as what divides us. I’m not just talking about current events. This works for writing fiction as well. Let me explore a bit.

Just as my ‘Jewish language’ is English, in England and France in the Middle Ages, the chief Jewish language was Old French. There are accounts written in Old French in Hebrew characters and there are notes written in Old French on religious and legal texts. My favourite illustration of this is always (so I’ve overused it!) the word for divorce, which comes to us from Jewish sources. If we only had Christian texts from the Middle Age, we wouldn’t know that there was a word for it in Old French at all. The word is ‘akitement’, and it pretty much means ‘finishing the contract’ in my reading of it. Jewish marriage was (and is) a contract rather than a sacrament, and this explains why we have the word from Jewish sources. It’s interesting that the Hebrew had to be glossed with the Old French – Old French was the language people used, then, when they wanted to talk about these issues. For a historical romance, it means that there is the notion of divorce but not a simple way of achieving it for Christians. This is an amazing tension to add to a story about an unhappy marriage. “They can get out of misery without great sacrifice, but we can’t.”

Then there is the Jewish Arthur, who is Italian but written in Hebrew. A short, unfinished work exists from the thirteenth century called “King Arthur” (Melekh Artus). My other favourite Jewish Arthurian story is later. It’s “Widuwilt”, a variant of a German version of a French story about Gawain’s nephew. This demonstrates that culture can be shared across borders and across religions. People talk to each other. Very handy when you want characters to hold conversations, for there are certain subjects they share. A useful tool for writers, and it’s based on understanding that culture is complex.

When we ask “What is the tradition?” we need to allow for cultural crossings and border crossings; we need to look at how the owners of the culture see themselves and describe themselves; we need to get the historical contexts and the cultural contexts right. If we don’t, we have fewer tools to work with to create marvellous stories. If we don’t then we’re more liable to create hollow characters. Universal Jews, Universal Englishmen (who probably all eat roast beef, and if the French medieval tales are correct, who menstruate and have tails), Universal Frenchmen (who, if the English medieval tales are correct all eat horse and are cowardly).

Breaking stereotypes is important for living successfully in culturally mixed society. We hear this a lot. It applies just as much to writing fiction as to living in a complex society. The stereotypes are not the people. They’re a set of attitudes that have developed due to culturally important reasons, but they are not the people who are described. The historical fiction that sees the biases and shows the individuals and how they deal with being told they have tails or are cowardly has a far greater kick to it than fiction that merely repeats those stereotypes.

This small reflection of the emotions we feel when we are caught up in one of those moments enables us to feel understanding with people in other places, at other times. The tension between the way someone is described and the way someone is as a person is a powerful tool for fiction because it can contain such a very big emotional range.

So many people have told me we need to get past stereotypes and prejudices because it’s a worthy thing to do, but it’s important to say that it’s also a useful thing to do, technically. It makes for better reading. More interesting characters. Sympathetic plotlines. Readers will defend a character strenuously when they’re described in a negative way due to stereotyping. How could someone say that this character was lazy, when it’s obvious to the reader that they’re hardworking?

It’s not just stupid peasants or abusive lords then that we have to get past as writers. History is complex and the complexity helps us so much as writers.

History belongs in all fiction (Canberra's history, part one) by Gillian Polack

This month I asked readers what they’d like me to write about. I was given half a dozen good suggestions, and a couple of silly ones. 

The suggestion that stuck with me was to write about the history of where I live, which is Canberra, Australia. When I was catching a bus last week I saw my local lake from the bus and realised that I’d seen that view in the Canberra Museum and Canberra. I’ve seen a nineteenth century painting of it (with sheep, for it was a sheep station at that moment in its long life) and a twentieth century painting (also with sheep) and any number of photographs (with cars and a highway replacing the sheep). I’ve not seen any pictures of it that show it before European settlement. 

Picture courtesy NLA

I’ve had this thought before: it’s the view that got me thinking about how we brought European culture to this region and laid it over an existing landscape, which was what I explored in The Time of the Ghosts. We replaced some of the kangaroos with sheep and pretended we were part of Europe. History slips into all novels, one way or another, and in the case of The Time of the Ghosts it did a lot more than slip in. 

The changes European settlers made to the landscape inspired me to think about the way we interpret landscape and live on the land. The psychic tensions in that novel reflect the very real unhappiness we’ve carried with us to this country. Fears have to be faced, not just carried like baggage. The sheep help explain that, too, for their sharp hooves are tough on the fragile local ecosystem.

St Andrews, Canberra 1934, picture courtesy St Andrews

I didn’t tell myself “I’m writing about the history of the city I live in” because I didn’t see it that way. Not even when I added the local story about the bushranger’s hoard. History is with us in our novels, however, whether we realise it or not. Historical fiction admits this directly. 

My fiction only sometimes says directly “This has history in it.” It always contains history, however. Every single piece of fiction I’ve ever written contains history in one way or another. 

History always informs our fiction, whether we want it to or not. Some novelists deny having pasts, but those pasts are always there. History informs mine more than most, because when I’m not a writer and analysing various things, I’m a historian. I can’t imagine the world without history. I can’t imagine stories without history. This means, of course, that I can’t imagine where I live without having many thoughts and views about its history.

My forthcoming novel (The Wizardry of Jewish Women) is the last of the series with such strong Canberra links and you can see recent history a little more clearly because of this and because it’s written from an outside vantage point, being set mostly in Sydney. It traces a year (or thereabouts) in the life of a family. I used real events for a great deal of it. Those events ranged from bushfires to meetings inside Parliament House. I was using real events with intent. History in this novel is a grounding factor. It’s the firm foundation from which the reader can enjoy the magic and the special powers that some of the characters possess. Because the bushfire actually occurred and really did burn down a whole region of our city, seeing just how far magical protection can help someone in the story gives the reader a sense of the limits of magic in this world that’s not quite ours.

Canberra bushfire, picture L Rose

So many writers find something that works as grounding for their fiction. For some people it’s the quirks of everyday life. For others it’s clothes and manners. For me, in my contemporary novels, it’s history. 

It’s so easy to remember those paintings and to envisage the difference between the nineteenth century station and the twentieth century fields with a burgeoning city in the background and then the city overtaking the sheep and transforming them into cars and houses. Because it’s easy to see, it’s easy to write about.

Two weeks ago I gave a workshop on world building for writers. I talked about discovering the geology that creates the landscape, because it’s exceptionally useful in grounding the story and in getting details right. The sheep were brought to Canberra because the farming land was mostly poor thin soil. The ancient rocks brought this poor thin soil into existence. But they also count for the shape of that slope I looked at from the bus: even when the sheep are gone, the land is there. It’s the foundation of the world of the story. 

Landscapes over time are terribly important to understand how people live in a place and interact with it. It’s the foundation of all our stories, whether we realise this or not. Once we know a place, we can tell its stories. And now that you know where I’m coming from, I can tell you stories of Canberra. Not every month, but now and again, when something strikes me as interesting.

I’ll leave you with a vignette, just to whet the appetite. 

The reason the Australian Labor Party has US spelling for its name is because one of its founders was American (or from Canada – it’s not entirely clear). King O’Malley was a famous teetotaller. One of my favourite pubs is named after him. I live in a city that has a pub named after a teetotaller politician from over a hundred years ago. This suggests that Canberra is not entirely the dull national capital it appears from outside. 

Our history helps dig beneath that surface and to the bedrock of the city. I look forward to introducing you to it.

Treasuring history through fiction, by Gillian Polack

This month other History Girls are writing about favourite books. I did that recently, so I thought, to balance those posts, I’d give you some context. Those books that we read and that we treasure and that we remember are part of a gorgeous cultural pattern. Right now, that cultural pattern means that historical fiction is changing. I want to look at what exactly is happening. 

Photo: Gillian Polack, Sydney 2015

Two decades ago there was a vast gulf between historians and fiction writers. This hasn’t always been the case. It wasn’t so much the case in the time of Walter Scott. And it’s not the case right now. It’s now socially far more acceptable to read certain types of fiction as part of enjoying history. The way history is written into many novels has changed: it’s more sophisticated, more aware and far more researched.

Writers have changed. Some of the writers who changed are here, in the History Girls. They looked at the history they fell in love with and they said “We can do this better.” They researched and they learned and they understood and they brought to their novels a greater depth of understanding. It didn’t happen overnight, but if you look at any of the established writers here, you’ll find that, over the years, their work has developed.

I discovered how this happened when I started researching historical fiction writers. Historical fiction writers have always loved history (why would someone write a novel on a historical theme if that someone didn’t enjoy history, after all) but what I discovered was that their attitude to research is at the heart of the sea-change in historical fiction. Some talk to scholars on their specialist subjects. Some frequent specialist archives. So many historical fiction writers do site tours and understand the place the novel is set. 

When I looked at the different attitudes towards research that writers of different kinds of novels have (for a book, which is still a new release and which I am still celebrating), the attitudes of historical fiction writers were closer to those of academic historians than those of science fiction writers, even of science fiction writers who write time travel or alternate histories. There’s still a big difference between history and fiction, but in recent years, historical fiction writers have worked to diminish that gulf.

Next came the readers. I discovered this very personally when I suddenly became more popular at conferences and conventions. Readers wanted to talk about my fiction with me, but they were even more interested in understanding history. These active and questioning readers of novels don’t just pose their technical questions to the historians: readers can be a lot tougher on the history fiction writers use than they used to be. 

There have always been some readers who knew a lot and questioned a lot and thought deeply about the subjects of novels, but the sea change means that there are a lot more of them. I meet them when they want a signature for the Beast (aka The Middle Ages Unlocked, which I co-wrote with Katrin Kania), for they love checking out the sort of background their favourite writers might use. Their favourite writers are usually those same writers who have done so much extra work on the history for their novels.

Some readers will spend as much money on books related to the history in their favourite fiction as they spend on that fiction itself. I’ve been asked about my sources for Langue[dot]doc1305 so often that I put a list of them on my blog, and written articles about them. And I’m not alone in this. So many writers end up talking about their experience in archives or in exploring primary sources or establishing an accurate date for an event as much as they talk about the characters their readers love and love to hate.

Readers do not work alone. They often join groups with similar interests. The Historical Novel Society has been a critical component of this change in historical fiction, and so have organisations like the SCA and the Richard III Society. 

Popular history and serious history are no longer as deeply divided. This opens the door to readers who want to approach novels with more insight into the history and more of an understanding of what possibilities it holds.

Writers respond to their readers. Often, they share similar interests. Elizabeth Chadwick, for instance, is a member of Regia Anglorum, a re-enactment group. She doesn’t just write the Middle Ages: she researches it, performs it and comes to understand it on many levels and from many angles. She is not alone. I can think of at least a half dozen writers who delve into the past during their spare time and whose novels reflect this. The tales these writers tell are still easy to read, but the history in them is better understood and more carefully thought out. It’s part of a complex feedback loop that has led to where we are right now, where historical fiction is successful commercially while its readers and writers see its historical contexts more clearly. They create possibly the best bridging between history and the general public that we’ve had since Walter Scott.

Compared with the demands of writers and readers, the critical world is a step behind. This is because the critical world is undergoing changes of its own. As I love saying, this is another story for another time, but it’s worth noting here. It’s also worth noting that blogs like the History Girls will help the world of criticism catch up, as it becomes clearer and clearer what audiences demand from historical fiction and what writers are willing to give.

Yesterday the History Girls turned five years old. I’m hoping it has many, many good years ahead because it’s very much a part of these changes in the way we see history and think about the past. It helps bring the work of scholars out of the university and gives it directly to the reader, whether the reader is on the train, on the beach or sneaking in a few pages of a favourite book on an e-reader.