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Andrew Miller, Arthur and George, David Mitchell, Emma Donoghue, Hilary Mantel, historical novels, Jane Harris, Julian Barnes, literary historical, Pure, Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Wolf Hall
In a 2012 article, The Guardian attributes to Hilary Mantel the rank of “the woman who made historical fiction respectable again, who had freed it from the (often immensely pleasurable) bodice-ripping romps of Philippa Gregory et al, making a derided genre safe again for those readers who consider themselves properly literary and serious.” Several of my favorite authors easily join Mantel in giving historical fiction a special literary identity, showing she was neither the first nor the last in this tradition.
Take Julian Barnes and Arthur and George, Barnes’s exploration of an early 20th century crime and Arthur Conan Doyle’s role in exonerating the accused (indeed, convicted) George Edalji. We writers can be a bit jealous of Barnes’s ability to take a crime story and turn in into a lyrical tale of identity. Even the prison scenes are sensitive and profound.
David Mitchell goes for more popular appeal in his linear The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a story of a Dutch clerk in turn-of-the-17th-century Nagasaki and the Japanese midwife he falls in love with. We have samurai attacks, a secret monastic society, and a villain of incomprehensible evil, but also a bildungsroman that depicts the age and the psychology of different cultures within the age masterfully.
And finally, Andrew Miller in Pure takes a little-known event—the excavation of a Paris cemetery just before the French Revolution—and follows a young man attempting to complete the one big job that will direct his life. This novel seems strangely modern in that aspect, yet it’s fascinating how the backdrop of pre-Revolution foment surrounds all actions.
I’ve listed just three, and if you include either Wolf Hall or Bringing Up the Bodies, you’ll notice an interesting trend: not one of these novels brings the literary aspect powerfully upon a story revolving around women. Even the midwife in Mitchell’s work, around whom much action revolves, is a minor character compared to all else.
There certainly are excellent novels about female characters with a literary bent to them—Jane Harris’s Gillespie and I and Emma Donoghue’s The Sealed Letter are two obvious examples—but I’d love to see more novels with female protagonists that go deep into literary waters. How can we writers write such works when women of our historical periods lived mostly in domestic worlds? Can a primarily psychological and domestic novel, say, match up with those listed above?
And how much can writers bend what’s called “literary?” I’d love to hear your thoughts.
How thought-provoking! It’s interesting that Sarah Waters is quoted in that Guardian piece – she was the first writer who came to mind when I tried to think about female-centered historical fiction that is also very literary. I don’t think Gregory writes “bodice rippers” – any more than, say, Sara Dunant does. But neither of them, at least on my readings, is a particularly ingenious or stylish novelist. Byatt’s The Children’s Book is too diffuse to say that it has “a” female or “a” male protagonist, but it’s serious historical fiction for sure, and it has a strong interest in domestic life.
Your examples of serious historical fiction are telling. I agree–Sarah Waters certainly writes historical fiction that stretches far beyond genre. But why is it that Hilary Mantel, who is very public about not writing about women (saying that women’s stories in historical fiction delve mostly into medicine and witchery), is widely recognized as pulling this maligned genre to a new level, and not other authors? I’m just wondering if a novel about a domestic environment, no matter how psychological, and especially a novel that is popular (like Waters’s works) will ever reach that level of High Literary. I also wonder what, by the standard that supposedly puts Mantel above the rest, could enable them to.
Thank you. I enjoyed reading this thoughtful and balanced post. It is undeniable that the lives of women before the twentieth century are less well documented than the lives of men, unless the women belonged to the very highest echelons of society. However, there is evidence that novelists can draw on, if they look for it, both from original sources, such as the Paston Letters or some of the excellent secondary works that have appeared in our lifetime, such as ‘The Weaker Vessel’ by Antonia Fraser, ‘Women in England 1760-1914′ by Susie Steinbach and, my favourite, ‘The Prospect Before Her’ by Olwen Hufton. I hope that some serious historical novelists will find inspiration in these works and write more about women, as you suggest.
Thank you so much for your comment. Indeed, it’s far easier to research the lives of upper class women than women of any other background, and that’s an angle, too, that the historical fiction market pressures novelists to write about. I’m familiar with Fraser’s and Steinbach’s works, but not Hufton’s, so I’m especially grateful to you for sharing these titles. You put forth a good challenge.