realism

[marycatelli]

Was reading a book on Getting It Right -- in historical fiction -- and pondering philosophically the use in fantasy.

Mind you, I've been amused or revolted or anything inbetween by the bloopers.  Ranging from the wrong roses in medieval Europe -- which were single or double, and by the way, yellow roses are overwhelmingly derived from the roses Napoleon brought back from Egypt (Josephine having a serious interest in roses) -- to having the medieval parents and midwife hang about waiting for the priest to arrive and baptize the baby instead of using the water they had hanging about for just that purpose.

In a fantasy, of course, you can ignore that.  Sometimes.  More or less.  Depending on how you build the world.  When the author held forth on how a high-born lady would put a lot of her life at risk by wandering around unattended -- well, I've got a princess, no less, setting out to seek her fortune.  I've also got The Three Heads of the Well to cite in my defense. Ha!

The young princess, having lost her father’s love, grew weary of the court, and one day, meeting with her father in the garden, she begged him, with tears in her eyes, to let her go and seek her fortune; to which the king consented, and ordered her stepmother to give her what she pleased.

I cite that one rather than the "All Kinds of Fur" variant because the reason is the slightest. Convenient for giving her freedom to go as she wishes, though, of course, having other problems.  There are still bandits.  And other problems.

Though that, of course, is that world.  There's another story where I had to make the heroine rather more desperate to set out alone.  Not living in a fairy tale world, she faced a lot more danger in doing it, even in the social realm.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I must admit, I cordially dislike the kind of blooper-finding that goes 'Medieval women would never...' because it's based on an assumption that social rules are as absolute as physical laws and not subject to personalities and occasions, that everyone everywhere behaved in the same way, and that the blooper-finders understanding of medieval life is absolute and complete, which it cannot be.

It's this sense that 'we know about' a subject, and therefore *even when supported by sources* anything that doesn't fit the mould must be dismissed. Irritating.

[marycatelli]

There's also the little detail that they lump together a millennium and a continent, at least.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

The comment above is correct, so I'm wary of saying this absolutely, but having a medieval heroine even wanting to be alone is anachronistic bordering on crazy.  It's like being “desperate” to be blind and deaf:  Not bloody likely,, pardon my language.  In the medieval world and mindset, being alone is scary.  No kin, no help, no check on reality (“things that go bump in the night” - the only time she's alone is in the dark, and it wouldn't take long for that conditioning to take root deeply).

Observe a child in the playground when recess is over (if there is still such a thing today).  If the child misses the return-to-class signal, does he say, “Oh, goody, now I can be alone”? No - anxiety mounts into terror, and he'll run to rejoin the crowd.  Even later, the urge to conform to style, to look like others, rules even if the adolescent does want to be alone - he still wants to fit in.

Remember that people didn't even read silently to themselves - they read aloud, so that at least one voice was heard.  (Was it St Augustine who was considered creepy, even frightening, because he did read without making a sound?  It was someone like that; people found it as unsettling as if his eyes were moving independently.  “What's he doing?  He's just sitting there staring at the parchment!”)

I would say that having a medieval heroine wanting to go off by herself is as anachronistic (and absurd) as having her be a sword-wielding knight in armor.  The authors of such tales say more about themselves than about their (thoroughly) fictional heroine.  It would be better, if realism is any kind of priority, to take hold of Mary Stewart's conception from her Merlin books - Merlin, who was not a “man of the world” in any sense, travelled always with a retainer, a loyal sidekick, a servant / batman who looked after him but otherwise stayed out of his way.  The character can be as interesting in his own right or as much of a cipher as the author wants, but he'd be there because socially and practically he has to be, and for her not to have such a retainer, to be “independent” and “empowered” as is the author, swinging comfortably in her hammock of high technology, is a “blooper” indeed!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

You don't think that the anchorite and hermit tradition might possibly contradict this a bit? Look at, say the life of Mary of Egypt or even Julian of Norwich. Or all those Irish saints that set to sea alone in a coffin or lived alone entirely on milk and so on - St Endelieta, for example. Or the life of St Cuthbert, which is written by a contemporary, does rather suggest that Cuthbert is quite happy without human company, in fact would really rather that people bogged off and stopped bugging him :-D (I have a soft spot for Cuthbert, he's so bossy and grumpy!)

It might not be *normal* for a medieval person to set out entirely without human company, but it's not an unfamiliar concept in medieval culture: I would have said it would be considered brave rather than impossible.

People did think S Augustine was weird for reading to himself, but ISTR that there's a similar outraged report about some Carolingian bishop who took daily baths, and washing certainly wasn't unheard of. Medieval monks could be quite bitchy. :-D

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Ah, but “anchorites” stayed put, by definition - they didn't go off as knights-errant, 'seeking their fortune.' (Note that even Don Quixote had his squire, Sancho Panza. So did Sir Launcelot, though I disremember his name.) Even today, any guide to wilderness survival will tell you, don't go hiking alone - if you fall ill or break a leg, who will go for help? And that's in today's relatively enlightened, generally non-violent times. Factor in highwaymen, brigandage, 'freebooters' and local bullyboys, and a woman travelling by herself is simply meat on the hoof.

[Logically, the smartest thing for such a woman to do is impersonate a leper, complete with distinctive ragged robe and warning bell. Hopefully no one she meets will know her, else she'll be in an embarrassing spot when she arrives, or returns…]

Unfortunately, as I said, 'fantasy' is a term not limited to story-telling, and modern authors who find reality inconvenient are not going to conform to it in their stories, nor do they see why they should.

p.s. Yes, I recall hearing of a monastery during the Black Death that was miraculously spared even the worst of the scourge. They ascribed it to their piety - why, to mortify the flesh they dove into a nearby icy stream every morning, first thing! That is to say, they bathed every day…

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Anchorites stayed put, and were self-isolated. Hermits ventured out to the wild places where they built huts or lived in caves. Not safe, of course. But that was kind of why they did it. They were throwing themselves into their god's hands: it was an act of faith.

The Booke of Marjory Kempe is one good real-world example. Marjory was an independent woman traveller towards the end of the Middle Ages. She did indeed get herself into all sorts of trouble and her life was neither safe nor easy - but she still covered a lot of miles.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember a lot of folks specifically wandering in the wilderness-- yeah, they'd be odd, but they wouldn't be unheard of.

[marycatelli]

Well, you could also pull a Sir Lancelot and go mad and turn into a wildman of the woods. . . .

[marycatelli]

Hmm -- did she travel alone? Most travelers formed companies.

As in my heroine who took a lot of pressure to leave, who attached herself to some merchants.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Marjory was mostly travelling to pilgrimage locations, so she wasn't the only person going there (and sometimes she travelled with her daughter in law).

That said, you get the distinct impression that she was not exactly popular with other pilgrims, due to her drama queen tendencies: ISTR that at least a couple of times they abandon her along the way and she has to find help from the locals :-D

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... I can't spell her! Google thinks she's Margery, sorry about that!

[marycatelli]

Eh, they were sloppy about spelling in the day. William Shakespeare never once signed his name "Shakespeare."

[marycatelli]

Yeah, her attitude -- was less than charming.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Which is kind of the point, isn't it? An entire culture full of Margerys could never exist and would explode, but demonstrably one woman making enough of a pain of herself to the right husband and family was able to transgress the normal limitations, as did your runaway brides.

These things depend partly on women doing the kind of self-policing that baron_waste thinking suggests: I can't do that, I might get raped, I might get killed: both of them real risks. But people DO take risks, and every culture has outliers of behaviour.

I was reading a history of the Vikings recently which was generally very well written, but every time the author came across a story where the original sources suggested a lovematch, he dismissed the idea as complete nonsense: Vikings never did anything for love, he says, that's a stupid modern idea. I really wondered if the author had been going through some sort of bitter divorce at the time of writing. I'm sure most of the lovematches *were* political, but saying that the man and woman involved could not be in love is as absurd as saying that they had to be.

[marycatelli]

The only way you could be sure that it was a love-match was if it was politically idiotic.

And there wasn't a child born within nine months. Otherwise idiotic marriages can have some point if the bride's family might be annoyed in their absence.

[marycatelli]

That's because they had found it. There are medieval tales of women who had to travel to their desired convent. There's one of a woman who deceived her family by hanging outside the window of her room until they concluded she had run away to avoid her arranged marriage, and then dressed as a man to actually run away.

[marycatelli]

It was St. Augustine who commented on how St. Ambrose read silently, not St. Augustine who read silently. Just to clear that up.

The hermit tradition is indeed one for solitude.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Doh, so it was!

[marycatelli]

there's a lot of natural variation in children, as in adults. Yes, there are children who would adore being alone.

And people read aloud because they didn't know how not to. To this day people often have to be taught to read silently.

But in particular, a heroine who wants to go off on her own does not need to want to be on her own. Catskin doesn't run off because she wants solitude; she runs off to escape a marriage. (And there are actual historical records of medieval women doing just that.)

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

I still remember having to be told it was possible to read silently. I was reading the picture book of Disney's version of The Rescuers and complained to my mother that I wanted to keep reading, but my voice was getting really tired.

It was a revelation.

[marycatelli]

blinks

Of course, both my parents would read silently before I learned to read. . . I might have learned it there.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Mine would too, but clearly I had failed to make the association that that's what they were doing -- possibly if I was aware they were reading, they were usually reading to me. Probably. I don't remember a lot from that age. I don't actually remember not being able to read, or the process of learning, although I am informed that I used to come up with these magnetic letter toys and ask "What letter is this? What sound does it make?" so I guess I took a phonic approach. :)

[marycatelli]

Yeah, connections can be fun.

I remember waking up one night and finding the house dark and realizing that parents went to bed too. I had actually not managed to make the connection between their getting up and that.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is a neat one.

(I checked with my mom. Apparently the part I didn't remember was that I was actually not merely tired of talking but a little bit sick with a sore throat. No wonder it was such a relief!)