The one question that bothers me a lot is about how real or fictitious historical fiction is. I mean, think about it, if one wanted to talk about historical figures, tell their tales, then why not write biographies? Obviously historical fiction is different, allows the author some agency into the lives of historic entities. But then, what right does one have to change the way someone lived, or died? Perhaps the best way to understand historical fiction is to think of it as set within the realms of history, aligned to the reality of the time, and yet allowing agency to the author to take their characters through the story they have chosen to tell.
A famous personality who has made historical fiction her life, is Hillary Mantel. In 2012, the New Yorker's Larissa MacFaquhar talked about Hillary and the agency of historical fiction. I have quoted a few snippets of this enlightening article below, but for the full article, click on this link.
"The writer’s relationship with a historical character is in some ways less intimate than with a fictional one: the historical character is elusive and far away, so there is more distance between them. But there is also more equality between them, and more longing; when he dies, real mourning is possible."
"Historical fiction is a hybrid form, halfway between fiction and nonfiction. It is pioneer country, without fixed laws. To some, if it is fiction, anything is permitted. To others, wanton invention when facts are to be found, or, worse, contradiction of well-known facts, is a horror: a violation of an implicit contract with the reader, and a betrayal of the people written about."
"It is, in some ways, a humble form. There are limits to the writer’s authority. She cannot know her character completely. She has no power to alter his world or postpone his death. But in other ways it is not humble at all: she presumes to know the secrets of the dead and the mechanics of history."
"In some places, the prose disappeared altogether, and she wrote in the form of a play. She didn’t want to write an actual play, because plays involved other people, and she wanted full control."
"The novel that emerged out of this desolate time in her life, “Every Day Is Mother’s Day,” was a bleak, airless story of awful people trapped in miserable lives: a deranged mother; a mute, malignant daughter; a coarse wife; a depressed failure of a husband. She punished her characters without mercy—tortured them with hostile spectres, child molestation, mold, filth, boredom, angst, canned food, social workers."
"When women apes have their wombs removed, and are returned by keepers to the community, their mates sense it, and desert them."
"It occurred to her that she was living in a gothic novel. “All the markers were there,” she says. “The woman travels to a strange place, her life is constrained there, and it’s controlled by a man who seems to change his nature from the situation in which she first met him."
"She already understood that the world was denser and more crowded than her senses could perceive: there were ghosts, but even those dead who were not ghosts still existed; she was used to hearing talk in which family members alive and dead were discussed without distinction. The dead seemed to her only barely dead."
"There is nothing to see. There is nothing to smell. There is nothing to hear. But its motion, its insolent shift, makes my stomach heave. I can sense—at the periphery, the limit of all my senses—the dimensions of the creature. It is as high as a child of two. Its depth is a foot, fifteen inches."
"So much of fiction is a matter of trying to force uncertainty and freedom into a process that is in fact entirely determined by choice or events. When she is writing historical fiction, she knows what will happen and can do nothing about it, but she must try to imagine the events as if the outcome were not yet fixed, from the perspective of the characters, who are moving forward in ignorance. This is not just an emotional business of entering the characters’ point of view; it is also a matter of remembering that at every point things could have been different. What she, the author, knows is history, not fate."
“I am glad I am not like you. . . . I mean, my mind fixed on the next world. I realize you see no prospect of improving this one.”
"This was always a problem with historical fiction, if you liked to stick closely to the record: there was very little information about women, on the whole, but if you wrote a novel without them it seemed off-kilter."
"She doesn’t believe in inventing greatness or significance where none exists. This is why she likes historical fiction: she feels she can write about greatness only in historical moments that have already proved ripe for its flourishing. She believes that there are no great characters without a great time; ordinary times breed ordinary people (of the sort—dull, trapped, despairing—who inhabit modern novels)."
"It is helpful to be acquainted with violence, because the past is violent. It is necessary to understand that the people who live there are not the same as people now. It is necessary to understand that the dead are real, and have power over the living. It is helpful to have encountered the dead firsthand, in the form of ghosts."
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