I have written a few historical novels for children, set in,
variously, Anglo-Saxon Britain, Roman Britain and World War two Britain, and am
currently researching a new book set in Somerset in 1953, and in each of these
I came up against similar problems: how to portray the mindset of people,
especially children, at the time the book is set, while making it palatable and
understandable to the mindset of children growing up today.
My first book, the one set in Anglo-Saxon Britain, was a
time-slip adventure,
so the way the Anglo-Saxon children behaved and thought was
immediately juxtaposed with the way modern children might behave and
think. So the modern child reader could
instantly see the difference. Time-slips
can get round this question quite neatly, but publishers don't always seem to like them, so they tend to go in and out of fashion.
In my three Roman books, however, which are straight
historical stories, I was concerned that today’s children would probably be
horrified by, for example, the killing of a wolf, whereas in the 4th
century it would have been the obvious thing to do if they saw a strange,
vicious beast threatening a friend. Writing
the books I had to try to downplay the savagery and violence of the times as
far as possible, while doing my best to make it reasonably authentic, even if
it gave the impression that, as one writer friend put it to me, “your Romans
are a lot kinder than they really were!”
I hope I managed to get round the problem of the Romans being fairly
bloodthirsty by making one of the central characters a non-Roman, ie from the
Silurian tribe, who didn’t agree with killing, whether at a gladiator fight or
in general, while her Roman friend thought it was exciting and necessary.
Similarly, in “Jimmy’s War”, there is an instance of a
British plane shooting down an enemy plane.
Someone said, “But don’t you think Jimmy would have thought ‘oh, the
poor enemy pilot’”? I strongly
disagreed, because having done my research I knew that at that time most
British people, and especially children, were very anti-Hitler and his cronies,
and would have cheered on “our” fighter pilot and rejoiced at his downing the
enemy. Children's comics at the time were full of
“us and them” stories, when the villains always got their just deserts and were
killed in various gory ways. At that
time the general population were not encouraged to feel sorry for the enemy.
The book I am currently working on, though set in the near
past, is presenting me with yet another problem. My story is set in Somerset at the time of the
Coronation, and since this is (just) within my own lifetime, I can remember that the
prevailing attitude at the time, not long after the war ended, was one of tremendous patriotism
for Queen and Country, and one of optimism: the reign of this new young queen
could only mean good things for our country.
If there were people around of a republican persuasion they kept very
quiet – in my memory everyone was enchanted by the young queen and her handsome
husband and her two young children, and wished her well. People treasured their Coronation mugs (we
were all given them at school!) and joined in the street parties, and there was
general rejoicing all round. And
although today there are still many people who feel sympathy with and
admiration for the Queen herself, there are increasing numbers who sneer
at the entire royal family and argue that they are an anachronism these days and that we should become a republic. They complain about how dreadfully they behave and the
money they cost us, often
egged on by certain newspapers making capital out of every juicy bit of gossip about anyone
with a vaguely royal connection. And of course at the moment, especially, many
people are wondering what is the point of the royals at all. Which makes me realise that children today, several of whom may be
brought up in homes where the royal family is regularly rubbished, could find the
whole concept of the country joining together to rejoice at the coronation quite strange.
I still haven't quite got my head round this one, but it occurred to me that it's exactly the same problem I had with my earlier books - trying not to transpose 21st century views and opinions on to 4th, 8th and mid-20th century people. The trouble is, the current royal problem changes daily and is having such repercussions that by the time this blog is published I may have to change the entire plot of my new novel! Or possibly make the royal connection a subplot instead...
Website: www.lynnebenton.com
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published by Hachette Children's Books
3 comments:
It's a very knotty problem... difficult to know how people saw things in past times, but it seems problematic to attribute modern values to people in the past. But maybe it's unavoidable.
You are so right about trying to get the sense of the time right and what would be the attitudeo of a character alive at the time.
re The mood around Elizabeth II's Coronation: when I visited the Dennis Severs house in Spitalfields, I eventually reached a third floor room depicting a silk-weaver's family's one room lodgin. The place was pitiful with bare boards, one frowsy bed for the family, cooking at a tiny hob on the hearth and hardly anything at all. But at the same time the sound effects on that floor are of the guns firing from the Tower in celebration, and the notes/voice-over describes the mood of joy at the coming of the young Queen Victoria and says there was a sense of joy and hope and a new beginning now the long reign of the Georges had ended. Hope,always hope!
This is such an important point, and something I really work hard on in my historical novels. Often young readers will comment on how 'harsh' or 'politically incorrect' my characters' views are but I always point out that historical characters aren't just the same as us in longer frocks! They really need to have opinions which suit their period, however uncomfortable this makes us -- and our readers.
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