I write paranormal romance because speculative fiction can illuminate the ordinary in extraordinary ways. However, I love historical fiction because it’s a mirror reflection of that same idea. By showing us history through the ordinary eyes of a participant, historical fiction is able to cast a very bright light on the extraordinary evils of times past, all while putting the advances of our own time into perspective.

A good example of this is Wideacre, Philippa Gregory’s novel. It teaches us more about land use than any of us would probably be willing to learn in a text book, and has a great deal to say about women’s rights and modern day unions without ever uttering a word about them. While you’re reading Wideacre, you don’t know that you’re learning anything–you’re just immersed in a powerful story. But one could hardly categorize her novel as a romance.

Historical romance novels–particularly Regency romances–are criticized for glorifying a time of vast gender, race and class inequity. But I think its important to understand that truths are discovered in a deeper place than someone simply telling us that discrimination is wrong. Insofar as is possible, historical fiction allows us to see the problems in antiquated societies for ourselves. Outside of a role-playing game, historicals may be the only way for people to experience, in a safe environment, the political realities of a not-so-entirely-distant time.

The critics may ask how anyone can learn anything from a historical romance novel when the ending is so decidedly happy and the heroine so obviously content with her lot in life. I think it’s because the heroine is a part of that antiquated society, and perhaps even happily so, that she may be more politically influential than a character who is miserable in his or her oppression. Certainly, there’s a place of honor for fiction like that too–Ibsen’s Doll House comes to mind–but modern readers may meet such fiction with more resistance.

People throw up walls against other people’s suffering–perhaps in an effort to protect themselves, perhaps out of a notion of collective guilt, or perhaps because they just want to be entertained. The historical romance entertains and bypasses those internal reader walls. Our heroine may not even perceive an evil of her time to be evil, but that doesn’t mean the modern-day reader hasn’t learned anything.

Take Julia Quinn’s excellent Bridgerton series. The Bridgertons are a privileged group who all find their happy endings, but you can’t come away from the series without a better understanding of how society was starting to fracture and how the social rules hurt various underprivileged groups, including the otherwise delightfully happy heroines of the books.

Tessa Dare also tackles some class issues in her debut historical novel, Goddess of the Hunt. She does so a little more overtly than one might otherwise expect, but having gained her readers’ trust in the first half of the book, she doesn’t shy away from using the political power of her historical pen. That’s something to be admired.

In a time when screaming matches on television pervade our national discourse, and people are more entrenched than ever in their political points-of-view, an exploration of history is a powerful and subversive thing. To know where we should go from here, it’s useful to know where we’ve been. Kudos to historical romance writers for blazing that path.

Tags: historical, julia quinn, philippa gregory, tessa dare

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 4:01 pm and is filed under historical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.