Perth Writers Festival 2017-The Historical Highlights

Mechanica Bug courtesy of my daughter and REmida

This weekend was the Perth Writers Festival on the beautiful grounds of the University of Western Australia. As always I’ve come away with more ideas than I know what to do with and more stimulation than my brain can handle.

There were so many wonderful speakers and engaging authors.
Friday was all about me, Sunday was all about Family Fun and encouraging my daughter’s creativity

These are my Friday highlights. (Click the picture captions to have a closer look at the books)

1880’s Girl’s Top 4 Historical Picks

In order of appearance, not importance

Much Ado About Shakespeare
by Donovan Bixley

Now does this not look more like a man capable of Hamlet and Romeo than the hallowed portrait that hangs in library halls?

A beautiful and hilarious picture book for grown-ups, trust me the pictures really are for grownups.

Bixley turns William Shakespeare into a living-breathing-flawed human being, the human being we can see in his work.

I appreciate the way Bixley approached “the black hole” that is Shakespeare (Bixley’s words not mine): He combined the dry, irrefutable facts of Shakespeare’s paper trail: receipts, business dealings and legal documents ( of which lawsuits for misbehaviour were not uncommon) with the historical context of life in the theatre and the lifestyle of actors/producers/playwrights.

 

Georgiana Molloy the mind that shines
By Bernice Barry

I absolutely love this cover. A visual of how history has obscured Georgiana Molloy.

I was thrilled to discover Bernice Berry and her book on Georgiana Molloy because you see Georgiana was a person who immediately sparked my interest when I first heard of her in the collective biography Great Pioneer Women of the Outback by Susanna De Vries.

Georgiana Malloy was the first West Australian botanist to begin identifying and cataloguing the vast biodiversity of Australia’s South West. This is a meticulously researched biography and I am looking forward to immersing myself in Georgiana’s world and combing through the 600 references at the back of the book.

The Birdman’s Wife
by Melissa Ashley

This has to be one of the most beautiful covers ever!

You can’t go wrong with a cover that features the beautiful art of Elizabeth Gould. If you aren’t familiar with her work, think Darwin’s finches, Yep she painted those.

Like most people I assumed the famous John Gould was famous because of his bird paintings but it turns out he was just the ornithologist, his wife was the artist, . If not for Elizabeth Gould’s extraordinary talent Mr Gould would have remained an obscure historical figure known only in ornithological circles.

I am really looking forward to reading this book, a novelization of Elizabeth Gould’s life.

 

Dark Emu, Black seeds: agriculture or accident
by Bruce Pascoe

An eye-opening account of what the early explorers really found when they landed in Australia.

This is perhaps not an obvious choice for 1880’s Girl but you see my love of the Victorian age does not blind me to its faults. The Victorian Age saw the peak of the British Empire and with colonisation comes abuse.

This book is a scholarly look at the truth about the aboriginal society as it was when the first white explorers landed on its shores. (Yes this was a good while before Victoria but it is how the empire was built.)

The Aborigional people were not uncivilised, without law or culture. They were not aimless wanders at the mercy of the seasons “picking a grub here a berry there” as Pascoe put it.

These were a highly ingenious and organised people. I am sure I have heard multiple interviews with Pascoe and other researchers on RN (Australia’s Radio National station) because this book contains all the information I have heard but could never remember the details about.

This includes records of aboriginal farming methods, and land care, the building of stone aquifers and irrigation canals. Early explorers recorded harvesting and planting and bread making on a par with Europeans and Native Americans. Facts that even today are glossed over, ignored or deliberately hidden.

My question is: If explorers like Thomas Mitchell and Charles Sturt recognized and recorded this civilization, if people like Georgiana Molloy benefited from the wisdom and humanity of indigenous people, how and why did the narrative change? How were the voices of reason and compassion drowned out by the ignorant and fearful?

I suppose we know the answers but…

Think how history would be different if reason, respect and compassion had won the day over  power, pride and greed!

If I were a sci-fi writer I would write that alternative reality. But I’m not.

So I model  my characters after wise and compassionate real people like Georgiana Molloy and Abigail March.

The Writers Festival has me chomping at the bit to jump back into my full writing routine.

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Does Condescension Belong in Historical Non-Fiction?

To Condescend

To behave as if one is conscious of descending from a superior position, rank, or dignity, .to stoop or deign to do something

Dictionary.com

Yes it is a return to my soap box and time for a rant.

When we take up a historical subject whether the plight of governesses, the institution of slavery or the narrative of an individual, is it an inherent condescension?

Are we the superior, educated wiser more knowing people who stoop down to explain a past culture? Do we deign to expose their shocking ignorance, cruelty or inhumanity? Is that the way it’s supposed to be?

Maybe condescension in non-fiction is the reason it has taken me so long to come around to reading it. I don’t like high handed dealing with a subject as if our current knowledge somehow  makes us inherently superior.

No group of people past, present or future can rightly condescend to another group of people on the grounds of inherent superiority.

People are not stupid just because they thought differently or believed things we now know to be untrue, because guess what in their day they were advanced and enlightened.

100 years from now some historian will scoff at what naive things we believed way back in 2016. 

I did overall enjoy this book and will be buying my own copy as a reference.

Last Monday in my Review of Other Peoples Daughters,  I said the book equally interested and annoyed me. The interesting bit was the content and the extensive quoting from the governesses and contemporaries themselves. I believe the book was as factual and accurate as as any historical non-fiction can expect to be.

The bit that ruffled my feathers and got my dander up was the condescension.

Now I am going to go very  un-scholarly because I could not locate a single infuriating quote or blatantly condescending paragraph, it wasn’t so overt, and maybe it was all in my reading of the text. 

However it felt like Brandon came to the material with the view point that women of the 1800’s were downtrodden, oppressed, ignorant, without hope, without prospects. The reason for this was men and religion and the governess was the tool by which women were kept in subjection.  This is the lens through which we are shown the governess.

by contrast…

There is mystification, there is wonderment but no condescension

Eve LaPlante in Marmee and Louisa tackles many of the same issues, women’s education,  women’s health, their rights or lack of rights in the areas of marriage, children and property but she never once sounds condescending.

Her account is written with great compassion, with understanding of the overwhelming odds women faced. She also wrote with compassion for the men who tried and failed, in what society saw as, their role as bread winner and provider.  Maybe her compassion arises from the fact that the Alcotts are part of her family history. (For more discussion of Marmee and Louisa see here )

A fantastic compassionate read!

In Cane River author Lalita Tademy tackles the equally contentious subject of slavery. (Abigail Alcott viewed women’s suffrage as the next great hurdle to leap after the abolition of slavery)

In my late teens early 20’s I had to stop reading about slavery and civil rights because I got so boiling angry at the cruelty and injustice one race of people could inflict on another. (No really my blood pressure would go up, I’d turn red, get dizzy and turn that tension on whoever was at hand)

I did not think it possible to tell a story with sympathy for both sides of the equation and yet that is what Tademy  accomplishes in Cane River.  Again she is writing from her family history so maybe there in lies the source of her compassion. (I will be reviewing Cane River in future)

LaPlante and Tademy put us in the shoes of historical people, make their world live for us, their narrative fills us with compassion, understanding and we feel the injustice without being told it was an injustice, without being repeatedly told we are lucky to live today “when life is so much better.”

Why condescension in historical non-fiction really gets my goat

And here perhaps is the crux of the matter.

Condescension in historical non-fiction really gets my goat because while ,yes we have laws that guarantee equal education, equal rights, equal freedoms it doesn’t mean everyone gets them.

Much of what happened to women, children and minority groups in the 1800’s, is still happening today!

For Example…

In Australia this year,  2016, on average one woman a week dies as a result of family violence, in the US more than 3 women a day are murdered by a current or former partner. Despite the laws, despite education hundreds of thousands of  women around the world are still in the same position as the former governess Nelly Weeton and they find it just as hard to leave as she did.

Is there really room for condescension?

Yes it is terrible that children were considered the legal property of their fathers, in  the same way slaves were the legal property of their owners, no matter how violent or neglectful the father/owner was. But here is a frightening statistic: In the US in 2015 at least 70% of abusers who fought for sole custody of their children won.

Can we rightly condescend to the Victorian’s?

In the course of historical research we come across infuriating view points, inflammatory beliefs and ludicrous reasons to support those beliefs.

But people haven’t changed.

With the advent of the internet, social media and (gasp!) blogs,there are even more infuriating, inflammatory and ludicrous beliefs at large in society today than in the Victorian age.

Life then and now is complicated made up of many layered narratives. That is why I love Historical Fiction, it humanizes history, helps us put ourselves in their shoes because in the end we are all hopelessly flawed.

In summary:

No,  condescension does not belong in historical non-fiction.

 

How do you feel about Condescension in historical non-fiction?

Does it get your goat and ruffle your feathers?