Writing about women in the past

Grand Duchess Natalia Alexeievna
shown pregnant and happy
in a portrait by Alexander Roslin, 1776. 

The position of women in the historical novel is problematic for authors like me. Exploring the strengths and weaknesses of my characters and how they cope with the historical world is what interests me and I want to show women in a positive and realistic light. However when it comes to writing about women in past I am confronted with some tricky problems.

The main problem is that for most of history women were legally, socially and economically subject to the will of men.

As my November blogs show even queens and princesses had very little control over their own lives.

Woman by Francesco Gasparini

In a strange way poor women were the freest to be themselves as they worked even when they were married and had children and earned their own money. The problem for these women was that their earnings were always vastly inferior to men’s and a woman alone was almost invariably a poor and exploited one. It's true in London and other towns where social anonymity was the norm many women turned to prostitution as a more lucrative way of staying alive.

For women of the middling sort, I hesitate to use the word class here, as for most of history there was no middle class as we know today, financial dependence on men was the norm even into the middle of the last century. Of course financial dependence on men has not gone away as women are still paid on average 16% less than men for the same work!

With no meaningful contraception, women were almost always burdened with pregnancy, subject to premature death in childbirth and responsible with almost all childcare unless a woman was wealthy enough to employ a nurse or nanny.

A single 'free' woman in the past was the exception and was almost certainly viewed as unsuccessful. Marriage and children were the markers of success for a woman in past and still are for most men and women today although more women are going it alone than ever and are happy with their decision. For the majority of us who marry it's a struggle to manage a demanding career and a family no matter how successful a we are in our chosen profession.




So how does the modern author go about creating their female historical characters?

Well some authors focus their attentions on the few women who broke the mould in the past while other abandon any sense of historical verisimilitude. Some use the Cinderella formula while others make their female characters masculine, sassy and ruthless. All of these forms can work if the story is good but they are not for me in the Tales of Tooley Street as the main characters are inspired by actual people who lived and worked at 65 Tooley Street for three generations.

Some argue that The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (commonly known simply as Moll Flanders) a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722 is the prototype for a female character who by the end of the novel controls her own life and is financially independent. Moll achieves what many feminists call success.

Alex Kingston in the BBC
 adaptation of Moll Flanders

Feminist writer Diana Del Vecchio says, "By the end of the book, Moll has completely appropriated the role of the husband, the provider, the masculine, the seeker, the adventurer, the leader, the thinker, and has figuratively donned the clothing of man, while keeping her nature as woman intact. She makes the final decision to enter and sign a legal contract with her son, where he manages her inherited land and gives her an annual compensation of the lands’ produce. When she returns to Jemy, it is she that supplies him with a dowry of a gold watch, a hundred pounds in silver, a deer skin purse, Spanish pistols, three horses with harnesses and saddles, some hogs, two cows, and other gifts for the farm. She enters this relationship with the fortune of her inheritance and the many accoutrements that she has acquired and accumulated in her years as a thief. For the first time in her life, she forms a relationship with a man, where she is the one in control."

The fact that Moll has to step outside the law to become independent is the problem for me but it is probably a realist one as Defoe was fully aware of the way society worked in the early 18th century. Prostitution and thieving were rife in London in the 18th century but most women involved in the trade did not end up like Moll. Most ended in an early grave, at the end of a noose or transported for life if caught. My character is inspired by a respectable widow who raises her son to be a successful doctor so prostitution and thieving are not options for her.

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Historian Lucy Worsley's most recent BBC TV series on the Wives of Henry III offers an alternative approach to the female character and narrative in history.





In the series she looked at the events of Henry's reign through the eyes of the women involved. She cleverly managed to breath new life into this over worked territory by showing Katherine of Aragon as a competent and popular queen not as the obsessively religious woman of traditional portrayals who was intelligent, ambitious and for much of her 24-year marriage gave as good as she got. Anne Boleyn too was shown as a clever and ambitious woman betrayed by her husband and removed on trumped up charges of adultery. Jane Seymour was a young and tragic a woman fed to the old lecher of a king by her male relatives only to die in childbirth. Ann of Cleaves was a smart political operator who negotiated herself out of disaster and ended up one of the richest women in England. Catherine Howard was what we would call an abused child who did not know how to say no to powerful and determined men; and, Katherine Parr was a wily woman of great learning and intellect who used her position to promote the establishment of the 'new religion' Protestantism and managed to out manoeuvre and outwit her enemies at court. See a clip by following the link. Six Wives of Henry VII clips.

In my own writing I have taken the Lucy Worsley approach. My heroine, Charlotte Leadam, the widow of the Tooley Street Surgeon Christopher Leadam is intelligent and resourcefulness but she is an 18th century woman living in 18th century London. She faces financial oblivion when her husband dies as she cannot run the apothecary shop she owns becasue as a woman she cannot hold a licence and becasue she has to pay her husband's debts.

As a widow she yearns for the return of the feeling of financial security and independence she enjoyed when she was married but she does not want to remarry, not at the start with at least. As grief slowly disappears she finds that she needs to love and be loved again. Charlotte achieves her desires by complying with some social conventions of the day and by ignoring others but she's always well within the law. Here's an excerpt.

Tales of Tooley Street - Charlotte Leadam
 (Portrait of an unknown woman c. 1780)

 “You and John will stay here with us now that Christopher has gone,” her mother said, in a tone that indicated it was not a matter for discussion.

“That’s very kind of you and father, but Christopher has not gone, as you put it. He died; my husband is dead. I am a widow, not an abandoned child.”

“We know that, dearest. Your father and I comprehend the situation all too clearly,” she said, handing her daughter a fresh towel and a bar of soap. “You’re a woman without a husband and without an income. You cannot simply go back to your old life, Charlotte; it no longer exists. Your father and I have discussed the matter, and we have decided that it is best that you and John stay here where we can provide for you. That is until you marry again.”

The flame of ire burning in Charlotte’s chest was rekindled and refuelled. Whilst she could not dispute her mother’s analysis of the situation, she was nonetheless livid with her for expressing it so clearly. She bit her lip, held her tongue and breathed the long slow breaths that Christopher had taught her to use in such situations. Experience told her that this was not the time or the place to have an argument with her mother. Losing her temper never worked; she had to be more cunning than that. As calmly as she could she said, “Mother, I have no plans to remarry.”

“I’m not saying that you have to forget Christopher. I’m not that cruel and insensitive. ” She pointed to the bath. “Your father took this in lieu of payment from a whore in St James’s. The poor woman could not pay her rent either, so your father took the bath before the landlord did. My friend Mrs Peacock says that bathing is of great benefit for the nerves, so I thought you might like to try it. I shall not be doing so: I’m too old to change the habits of a lifetime. Besides, they cost a fortune in hot water – which is all very well for Mrs Peacock: her husband is a banker. And I can’t use poor Millie like this again; she is exhausted with carrying the pails from the kitchen.”

When her mother had gone Charlotte launched herself face down onto the bed and let out a long, low scream of frustration. How dare her mother decide what she was going to do with her life without even talking to her about it? And why had she told her about the whore? Was she trying to warn her what happens to women who are left on their own?

Volume 1 of the Tales of Tooley Street, "Sinclair", will be available in March 2017

Love Letters - The Paper

This month’s theme is Love Letters, but before you can write a letter, you need paper.

As England moved into the 18^th Century most of the paper being used was French, German or Dutch. There were a few paper mills dotted around the kingdom and one in Edinburgh by the mid century and of course, all the paper had to be made by hand.

In 1709 Britain invited Europeans to settle in its American colonies but German arrivals at London were far greater than shipping could take so some returned to Germany but others were relocated, mainly in Ireland but others stayed in England. One such was a man called Isaac Tipps who decided to settle on the Isle of Wight in Hampshire. He is recorded as a paper maker when he married Christian Rutter in 1711. It turned out that the Isle of Wight was not a particularly good location and the mill enjoyed only a brief life but local historians think that it provided coarse wrapping paper for local trades.

Whatever its quality paper is a fibrous mat made by mixing fibres with water, colour or bleach to make a suspension, when the water is drained away the fibres are pressed and dried to make a flexible bonded sheet. Any fibres will do, plant fibres were first used by the Ancient Egyptians to make papyrus but by the middle ages the European paper industry was based on the shredding of rags or other waste textile material. The rags were sorted and cut by women then boiled in open tanks using wood ash as a source of alkali to break the fibres down. The resulting grey slush was sorted and washed to shallow tanks or stone troughs to clean it then hammered with iron shod stamping hammers, similar to the type used for fulling cloth. The longer the fibres were hammered the finer the resulting paper.

Sorting the rags

Hammering the fibres

Making the sheets

Hanging the sheets to dry

As the 18^th century progressed the production and use of paper in Britain gradually increased as higher rates of duty reduced imports. The British paper industry was able to rise to the challenge with the help of the introduction of a rag- machine known as a ‘Hollander’, invented in Netherlands sometime before 1670; it replaced the stamping mills that had previously been used for the breaking down of the rags and beating of the pulp. 

John Baskerville, Printer

The second was the creation of a woven mould John Baskerville, a Birmingham printer, who is more widely known for his Bakerville typeface these days than his printing. He wanted to improve the quality of his printing so he collaborated with James Whatman the Elder and developed a woven wire fabric to strain the fibres on, thus producing the first woven paper in 1757.

John Dickinson, Papermaker

The transition from hanging each separate sheet out to dry to creating a continuous roll began in 1809 when John Dickinson patented a machine where a wire-cloth covered cylinder revolved in the pulp suspension. The water drained away through the centre of the cylinder and a continuous layer of pulp was laid onto a felt covered roller (later replaced by a continuous felt passing round a roller) so that the sheets could be made to any length and cut to any size. Backed by George Longman, whose family controlled the Longman publishing firm, he established a number of paper mills in the south of England taking advantage of water for power and canals for transportation of his wears. Dickinson brands are still available today - Basildon Bond and Black and Red accounts books.

Production was further enhanced in 1821 when T B Crompton patented a method of drying the paper continuously; using a woven fabric to hold the sheet against steam heated drying cylinders.

In 1850, Dickenson’s  company started mechanical envelope manufacturing, with gummed envelopes for the first time and they pioneered the production of window envelopes in 1929.

In America, Thomas Gilpin opened a mill in Brandywine, Maryland using the cylinder paper machine in 1817. This was the first machine paper mill in the US. This mill operated from 1809 to 1828.

Today paper is still made by hand for specialist purposes and as lovely gift wrapping.

For further information see:

http://paper.lib.uiowa.edu/european.php

http://www.peacepaperproject.org/dardhunter.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Baskerville

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dickinson_Stationery

http://www.iwhistory.org.uk/papermill/

July Independence Days

July is the month when America and France celebrate their national independence days. For the Americans their celebrations focus on the signing of the Declaration of Independence on 4^th July 1776. The French commemorate the storming, on the 14^th July,1789 of Prise de la Bastille.

Photo credit: blog.fluentcity.com

The eastern seaboard of the country that is now known as the United States of America was Britain’s largest and most successful colony until the East India Company secured most of the Indian sub-continent for the company and the crown at the battle of Plessey (see previous post).

Along with the French, Spanish and the Dutch the British fought to keep and expand its territory on the American continent since its first colonies were established in the 16^th century but were eventually driven out in 1783.

The British adventure in America began with the establishment of the James Town colony in 1607 and since then the colony had grown. By the mid 18^th century the colony had achieved some measure of self government but was still subject to the British parliament.

The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) has its origins in the resistance of many Americans to taxes imposed by the British parliament. On December 16, 1773, unhappy with the high price of tea, which had to be purchased from British East India Company, a shipment was dumped in Boston harbour as a protest, the event that is now known as the Boston Tea Party.

The British government retaliated by closing the port of Boston and taking away the self-government the colony had achieved. The Bostonians responded by rejecting British rule and setting up a shadow government. Twelve other colonies supported them and formed a Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance. On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress formally voted for independence, and issued its Declaration two days later on July 4.

Thomas Jefferson, draftsman of the U.S. Declaration of Independence
and the nation's third president

In my novel Sinclair (available autumn 2016) which takes place between 1786 and 1788 Captain Francis Greenwood is bound for Madras on the East Indiaman, Sherwell. He is one of the hundreds of officers let go by the British at the end of the American war. Like ex-service men today Frank Greenwood, the fourth son of the MP for Staffordshire who would inherit nothing from his father, had to find another job when the British Army no longer needed him so he joined the East India Company like so many other hopefuls at that time and headed for Bengal.

“At supper Sinclair fell into conversation with Captain Greenwood a young man like himself intent on forging a successful career in the East. He was a retired British Army officer who like so many others had been let go after the defeat in America. Greenwood, much to Sinclair's chagrin, was admired by both the men and the women on board. His good looks and easy temperament seemed to smooth all his social interactions. He was gracious, charming and good company. He spoke eloquently of his experience in the American War telling Sinclair that he had had a mainly diplomatic role and had not seen much in the way of fighting. Over their meal he told Sinclair how he had sailed from Nova Scotia up the Hudson River with his commanding officer, Sir Guy Carleton to a conference with General Washington at Orangetown. There they agreed how what was left of the British Army and the thousands of ordinary people who had remained loyal to the Crown were to be removed from the new and independent country.”

Sir Guy Carleton: the last British Commander in North America

 Travelling in France at the end of 1788 Dr Sinclair and John Leadam discuss the state of the country: 

“In every town and village we pass through there are vagrants on the road and groups of young men looking for work. In the woods and along the roadside we see women and children foraging for food. It looks like they are eating weeds, snails, and mushrooms in fact whatever they can find. From what I have seen so far I am not impressed.”

“I agree John, things look pretty bad.”

 When they stopped for lunch John decided to their driver Joseph the cause of the malaise.

“It’s because of you British,” he said with a sour face. “The men who weave are without work.  This new Commercial Treaty will be the death of us. We cannot compete with your English factories. And now there is no food. In the summer it did not rain and to compound our problems when the rains came the Lord sent us hail the size of men’s fists that destroyed the crops in the fields. This harvest is the worst in living memory. The bread you are eating is most probably made of English corn and the oats we feed the horses are English too. There is nothing here but the landlord must still have his rent. The King has been merciful and has suspended the collection of normal taxes but the country is bankrupt someone has to pay for fighting you British in America and Canada. The trouble is that the nobles don’t want it to be them; they think us little people should foot the bill. France is in crisis Monsieur, people disappear into prison never to see the light of day again and to make matters worse the weather was already unusually cold for the time of year; it will be very bad for many Frenchmen this year messieurs.”

The Bastille in 1715

The Storming of the Bastille on the afternoon of 14 July 1789 came as food prices soared in Paris. The castle was taken by the residents of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine who were some of the poorest people in city. The medieval fortress represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. The prison contained just seven inmates at the time but its storming became a symbol of the people’s triumph over the abuse of the absolutist monarchy governing France at the time.

The Bastille was demolished by order of the Committee of the Hôtel de Ville during the revolution and souvenirs of the fortress were transported around France and displayed as icons of the overthrow of despotism. Over the next century, the site featured prominently in political protests and revolutions. Today the there is little of the site to be seen except for some stone foundations that were relocated to the side of the Boulevard Henri IV.

Both the American Revolutionary War and the build-up to the French Revolution provide a back drop to my new novel. Times of war and conflict are times of misery and heroism: Find out what happens to Dr Sinclair and Frank Greenwood in my novel, Sinclair, which will be available to read in the autumn of 2016.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité - but not for women

We are interested in all things French at the moment it seems form the BBC's new block buster drama on the life of Louis XIV and Versailles to Euro 2016. France as we all know is the home of revolution, of Liberté, égalité, fraternité but what is not so well known is that women were barred from political rights even as they were being proclaimed to be universal and inalienable and in 1793 were deemed to lack sufficient education to participate in the nation's political life and by the autumn of that year they were also barred from participating in clubs and societies.

But not all Frenchmen and revolutionaries were against women's rights. Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (September 17, 1743–March 28, 1794) was one such man. In 1786 at the age forty-two, he married the twenty-two year old Sophie de Grouchy (1764–1822), with whom he forged a loving relationship. The pair shared similar political convictions and developed a solid intellectual partnership.

Like her husband, de Grouchy was committed to bringing about major judicial and political reforms in France; and her own experiences of convent schooling had left her with fierce dislike of the Church and a commitment to secular values. They both dreamed and worked towards a liberal, rational and democratic France. 

In 1790 as the French Revolution was well under way her husband called for “the admission of women to the rights of citizenship” but he was widely opposed on the grounds that women were innately inferior and destined to only to be wives and mothers.

In 1791, along with Thomas Paine, the Condorcets founded la Société républicaine [the Republican Society], sometimes credited as the first republican society in France; and Mme de Condorcet translated Paine's writings for the journal of the Society, La Républicain ou défenseur du gouvernement représentatif [The Republican or defender of representative government].

In the autumn of 1792, the Marquis was elected to the National Convention of the newly constituted first French Republic, and became chairman of the Committee on a Constitution. He proposed what became known as, “La Girondine” a constitution that was rejected in favour of the Jacobin Constitution, in June 1793 and his impassioned defence of La Girondine led to an order for his arrest and he was forced to flee from his beloved France.

Separated from one another de Condorcet wrote until he was found dead in prison cell under suspicious circumstances while his wife worked on her own text known as Lettres à Cabanis sur la sympathie [Letters to Cabanis on Sympathy], in which she sets forth her own ideas on achieving “a society of happiness” and struggles with the question of what holds society together while her own life and the life of the nation was being rent asunder as the Terror raged.

Sophie was rendered penniless by her husband's proscription and death and to support herself, her child and her sister she opened a shop and put aside her writing and translation work for years until she eventually published a translation of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) in 1798, adding eight letters, Lettres sur la Sympathie, commenting upon this work.  This became the standard French translation for the next two centuries. Her eight letters on sympathy were however ignored by historians of economic thought, and were only recently (2008) translated into English.

In the French Revolution we see for the first time the issue of gender as a constitutional condition for the possession of political rights and it is a sad irony that the women of France would not achieve the ballot until 1944, and many of the advancements in civil law passed in the euphoria of the 1790s were withdrawn by Napoleon, and not again fully secured until the last half of the twentieth century.

The Marquis de Condorcet was symbolically re- interred in the Panthéon in 1989, in honour of the bicentennial of the French Revolution and Condorcet's role as a central figure in the Enlightenment. He started his academic life as a mathematician then transferred those skills into social and political affairs developing a model he called “social arithmetic”. He could be called the ‘father of statistics’ because he advocated the use of statistics and probability theory, to the financial reforms, the reform of hospital care, jury decision-making and voting procedures.

Sophie's contribution to modern political and economic thought is now being properly evaluated and recognised particularly in the United States where her contribution to the discussion on the nature of liberty is now being widely acknowledged. In a world of political and social turmoil she advocates that educators and social reformers should nurture 'sympathy'  the feeling for others induced by imagining yourself in another’s place and imagining how you would feel. In this way, people would be led to strive to maintain good relations with their fellows and provide the basis both for specific benevolent acts and for the general social order. 

Sympathy may be an old idea but I think its a good one and many of our politicians and economists would do well to consider it once more.

Sources:

The Status of Women in Classical Economic Thought edited by Robert William Dimand, Chris Nyland

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/histfem-condorcet/

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/rousseaus-theory-of-sentiments-57752.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_de_Condorcet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Condorcet

Euro 2016 Liberté, Égalité, Footé

In Europe we are obsessed with all things French at the moment. No it's not because of terrorism, the Euro, fashion, the strikes or the sophistication of French culture - it's the football or more precisely the UEFA Euro 2016 Competition.

The BBC has tapped into the trend with a new multi-million pound drama, Versailles which is proving to be a hot, steamy romp of sex and violence at the court of Louis XIV and with an impressive trailer for the football with a host of commentators and sports stars dressed in 18th century costume, parading with the tricolour in hand and proclaiming - Liberte, Egalite Foote! Who says 18th century history is not relevant today?