Rant About Poor Scholarship

I’m going to be a bit ranty today. I just saw something on The Daily Mail that really concerns me. Supposedly Hilary Davidson, the fashion curator at the Museum of London, says that the discovery of these two items “totally rewrites” fashion history. To which I say BOLLOCKS!

These items were found in Lengberg Castle in east Tyrol (Austria). They are thought to have been buried c. 1480. I’ve spent 30+ years as a re-enactor studying late 15th century and early 16th century “German” Landsknechts. It’s probably the period I know the most about, and these garments don’t rewrite ANYTHING from where I’m sitting. In fact, they appear to be rather common.

Let’s start with the underpants (please click on the images to enlarge them, I had to make them small to fit them all in). I haven’t the slightest idea how Davidson came to the conclusion that the underwear were for women. Every scrap of evidence I’ve seen supports the opposite conclusion. Here is a detail from The Men’s Bathhouse by Albrecht Dürer, 1498. What are all the MEN wearing? Little undies that tie on the sides. They look suspiciously familiar, don’t they? Not entirely sure how anyone claiming to be a fashion historian with a specialty in the Medieval period could fail to have connected this garment and this image in a heartbeat.

UPDATE: Please see the comment from Nutz below. "Davidson NEVER came to the conclusion that the underpants were for women and I NEVER said so either. I always said that underpants were a male garment in the Middle Ages." So the quote in The Daily Mail is misleading. 

On to the “bra”. Please look closely at this garment. The bottom is frayed. Why? Because there’s something missing. Please look at the side. See all the little eyelet holes? Those are for lacing. What was the MAIN female undergarment of the day? The kirtle (a long, tightly-fitted smock). You can see tons of examples of this garment in the Wenceslaus Bible (dated to the late 14th century). There is NOTHING groundbreaking about finding the top portion of a kirtle. 

I know sensationalism sells, but is it really worth your reputation to make such easily debunked statements? I know I’ve pretty much lost all respect for the Davidson, and I have serious reservations about anything coming out of the Museum of London at this point.  (I'll cut this given that I'm being told Davidson was misquoted). In conclusion, I’ll wait until I hear something from Dr. Jutta Zander-Seidel telling me that SHE thinks these rather common looking garments “totally rewrite” fashion history.

Rant over. Ok, not quite ... Update:

fighting for the pants

More reading for those who just can’t get enough of the topic. Here is Beatrix Nutz’s article for BBC History Magazine, and here is a shorter piece that was posted on the University of Innsbruck website (where it specifically notes that the cache contained men’s clothing, further undercutting the attribution of the underwear as women’s clothing). Given what I’ve seen so far, I stand by my opinion of the find. Is it possible I’ll change my mind? Sure … at least about the “bras” (there are still two I haven’t seen). But not about the underpants. There’s simply no supporting documentation out there for them to be attributed to women, nor is there any reason to pluck them out of a mixed cache of clothing and come to that conclusion. 

UPDATE from Nutz's comment: "As to the “longline bra”: The bottom is NOT frayed. There is a hem at the lower end, even if it is only preserved over a short length. In addition there is NOTHING to indicate that a skirt may have been sewn onto that end thus making it a kirtle. No tiny holes in the fabric where a sewing needle and thread may have passed through.

And the kirtles in the Wenceslaus Bible: They do have narrow shoulder straps like the “longline bra” but I can´t make out anything that even remotely resembles cups. Besides – there´s still the other “bras” from Lengberg that end right below the breasts and are definitely NOT upper parts of dresses."

I don't agree that you can extrapolate from art 100%, so it's not possible to dismiss the tie to the bathing gowns simply because you can't make out cups. But given that Nutz has access to all the "bras", I'll again state that I'm open to having my mind changed on this one. Perhaps the French article will have more and better images? Or perhaps Nutz will post high rez ones somewhere? 

I’d love if they made the dig notes and pictures available. I’d also love to see the final thesis that Nutz is working on, as it’s entirely possible that the article she wrote (and the ensuing coverage in the news) isn’t wholly representational.  I’m attempting to get a hold of the partial notes that a friend had previously reviewed, but the link for them has been removed. More to come, hopefully!

Beating husband w/spindle
while pulling on his pants

Another Update: I found the link to another article in German. The ever lovely GrowlyCub gave it a quick look over since she’s fluent and her report is that all it says is that DNA testing on the underpants was inconclusive in attempting to establish which sex wore them and that all the evidence for women wearing them is confined to art. What it doesn’t mention is that all of said art is allegorical in nature, and you can’t use it to show that women wore underpants any more than you can to show that Landsknecht soldiers wore sandals. (Nutz says in the comments that she agrees with this point, so I clearly misunderstood the articles). The images she’s talking about are all about hen-pecked husbands and adulteresses. They all allude to the woman wearing the man’s garments to assert her authority (the underpants in question) and they frequently show the husband desperately trying to get them back. Here are a couple that aren't in any of the linked articles so far. What needs to be acknowledged is that the power of the image is lost if this was a common woman’s garment. The reason underpants were chosen to symbolize the wife stealing the husband’s power is because the garment was unmistakably seen as masculine during the period.

Real Life Research

All the Hoydens share a love of research. In dusty archives (as dramatized so well in the Eloise portions of Lauren's books), on the internet, on trips to museums and historic locations. One place we don't think of historical novelists doing research is our own lives. And yet I find real life experience serves as research fodder more often than one might think.

Isobel's experience with reenactments means she has hands-on knowledge 0f how a corset laces and how one goes through a doorway wearing panniers. A modern-day nonprofit benefit may be different from a Mayfair ball, but certain things - the press of the crowd, the buzz of conversation, the clink of glasses, the rustle and sweep of wearing a long gown - translate into the experience of my characters. Doing a seating arrangement for a family dinner, I have sudden sympathy for the challenges faced by my diplomatic hostess heroine. My characters' cat Berowne is taken directly from my cat Lescaut. Before I had my own child, the children in my books were inspired by my friends' children. Not modeled on them exactly, but they definitely served as models for different ages and stages of development. Now I confess as I delight in watching my daughter Mélanie (who is observing me with great interest as I write this blog post) a part of me is taking notes for the next time I write about a newborn baby.

Writers, which of your real life experiences serve as historical writing research? Readers, is the reverse true? Which scenes in historical novels resonate with your present-day experiences?
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Theatrical References

I spent this past weekend in Ashland for the closing weekend of the season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Crisp air, gorgeous autumn leaves, snow-capped mountains, lovely time with friends, and a glimpse of three of our own Leslie's books prominently displayed in the Tudor Guild gift shop. And three wonderful plays, all of which I was seeing for the second (or in the case of Measure for Measure the fourth) time.

One thing I noticed is that all three plays dealt with theater in a variety of ways. Saturday I saw Ghost Light, a fabulous, wrenching world premiere developed by Jonathan Moscone and Tony Taccone, written by Taccone, and directed by Moscone, It's a wonderfully theatrical play both in style (moving back and forth in time, combining elements of dream and reality) and in substance, as the central character struggles to come to terms with his father's assassination while directing a production of Hamlet. The scenes of the production team discussing how to handle the Ghost of Hamlet's father, and of Jon, the central character, working with his acting students and auditioning actors are spot-on and at moments hysterically funny.

Saturday I saw a matinee of Julius Caesar, a play, as the production notes pointed, filled with theatrical references, from the assassins meeting in the porch of Pompey's theater to the political theater of Marc Antony's funeral oration (not to mention the fact that Antony's scene where he seemingly makes peace with the conspirators just after the assassination is a brilliant piece of acting). That evening I saw Measure for Measure, another play where the story is largely played out upon the public stage (particularly in the denouement) while a key plot element involves one woman playing the part of another in a secret tryst.

During breaks between plays I was working on a sequence in my current WIP that takes place backstage at the Comédie-Française. I love theatrical references in books and plays. Actual scenes backstage and onstage become metaphors for the roles we all play - with different people, in different aspects of our lives. For the fine line between illusion and reality, for the difficulty of discerning truth amid artifice and the way that theatrical artifice can sometimes ring with truth. Reading Isobel's great interview with Joanna Bourne on Monday, I was thinking that a large part of why I love writing about spies is that like actors they too play many parts, though on a rather more dangerous stage. The sequence I was working on set at the Comédie-Française gave me lots of opportunities to play with the parallel, as it involves the escape from Paris during the White Terror of an actress who is also an agent.

Do you have favorite books that deal with theater, whether on stage or backstage? Does theater become a metaphor for other elements in the story? Writers, do you like writing scenes set in the theater? Do you get inspiration from plays?

Anti-heroes, Anti-heroines, and the Sympathy Factor

Isobel had a great post a few weeks ago about anti-heroes. The fascinating follow-up discussion on Isobel’s post took me back to a question I've pondered in the past. What exactly makes an anti-hero or anti-heroine? Is it the behavior or the motives?

I’ve heard the term anti-hero used to encompass a range of characters. There’s the Talented Mr. Ripley, who commits murder for his own advancement. There’s Don Draper, who has principles of a sort and is remarkably loyal to some of the people in his life, but seems to have no concept of romantic fidelity–(or at least no ability to be faithful. (One of the things I love about Mad Men is how all the characters are flawed and yet all of them have sympathetic moments.) Francis Crawford of Lymond does all sorts of seemingly horrible things, and yet he inevitably proves to have done so for the noblest of motives. Is he an anti-hero? Or is an anti-hero someone who acts out of selfish motives and doesn’t have a core of principles? Both Han Solo and Rick Blaine claim to only be out for themselves fairly early in their respective stories. And yet neither of them does anything remotely approaching Lymond’s actions (burning his mother’s castle, being responsible for the death of his son).

Isobel described Lady Barbara Childe in Georgette Heyer’s An Infamous Army as “a benchmark anti-heroine.” Lady Barbara’s behavior is certainly destructive and causes pain to a number of people. On the other hand, I don’t think she does anything as morally questionable as my character Mélanie Fraser (entering a marriage on false pretenses, lying to her spouse for years, being responsible for deaths because of information she passed along). But Mélanie is acting out of loyalty to a cause and comrades, whereas Barbara’s behavior is driven by being discontented and unhappy. Does that make one more an anti-heroine than the other?

And, as Isobel asked, what makes an anti-hero/ine redeemable or not? I've also been pondering the question of what makes a character sympathetic (and blogged about it recently one my own website). My book The Mask of Night has a secondary couple who's marriage is in crisis. I had a number of comments from readers who were very sympathetic to Isobel, the wife, and disliked Oliver, the husband. Which surprised me, because while I was quite sympathetic to Isobel as I planned the book, when I actually wrote it, I had a hard time with her. I’m not sure what it was precisely. But though I felt sorry for her, it was though her coolness held me at a distance as wel. I often found myself sympathizing more with Oliver. Perhaps because he’s an outsider? Mostly, though, I felt sorry for both Bel and Oliver and the way their marriage eroded. In any case, I was intrigued and quite relieved by the reaction of these readers to Bel, because it means that even if I had trouble sympathizing with her myself, she didn’t come across as unsympathetic the way I wrote her.

Princess Tatiana in Vienna Waltz (who would certainly be an anti-heroine if she was the protagonist of a book) was something of the opposite case. I didn’t particularly sympathize with her when I plotted the book, yet I found myself sympathizing with her more and more as I wrote it and saw sides of her beyond the schemer. I also found myself quite sympathetic to Talleyrand, despite the fact that he was a schemer par excellence, with questionable motives both in the novel and in the historical record..

I recently got revision notes from my editor on my Waterloo book, Imperial Scandal. There’s one action of the heroine's my editor suggested I take out, because she’s afraid it goes too far and could destroy reader sympathy for her. I confess I was worried myself that that scene pushed the envelope too far. I’m glad I got to write it the way I did (and that’s the way it happens in my mind), but I don’t mind changing it in the revisions. It might be a scene that tilts the heroine into anti-heroine territory. Though it's difficult for me to judge, as I still can't define what that territory is :-).

What makes a character sympathetic to you? What makes a character lose your sympathy? Are their anti-heroes or anti-heroines for whom you've felt more sympathy than more conventional heroes and heroines? How do you define anti-heroes and anti-heroines? Is it their actions or their motivation or both? What are some of your favorite examples? What does it take for you for such a character to be redeemed?

Austen on Film - 1940 Pride and Prejudice

This weekend I rewatched the movie that began my fascination with the Regency era – the 1940 Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier as Elizabeth and Darcy and a wonderful screenplay by Aldous Huxley and Jane Murfin, directed by Robert Z. Leonard. I’m aware of the irony that the movie that set me on the path to writing Regency-set books is set in the 1830s, but the movie sent me to the novel and then to other Austen novels and to Georgette Heyer and Bernard Cornwell and Regency and Napoleonic history books and ultimately to creating my own stories.

I love a number of adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, but in many ways this one remains my favorite. I’ve sometimes wondered if it seems to be so true to the mood and tone of the book to me because I saw it (at the age of six) before I read the book. But I’m currently in the midst of rereading Pride and Prejudice and watching the movie this time I was struck by how well it captures the spare, dry irony of the book, the keen wit, and the understated emotion.

I also think the film does a brilliant job of taking the book and telling it in cinematic terms. There’s the opening sequence in which Mrs. Bennet and her daughters and Lady Lucas and Charlotte learn about Bingley’s and Darcy’s arrival in Meryton, and the two women have their coachmen race each other home, so their husbands can be the first to call on Mr. Bingley. A wonderful way of demonstrating cinematically that “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.”

There’s the archery contest between Darcy and Elizabeth that captures, also in cinematic terms, the tensions in their relationship and their growing attraction. There’s the lovely, heart-melting scene (which Leslie and I have discussed) in which Darcy tells Elizabeth the story of Wickham and Georgiana, a scene that is essentially Darcy’s letter, turned into a dialogue between two people.

When I blogged about Pride and Prejudice recently and mentioned the film, Isobel brought up the fact that the movie softens Lady Catherine. “In the Olivier/Garson P&P I was always very bothered by the transformation of Lady Catherine into a benevolent do-gooder who’s promoting the match between Lizzie and Darcy. It changes the story too much for me. It removes one of Darcy’s major moments of character growth.” I blogged about the film this week on my own website, and JMM brought up this same point, saying " The whole point of Darcy’s growth was him learning to let go of his snobbery and seeing people as they are. (IIRC, it’s Lizzie’s mother’s relatives that impress him when he meets her again at Pemberly after his insulting proposal.) He marries Lizzy with the knowledge that his aunt might never speak to him again."

This always bothered my mom (who loved the movie) as well. The changes to Lady Catherine bother me, too. I actually like the scene between Darcy and Lady Catherine after Lady Catherine speaks with Elizabeth (Darcy is so wonderfully exuberant), but I agree the arc of the story is better with Lady Catherine not changing and Darcy marrying Elizabeth knowing he is cutting ties with his aunt (who seems to be his only remaining relative from his parents’ generation).But it’s not enough to ruin (or even damage) the movie for me.

Then there are the performances, a series of finely etched portraits. Very much including Olivier as Darcy. He’s so wonderfully aristocratic (with so much emotion smoldering beneath). And yet if you watch the way he moves, his arms are always held close to his sides, as though he’s hemmed in by his role. Even as a romantic leading man, Olivier was a fabulously physical character actor. He and Greer Garson have great chemistry (watching the movie this time I was particularly struck by the intensity of the romantic tension). Edmund Gwenn captures Mr. Bennet’s dry wit, Mary Boland has Mrs. Bennet’s giddiness and determination, Melville Cooper is an hysterical Mr. Collins, Maureen O’Sullivan is a sweet but not cloying Jane…

In the comments to my post on my website, there's been wonderful discussion about favorite adaptations of Pride and Prejudice. There were votes for the 1980 1995, and 2005 versions, with many noting a preference for the first version they saw. The discussion moved on to other Austen adaptations, particularly different versions of Emma, and other film versions of literature, such as the fabulous Anna Karenina with Nicola Pagett, Stuart Wilson, and Eric Porter that was on Masterpiece Theatre years ago (and which is now firmly fixed in my mind when I think of the book, though I read the book first). What are some of your favorite novel-to-film adaptations, Austen or otherwise? If you like the Regency/Napoleonic era, what book or movie or other source introduced you to it?

Names: The Good, the Bad, the Confusing (?)

I’m curious what readers have to say about character names. Me, I like the memorable ones. Jo Beverley’s Mallorens (Cynric, Arcenbryght, Elfled) and Mary Balogh’s Bedwyn’s (Freyja, Wulfric, Rannulf) are prime favorites. There’s something that appeals to me about digging down into history and pulling forth names that have been forgotten, overlooked, and left to molder. I think it’s nice to be able to play off of this with more common names (especially if the names either show you something about the character or let you play wildly against type).

I’ve got a whole set-up in my new series (tip of the hat to the aforementioned historical romance goddesses) where the parents are both history buffs, which the mother having a penchant for Scottish history and the father being a classics scholar. All of their children have one name from the royalty of ancient Scotland and one from the pages of the classics. It was great fun to come up with them (the hero of my upcoming book Ripe for Pleasure, for example, is Leonidas Roibert Vaughn).

So I’m curious, does it bother you when you don’t know how to pronounce a character’s name, or when the name is unusual, or do you—like me—think it’s a wonderful addition to the genre?