{"id":1795,"date":"2014-01-06T11:00:01","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T18:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/?p=1795"},"modified":"2014-01-06T11:06:35","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T18:06:35","slug":"victorian-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/victorian-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting inside the Victorian Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\" align=\"center\">I&#8217;m pleased to welcome my literary friend Antoine Vanner to talk about how he creates believable characters in his Victorian-based historical fiction. Vanner writes <em>The Dawlish Chronicles<\/em>, of which <em>Brittania&#8217;s Wolf<\/em> is the first book of five (see my review on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/review\/R1EWN9B1FB81PU\/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&amp;ASIN=B00CLHET9S&amp;channel=detail-glance&amp;nodeID=133140011&amp;store=digital-text\">Amazon<\/a>.)\u00a0 The story begins in 1877 during the Russo-Turkish War, a period the author is obviously knowledgeable about and feels at home in.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\" align=\"center\">&#8220;I&#8217;m fascinated by the Victorian period,&#8221; Vanner told David Hayes for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.historicnavalfiction.com\/other-authors\/3132-antoine-vanner\">Historic Naval Fiction. <\/a>&#8220;for not only was it one of colonial expansion and of Great Power rivalry that often came to the brink of war, but it was also one of unprecedented social, political, technological and scientific change&#8230; <em>The Dawlish Chronicles<\/em> are set in that world of change, uncertainty and risk.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\" align=\"center\">Antoine has survived military coups, a guerrilla war, storms at sea and life in mangrove swamps, tropical forest, offshore oil-platforms, and the boardroom.\u00a0 He has lived and worked in eight countries, has traveled widely in all continents except Antarctica and is fluent in three languages.\u00a0 His writing is both meticulous yet lively and action-packed.\u00a0 Vanner writes from a Victorian mindset, not from a twenty-first century perspective. Because of the psychological and social verisimilitude he achieves in his historical fiction, I consider him a fellow time-traveler.\u00a0 I entertain a little fantasy in which Vanner and I write a book together; I would be Florence Nightingale, or one of her nurses, and he would be Nicholas Dawlish, or one of his crew&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\" align=\"center\">When I asked Antoine to give us some insight into how he thinks like a Victorian, here is his process:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<p align=\"center\"><b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Antoine-in-his-library-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazyload alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1798\" alt=\"Antoine in his library (1)\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Antoine-in-his-library-1-150x150.jpg\" data-orig-src=\"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Antoine-in-his-library-1-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27150%27%20height%3D%27150%27%20viewBox%3D%270%200%20150%20150%27%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%27150%27%20height%3D%27150%27%20fill-opacity%3D%220%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Antoine-in-his-library-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Antoine-in-his-library-1.jpg 3456w\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-orig-sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>Getting into the minds of characters in Historical Fiction<\/b><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><b>by Antoine Vanner<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I believe that the greatest single challenge in writing historical fiction is not getting dates, physical details of ships or weapons, forms of speech or linkages to real events right, but in getting into the minds of the characters. This means that they should think and feel as people in that period would have done and that they should not be 21<sup>st<\/sup> Century people in re-enactors\u2019 dress. The most uncomfortable aspect of this may concern values and views regarded as acceptable by decent people in those days yet which would be considered abhorrent today. An example of this was the fact that many abolitionists in the United States had attitudes to African-Americans which we would regard today as patronising and demeaning, and that they saw resettlement in Liberia and elsewhere as a goal to be pursued once slavery had been abolished. Even Lincoln himself held such views to some extent.<\/p>\n<p>When creating believable characters not all research should show up ultimately on the page but the writer should have a comprehensive mental picture of the world the character inhabited and how he or she would have thought or behaved in it. \u00a0Main characters \u2013 and especially ones which recur in series fiction \u2013should become real persons to the writer and their reactions to any set of set of circumstances should be consistent with the constraints, liberties, challenges and opportunities which that world represented, and with the values they hold. Any one book in a series will show a lead character at a particular period of their lives and credibility is enhanced if the writer has a view of what the totality of that life might have been, from birth to death. The \u201cback story\u201d of the character\u2019s life up to the period of the book\u2019s action determines how he or she will feel and behave, and the events in that book in turn will have a bearing on their thinking and behaviour in later books. In my own case my fictional hero, the Royal Navy officer Nicholas Dawlish (1845-1918) has featured in one published novel so far (<i>Britannia\u2019s Wolf<\/i>) but I\u2019ve already written three others and am currently at work on the fifth in the series. The second novel in the sequence (<i>Britannia\u2019s Reach<\/i>) is due for publication early in 2014. I therefore have a sense that I\u2019m writing (and researching) chapters in a biography, the main features of which I already know, even if the detail remains to be filled in. <a href=\"http:\/\/dawlishchronicles.com\/\">On my website\u00a0<\/a> an outline is provided of Dawlish\u2019s whole life and further information will be added as more books are published.\u00a0 (dawlishchronicles.com)<\/p>\n<p>My writing concentrates on the Victorian period (1837-1901) and though the settings are global the perspective is from a British viewpoint. At this time British power was approaching its zenith and though the sentiment that \u201cGod is an Englishman\u201d might not have been stated in so many words the sentiment was widely held by all classes of society. As the British Empire expanded \u2013 more often than not by a series of accidents and by reactions to real or imagined external threats \u2013 Britons came in contact with a wide range of other cultures. And in most cases, when they matched them against their own values, they regarded them as wanting and shaped their own behaviour accordingly.<\/p>\n<p>In getting into the minds of fictional characters, whether admirable or despicable, or somewhere on the broad spectrum in between, I see three major themes which must be addressed. These are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Social and ethical values<\/li>\n<li>Physical constraints of time and distance<\/li>\n<li>What they didn\u2019t know<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For the Victorian periods \u2013 Dawlish\u2019s era \u2013 there were major differences In all these areas with how people in English-speaking countries view the world today. In this blog I\u2019m concentrating on the first of these themes but the others should not be forgotten and I may discuss them at some later date. My focus is largely on British values and thinking, not just in what is today the United Kingdom but in the major settlements in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, where large numbers of emigrants settled. Much of what consisted of the remainder of the still-expanding empire saw very little permanent settlement by Europeans. The enormous area represented by \u201cIndia\u201d, which covered today\u2019s India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, saw practically none, and it was administered by a few thousand British officials, garrisoned by a small British army supplemented by high-calibre Indian regiments.<\/p>\n<p>What follows here is a non-exhaustive list of Social and Ethical values that influenced, or determined, how Britons thought and behaved in the second part of the 19<sup>th<\/sup> Century:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Many, and not only those in positions of power, felt pride about what Britain had achieved as a world power and, increasingly, unease about whether it could be maintained. Over the preceding three centuries Britain had been threatened by great Continental European tyrannies \u2013 Spain\u2019s Phillip II, France\u2019s Louis XIV and Napoleon \u2013 and it had survived, and prevailed, by a combination of superbly professional naval power, subsidy of European allies and deployment of armies, often small, on the European mainland only when unavoidable. Nobody knew with certainty in the late 19<sup>th<\/sup> Century that the pattern was to repeat itself twice in the 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century \u2013 and three times if the Cold War is taken into account \u2013 but there was growing unease about the rise of German power through and after the years of German unification. Despite this, for much of the period the main threats were still to be seen as coming from both France and Russia;<\/li>\n<li>There was a widespread sense of national superiority. \u00a0To many today there seems much that is smug about Victorians\u2019 view of \u201cforeigners\u201d in general. This was perhaps largely founded however on awareness that social and political reform had been achieved by compromise and consensus, notably by the 1832 and 1867 Reform Acts, rather than by the revolutionary violence that had torn much of Europe apart in earlier decades. \u00a0Even by comparison with Britain\u2019s nearest continental neighbour there was much to be smug about since the 1830 and 1848 revolutions, the 1851 coup, Napoleon III\u2019s tinsel empire and the horror of the Paris Commune, and its suppression in 1871, all reinforced the view that the British way was best;<\/li>\n<li>The sense of national superiority allowed \u2013 even sanctioned \u2013 forms of religious and racial intolerance which shock us today. Though restrictions on Catholics, Dissenters and Jews had been removed by the 1870s, unofficial barriers often prevented their full acceptance in social life. Pockets of outright bigotry against Catholics persisted in Northern Ireland and Scotland and despite the friendship of the otherwise un-admirable Prince of Wales with leading Jews they too found it had to gain acceptance. The \u201chumorous\u201d magazine <i>Punch<\/i> routinely depicted the Irish as chimpanzees in cartoons that merit comparison with those of Jews in Julius Streicher\u2019s scurrilous <i>\u201cDer St\u00fcrmer\u201d<\/i> in the 1920s and 30s;<\/li>\n<li>Britain\u2019s lead in abolishing the slave trade \u2013 and being ready to expend lives and money in continuing to suppress it as in both the Atlantics and Indian Oceans \u2013 and her outright abolition of slavery in all her colonies from 1834, allowed some justifiable feeling of superiority over nations which were much slower to follow suit (Outright abolition dates: France and Denmark 1848, Netherlands and United States 1863, Ottoman Turkey 1882, Spain 1888) ;<\/li>\n<li>There was widespread awareness that social reform was being achieved, usually in fits and starts, but overall positively. Legislation had curbed the worst excess of exploitation of labour in general, and of women and children in particular, even it a lot still remained to be done. Labour was finding a voice through the now-legal trade-union movement and would emerge as a major political force by the end of the century. The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 and would have a massive impact on the politics and structures of later decades. Many of its early members, including Beatrice and Sydney Webb, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were to be influential well into the 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century;<\/li>\n<li>By the early 19<sup>th<\/sup> Century the cruel and savage punishments that had disgraced earlier centuries were phased out and reform of the prison system was underway, even if conditions were still harsh by modern standards.\u00a0 Transportation to Australia was ended in the 1860s (though France was still transporting convicts to dreadful conditions in French Guyana up to 1953). A revulsion against public executions led to their ending in the 1860s. Unpleasant as long-drop hanging in private might have been it was less brutalising than the spectacles of public beheading (for the last time in France in 1939) or of execution by slow-strangulation in Spain (used last in 1978). \u00a0Another manifestation of this greater humaneness was the movement against cruelty to animals. This increasing sensitivity was to a significant extent responsible for ruthless reaction by British forces when they encountered atrocities committed, and considered acceptable, by other cultures. The most extreme example of this was the retribution meted out to rebellious sepoys during the Indian Mutiny, and triggered by massacres of British women and children such as at Cawnpore. In my novel <i>Britannia\u2019s Wolf<\/i>, the hero, a British officer, is revolted by a similar massacre elsewhere and he exacts retribution, without hesitation, in a way that would certainly be called a war crime today;<\/li>\n<li>Though cholera and infectious diseases generally had been major killers up to the middle of the century, improved sanitation and supply of clean water from the 1860s onward, often involving huge projects, had a significant impact on life expectancy. For many families the loss of one or more children had previously been regarded as all but inevitable. It\u2019s hard today to imagine the sorrow that had been so widespread from this cause \u2013 and for the first time the numbers involved were starting to fall. Florence Nightingale\u2019s virtual invention of the modern nursing profession, the application of anaesthesia and antiseptics and the discovery of the bacterial source of many infections brought relief to millions. Despite this, medicine was till primitive by modern standards and bed-rest was the only prescription for many illnesses;<\/li>\n<li>Religion (and Disbelief) was taken very seriously by the steadily growing middle-class, not just in outward forms which included strict Sabbath observance, but as regards how religious faith consciously influenced personal behaviour. (A fascinating insight to this can be got from Edmund Gosse\u2019s wonderful memoir <i>Father and Son<\/i>). Political and military leaders felt no embarrassment about admitting to praying for guidance. Disbelief was approached with similar earnestness (itself a great Victorian virtue) and for those whom Darwin\u2019s <i>Origin of Species <\/i>(1858) forced reassessment of their beliefs the process was painful in the extreme. It was notable however that religious belief and observance was weaker, and frequently non-existent, at the extreme upper and lower levels of society;<\/li>\n<li>Higher ethical standards in public life and service were demanded from the mid-century onwards. Corruption, nepotism and bribery had been accepted as integral aspects of government and administration up to the early 19<sup>th<\/sup> Century, as they are still in many countries today. In Britain however, from mid-century onwards, a politically-neutral civil service was created which was recruited, and promoted, on merit, and held to strict standards of accountability. Local government, notably in great urban centres such as London, Birmingham and the major northern manufacturing cities followed a similar course. Reform of the Army, especially abolition of purchase of commissions, also followed a similar path. There was still a long way to go but there was a general awareness of steady progress;<\/li>\n<li>Food was getting cheaper, partly due to the abolition of the Corn Laws in the 1840s (but not soon enough to stop the Irish Potato Blight deteriorating into the Irish Potato Famine) which allowed importation of grain from Russia and North America. The invention of refrigeration, brought affordable meat imports from as far afield as Argentina and New Zealand from the 1880s onwards;<\/li>\n<li>Technology was impacting on the lives of ordinary people at an unprecedented rate, and usually improving them. Gas lighting and, by the last decades of the century, electric lighting made for greater home comfort and facilitated reading of the flood of cheap newspapers, magazines and books that new printing techniques made possible. Ever more efficient railways made commuting from more distant suburbs a reality and London\u2019s underground railways set the example for mass-transit schemes elsewhere. The penny-post and the very efficient organisation that supported it (up to three deliveries a day in large towns and cities) allowed families to keep in hitherto undreamt-of easy contact. The telegraph had linked all major parts of the globe by the 1880s but for most people a telegram was too expensive to send, even locally, except in emergencies. And few imagined that from 1914 onwards the sight of a telegram delivery boy was one to chill the blood have<\/li>\n<li>Awareness of class differences probably reached its climax in this period, becoming almost an obsession with the expanding Middle, Lower Middle and \u201cRespectable Working\u201d Classes. Above these levels nobody was much concerned, being convinced of their own superiority anyway, while the Underclass was too focussed on survival to care. \u201cRespectability\u201d, difficult to define but known when seen, was a goal to be striven for. The Church, Law, Medicine, the Army and the Navy were no longer the only professions to which gentlemen cold belong as room was made for accountants, bankers and stockbrokers, though not necessarily on equal terms. (Somerset Maugham\u2019s <i>Of Human Bondage<\/i> is excellent on this). Bizarrely, given that Britain\u2019s wealth was built on industry, engineers never achieved the status they did in the United States or Continental Europe and indeed still haven\u2019t. \u201cTrade\u201d remained looked down on, the term applying to profit-making ventures of any type and minor land-owning gentry sneered at millionaires who had made their money in business or industry. These millionaires in turn bought landed estates and angled for knighthoods and peerages, striving to ensure that their own sons and daughters would escape the taint of trade. \u201cMarrying beneath one\u201d could invite a lifetime of humiliation, if not\u00a0 social ostracism, a concern that troubles the hero of <i>Britannia\u2019s Wolf<\/i> even as war rages around him and his survival hangs in the balance;<\/li>\n<li>Servants, male and female, represented a huge percentage of the working population, valued and reasonably well remunerated at the senior levels of butler, housekeeper or cook, but paid pittances at lower levels such as scullery maid. Even allowing for inflation, \u00a310 a year, plus food and accommodation, was not overgenerous, especially when one free day, or even half-day, might be provided per fortnight and working days might be up to 16 hours. Even modestly prosperous families could afford a single servant and having one was one mark of respectability. (A very realistic picture of lower middle-class life in the 1880s can be had from the Grossmiths\u2019 very entertaining <i>Diary of a Nobody<\/i>). An unpleasant aspect of the system was that young female servants were often the victims of rape by employers, or by their sons. <i>Tess of the d\u2019Urbervilles\u2019<\/i> case was not unusual;<\/li>\n<li>Which brings us finally to Sex. There is a widespread modern misconception that Victorians disliked and disapproved of it but the large families of the period, including Queen Victoria\u2019s nine children, give the lie to it. There was however good reason to be careful. There was no reliable method of contraception and pregnancies were often dangerous, indeed fatal. The commonly held view that that \u201cGood Women do not like Sex\u201d probably had much to do with this. Educated and reasonably wealthy women who had produced \u201cthe heir and the spare\u201d were reluctant to have more children, which only sexual abstinence could guarantee.\u00a0 In such cases gentleman would be unwilling to force the issue, but in many cases would find solace elsewhere. What were referred to by Sherlock Holmes as \u201cseparate establishments\u201d were not unusual and prostitution flourished. Fear of unwanted pregnancy also inhibited easy sexual relations outside marriage and a major lack or realism in many historical novels and movies is the ease with which characters jump into bed together! Though savage legal penalties applied to homosexual practices (life imprisonment for Sodomy and two-years&#8217; hard labour for Gross Indecency) they seem to have been seldom applied. A blind eye seems to have been turned by the authorities to an active Gay sub-culture, the view being that \u201cYou can do what you like as long as you don\u2019t do it in the street and frighten the horses\u201d. Only when high publicity was involved, as in the case of the Oscar Wilde and Cleveland Street affairs, was action taken. Wilde himself would probably never have been prosecuted had he not brought the matter into the open himself.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s listed above provides only the sketchiest outline of a complex and rapidly changing culture. Many of its features are familiar to us in our own day, sometimes in an evolved form, but others are jarringly different. We have the advantage of knowing \u201cwhat happened next\u201d, which the people of the time did not, and we know what aspects led to positive or negative long-term outcomes. It\u2019s a world like this which a historical novelist must make his or her characters citizens of, not people of our own day acting out parts in period dress. Any character will be conscious of, or driven by, or oppressed or advantaged by any of the factors above. Even if this does not emerge explicitly on the page it\u2019s essential for the novelist\u2019s own mental picture.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, for me, writing about \u201cthe day before yesterday\u201d in historical terms is much easier than novelists dealing with older and remote periods \u2013 but for all of us, regardless of era, the joy or research and creation is a delight. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Britannias-Wolf-Book-Cover-Image.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazyload alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-1797\" alt=\"Britannia's Wolf Book Cover Image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Britannias-Wolf-Book-Cover-Image-150x150.jpg\" data-orig-src=\"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Britannias-Wolf-Book-Cover-Image-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27150%27%20height%3D%27150%27%20viewBox%3D%270%200%20150%20150%27%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%27150%27%20height%3D%27150%27%20fill-opacity%3D%220%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Britannias-Wolf-Book-Cover-Image-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Britannias-Wolf-Book-Cover-Image.jpg 333w\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-orig-sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m pleased to welcome my literary friend Antoine Vanner to [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-we-write-a-series-of-essays-by-guest-authors","category-writing-and-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1795"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1803,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions\/1803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}