avatarE.B. Johnson

Summary

The article argues that historical fiction often undermines the significance of women in history by focusing on romantic relationships rather than their achievements and influence.

Abstract

The author, E.B. Johnson, expresses a concern that historical fiction frequently fails to portray women as the influential historical figures they were, instead reducing their stories to romantic escapades. Johnson points out that women like Anne Boleyn are often depicted solely in relation to the men in their lives, which overshadows their own accomplishments and the progressive ideas they may have championed. The article emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the true impact of historical women, suggesting that contemporary writers, especially women, have a responsibility to tell their stories with accuracy and depth, thereby challenging the patriarchal narrative that has long dominated historical accounts. By doing so, the author contends, we not only give credit where it is due but also provide a more inspiring and empowering narrative for future generations.

Opinions

  • Historical fiction should focus on the actual historical contributions of women rather than solely on their romantic relationships.
  • The portrayal of women in historical fiction often reinforces sexist stereotypes and the patriarchal view that women's stories are less important than men's.
  • Women in history have been powerful catalysts for change, and their stories should reflect their strengths, actions, and the adversity they faced.
  • The tendency to define women by their relationships rather than their individual achievements diminishes their historical roles and influences.
  • The English Reformation, for example, is often attributed to Henry VIII's lust for Anne Boleyn, but the article suggests that Anne and her family played a more significant role in pushing for religious reform.
  • The author argues that the historical romance genre often perpetuates a narrative that women are valuable only in their ability to secure romantic relationships, which is a disservice to their legacies and contemporary readers.
  • There is a need for historical fiction to break away from the damsel-in-distress narrative and instead portray women as dynamic characters with their own power, success, and legacies.
  • The article calls for a more honest and potentially uncomfortable retelling of history that accurately represents the roles and contributions of women.

The women of history deserve more than your historical romances

The women of yesterday and the daughters of tomorrow deserve more than your historical romances and this is why.

Photo by Cheryl Winn-Boujnida on Unsplash

by: E.B. Johnson

I’m someone who not only writes historical fiction, I also read a lot of historical fiction. I love a good story about a strong female who changed the tides of world events, but I often find that these stories center more around the relationships in that woman’s life, rather than the role she played in the events taking place around her.

If you’re the type that loves a good history read too, then you’ll know how hard it can be to find fiction that focuses on the actual history, rather than romance — especially when it comes to the stories of women. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen in love with a new historical heroine, only to be let down when I discover that the brunt of the story centers around what man she can catch or what man she is constantly longing for.

The women of history deserve more than your historical romances.

As women, we have been coached for centuries to make ourselves small. We make ourselves small at home when it comes time to stand up to our husbands; we make ourselves small when it comes to the temper tantrum of our friends, our bosses, our children. As women, we’re taught that our power is in disappearing, and that is doubly true when it comes to sharing our stories as the powerful catalysts that they are.

The role we women play in history is reduced consistently for a number of reasons. It is easier and more comfortable to define a woman by her relationships than it is to define her by her strengths and actions. It is also easier to strip her of her greatness and place that power back where it’s so familiar: in the hands of men.

As writers, we owe more to those who came before us than a roll-in-the-hay and a few poorly-written, inherently misogynistic romance stories. When we reduce the stories of women in the past, we reduce the impact they had on the future. What’s worse, we only go to perpetuate an oppressive patriarchal narrative that has — for centuries — told women that they are not the ones who make history. Men are.

Women deserve to be defined by more than just their relationships.

Read any take on Anne Boleyn and I can promise you the story you will find: either a helpless or a vengeful woman, set on controlling a romance that was ill-fated from the jump.

Every variation of her tale centers around her husband, the tyrannical Henry VIII, and doing so loses sight of the many incredible things about Anne Boleyn that make her story an inspiration.

Anne Boleyn was more than just a harpy seeking a throne, she was a woman that was seeking to control her own destiny in a time when it was illegal to do so.

Rather than lowering herself to become the complacent property of some obscure, up-trumped lordling she aimed for the highest seat in the land, and made great plans for the women and poor of the country when she attained it.

By focusing on Anne’s relationships with this king or that lord, we take away from the real story: a young, intelligent, charismatic woman taking the reins of destiny into her own hands. Focusing on whether or not she loved Henry VIII is irrelevant, what matters is that she was a woman that refused to be silenced.

Women deserve more than to be defined by their relationships with men or their relationships with their children. They deserved to be defined by their actions, their passions, their beliefs and the desire they hold deep in their hearts. Women want the same things men do — power, success, legacies. Give them the justice they deserve and reveal those things in your stories.

Women deserve credit where credit is due.

Minimizing a woman’s role in history removes credit where credit is due. Boiling down a heroine’s story to whether or not she successfully captured the heart of a man places the power of the story (and the events contained therein) back into the hands of men — where they’ve always been.

Take again the story of Anne Boleyn.

While the story of the English Reformation is often accredited to Henry’s lust for Anne, it is hardly ever accredited, in design, to Anne herself.

Henry’s lust did play a part in the English Reformation, yes, but it was Anne and her family that pushed Henry to take up the mantle of reform and it was for far more different reasons that a quick hump and long-coming release (no pun intended).

Anne Boleyn was raised in some of the most progressive courts in Renaissance Europe. There, new ideas were starting to form and many of these were humanist ones. When she returned to England in 1522, it was with a very different vision of life than what her superstitious English counterparts held. Thanks to her liberal upbringing, Anne saw a new future and she saw how she could enact that future too.

Anne believed in a church that saw to the needs of its people. She believed in churches being places of charity and education, with schools bursting full of local children learning how to read and write. It was Anne’s belief (as well as the belief of her father and brother) that the churches of their time were not meeting these most noble goals, so she sought to reform them and remake them in the honest and charitable image that had been intended for them.

She gave more in charity than any monarch before her, and she often haded out alms and blessings on her own. Anne was a powerful woman who wanted good for the people around her, but that credit is stripped from her when she’s minimized to a bedfellow and a broodmare.

Making a woman in history’s story strictly about romance doesn’t give her the credit she deserves. It does’t convey the adversity she faced or the courage it took just to wake up and be a woman in times gone by. As writers (especially female authors of historical fiction) we owe them more.

Women deserve more than perpetuating sexism and the patriarchy.

The biggest flaw, however, when it comes to much of the historical romance that is marketed as historical fiction today, is the way it perpetuates sexism and the stereotypes that reinforce destructive, patriarchal thinking.

Reducing a woman to nothing more than romance is to say that that is all she is worth. It is to say that women are shallow, with little interest in things outside the realm of pleasing men, and it is also to reinforce the idea that women are defined by the relationships they are able to secure. To make a woman’s story little more than a love story is to tell little girls that they are valuable only when they can capture a man; a dangerous precedent to set in a world of social media and internet predators.

Stories like these teach women that their love is for others, never themselves. They perpetuate more of the same patriarchy, with men being the complex, omnipotent masters of the universe at the top and women being the groveling, desperate-for-love whimps on the bottom. In these stories, women are always static (no matter how much “screen time” they get) and it is always the men who experience the change and growth and enlightenment.

These stories are toxic, and they’re nasty and they teach our daughters to keep their heads in the clouds, looking for daddy’s love and acceptance when they should be learning how to love themselves.

We’re better than these stories, but we have to make the conscious decision to get uncomfortable and step outside of the damsel-in-distress narrative we’ve all been programmed with.

Putting it all together…

Not all historical romance is damaging, but much of it is. Many of the tales that parade as historical fiction at your local library or bookstore are really historical romance, filled with antiquated ideas of history and what a woman can and cannot be.

When we perpetuate these flimsy, misogynistic historical romances, we strip women of the credit they rightfully deserve in history. We also strip them of their autonomy as a person and their value as an important part of the past.

We owe our foremothers better and we owe our daughters even more. As women who are looking ahead to a brighter future, it’s time to make sure we start telling our history as it actually was — as uncomfortable as that might be.

History
Gender Equality
Women
Writing
Writers On Writing
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