How politically-correct can historic crime fiction ever be? Musings from the sofa.

Writing historical fiction poses an interesting challenge. If you are into fancy terminology you could call this ‘deliberate values dissonance’, if not, you could simply ask: How well do morals and values travel through time? When creating characters who lived in the past do you portray them accurately or give them modern attitudes to make them more appealing to contemporary readers?

Not so long ago there was a debate at Oxford University about Cecil Rhodes and whether or not his statue should continue to grace the campus. According to some, Rhodes was an ideological coloniser and racist, perhaps even a mass murderer, to others he was a statesman and philanthropist who held opinions common to many during his life time. It has been said that Churchill was a racist too. In 1937 he told the Palestine Royal Commission: "I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." Few of us today would condone eugenics, ethnic cleansing or genocide. Yet are we prepared to take down Churchill’s statues? Do his values, common to a man of his race, generation and class, diminish his contribution?

I’m sure I’m not alone in wanting as much historical authenticity as possible when reading a book set in the past. Take the Roman period. I’d be very surprised if an author, however well meaning, penned a protagonist who started a campaign against slavery or for women’s rights. We all know that in the past people held different views and values. We try not to judge those people out of context. Someone was good if they were considered good by the standard of morality in that time and place. It would be silly to judge a medieval person for not taking a bath every day or for punishing their child with a moderate beating. It gets more uncomfortable when we realize that almost everyone would have been a racist or homophobic during the Middle Ages, in fact, in some places you were held in suspicion if you so much as came from the next village.

Some of us are accomplished cultural relativists, as in we can accept differences between cultures, such as arranged marriage or a woman wearing a burka. Sometimes though, the same people who are so broadminded and tolerant with other cultures are less inclined to be tolerant when it comes to people in their own culture or in past generations of their own culture. We are thus faced with a dilemma. Should we write about the past as it was or should we sanitise it, make heroes and heroines after our own hearts?

The contemporary author has a difficult balancing act – to create a protagonist the reader can empathise with and yet be true to the attitudes of the period. Agatha Christie didn’t have to worry about being quite as politically correct as some current authors try to be. Increasingly I’ve been reading historical crime books which abound with gay relationships, characters from ethnic minorities, liberated females etc., all of which existed in times gone by and the inclusion of which is commendable of course, but when you end up with every category represented in a single book it comes across as a box ticking exercise.

The most annoying historical crime fiction books are the ones where the author gets on their politically-correct high horse and preaches loudly about their political values. For example, politicians are always bad, people from disadvantaged backgrounds are always good, people with prejudices, even when these attitudes are entirely compatible with the age they lived in, are considered downright evil. If you envy rich people and feel that they are all nasty parasites, then don’t set your book in that milieu.  However, if your political views are such an integral part of who you are, that you can’t resist colouring everything you write with your values, then I would suggest setting your novels in the present, perhaps in the headquarters of a trade union in Glasgow or Liverpool. You could then project your values without causing ‘deliberate values dissonance’. This problem is a tricky one for any writer of historical fiction. Ask yourself, would you stop loving your granny if you found out she was a racist?

 (Indiana Brown)