It really peeves me when in historical books, movies, etc., people act

like modern-day people instead of like the time they are supposed to be in.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS










For instance, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE last night on Masterpiece Theater. Willoughby wanted to give Marianne a horse. Such an expensive gift would be highly, highly inappropriate for a woman of her class and time. Her sister, on the show, did say it was inappropriate. The mother would have had kittens at him offering such a gift.

Another, it appears that Marianne and Willoughby are going to have sex. (In the first few minutes of the program they showed this. (Also, in MANSFIELD PARK a friend of Fanny's had sex with some man.) I know it happened in those days, even among unmarried women in their class. But it wasn't something done lightly; reliable birth control was non-existent, and if it even got out that these women had had premarital sex, even if they didn't get pregnant, they would be RUINED. Think of Little Emily in DAVID COPPERFIELD. She ran off and lived with Steerforth. She was ruined and her uncle took her to Australia to begin a new life.

I've never read the book, so I don't know.

However, the part in Pride and Prejudice, about the youngest daughter eloping and living with a man, IS in the book, even though Jane Austen didn't include any portrayals of their domestic life.

And look how everybody had kittens until Mr. Darcy bribed Wickham to marry her. If he hadn't, she'd have been disgraced, and by association, her sisters.

It's very incongruous. Sorry Hollywood, there were no electric guitars in Medieval times.

Also, how about some effort toward a realistic portrayal how people looked? Capped teeth, highlights, and boob jobs were not common features of our ancestors.

Enough said?

They must have had fabulous dental care in those days...everybody had perfect teeth.

I think it must have been based on the old "The Way Things Work" books by David McCauley that showed Mammoths doing all the figuring out work for mankind.

how Stands-with-a-Fist had been able to use a blow dryer in her tepee. All the other women in the cast had historically correct braids or straight hair.

It also bugs me when characters from the past have modern attitudes. My parents were huge fans of Little House on the Prairie, a show that made me gag, because I considered it a travesty of the books, but it was unavoidable when I was visiting the elders. There were times when I wanted to scream at the TV, "Slaves weren't visited by Santa Claus! A Jew and Gentile who married each other would have been ostracized by both sides!" Stuff like that.

I've also seen stuff in allegedly nineteenth century settings where people call each other by their first names right away. This is one thing that the Masterpiece Theatre writers have correct. Calling someone by their first name implied that the person was either an intimate or an inferior--the characters call family members, close friends, lovers, and servants by their first names. Everyone else is last name with a title or full name.

One of the best historical recreations I've ever read comes from a writer named Sandra Scoppettone. She started out writing mysteries with lesbian characters, but her latest two are about a woman PI in the 1940s. As a linguist, I'm sensitive to the use of language, and her use of 1940s slang sounds exactly like the way some of my older relatives talked.This Dame for Hire is the first book in that series.

I also recommend Jack Finney's Time and Again, which is a time travel novel. It is obvious that Finney spent a lot of time in the library before writing this story of a man who is sent to 1880s New York on a secret mission that even he doesn't understand.

I've met far too many who think (insert previous era) was an idyllic time when everyone was happy, children were well behaved, and crime was non-existent and that if we could only return to it we wouldn't be having all these problems. Visual entertainment and literature that depicted the more "nasty, brutish, and short" aspects of history may not be as fun to consume but it would offer a better perspective on how things really were. My bf and I are hooked on the new series "Mad Men" on AMC. It's set in 1960, in a Madison Ave. ad agency. Supposedly the producers took great pains to be historically accurate with the costumes, props, and dialog. As a linguist you may discern some taking of license with language that I can't but it does seem to do a good job of showing how shitty things were for women, people of color, and the working class back then.

Thanks for the recommendations! :hi:

time to watch only the first episode, I can see (as someone who was a child in that era) that they've gotten the "look" perfect, and even some of the attitudes, such as the near universality of smoking or the way that the only acceptable role for black people was that of "humble servant." The only jarring note linguistically was when Peggy was asked (in reference to her long skirt) "Are you Amish?" For some reason that seemed out of period to me. I think people would have asked someone who wore overly conservative clothes, "Did you borrow that from your grandmother?"

But otherwise, I look forward to a time when I can see some of the other episodes.

"It also bugs me when characters from the past have modern attitudes. " Including, but not limited to, characters not being as strictly chaperoned as they would have been (one man and one woman going somewhere ALONE unchaperoned), young girls being encouraged to behave in ways that would have been considered "unladylike" at the time, children being outspoken in ways that wouldn't have been tolerated in those days ("children should be seen and not heard"), etc.

and I can do that because I've written over 25 of them...most set in Jane Austen's time period.

In these books (not mine), the girls leap blithely into bed with the 'hero' without a thought of the consequences that would have inevitably fallen upon them if they really lived then. The only path open to a girl who had sex before marriage in 1800 England was either instant marriage with her despoiler (like Wickham and Lydia) or instant marriage to some other man, or expulsion from her home and inevitably a life on the streets. They leap thus blithely because our modern readers want to read about sex...no more panning to the waves crashing on the shore. The same people who want to read about it want to see it...not porn, mind you, just vicarious 'romantic' sex. It's a fantasy set in the 1800's and historical validity is the least important part of the books.

Heck, apparently HBO was showing John and Abigail Adams getting it on. Gak. Anything for ratings/book sales.

Now Lydia told her friend that she and Wickham were headed to Gretna Green, over the border in Scotland where a declaration of marriage before suitable witnesses was legal even if either or both of the party were underage. England's rules were stricter, thanks to George II's (1752 Marriage Act) desire to control the destinies of his children. But L & W went to London instead, where the Uncle and Darcy found them and arranged their marriage upon terms.

One of my biggest peeves as a re-inactor is when historical fiction writers don't take the time to properly research the period they are writing. I've frequently been jarred out of a good story by a bad note on the language, morals, or even the geography of the times. My first advice to a friend wanting to write a novel in 1930s Chicago was to research the period's slang and what the city looked like (the streets that are different than they are now, where the Hooverville was, etc.).

You've obviously done the footwork many will not. Cheers!

Often however either the editor or the copy editor, neither of whom knew anything except what they'd read in other people's books, would change or 'suggest changes' things that were right to things that were wrong but sounded right. Since I wanted to get paid, I'd go along. Not that all the 'mistakes' were their fault...nobody memorialized the true trivialities of their time in enough detail to satisfy a fiction writer. I could find tons of information about the economics of a time period, but very little about day-to-day women's lives. You had to extrapolate from diaries or cookbooks or other first-sources but when someone like Jane Austen wrote 'bought Queen's-hair ribbon to transform my old satin straw', what does it mean?

That's not an actual quote from a letter to Cassandra but a fictionalized version...anyway they both knew what was meant. It is those of us who come after who get to debate (ad nauseum) exactly what color Queen's-hair was.

When did you last see a pre-Renaissance period film in which people spoke the actual language of the time? Aside from the execrable The Passion of the Christ, I can't think of many. Maybe Apocalypto, but I've seen/read very little about that one.

The selective insertion of modern elements into a period film is a stylistic choice that you may find more or less effective. But it's a necessary concession to a million factors, so it becomes a matter of picking your battles.

I've read both books, seen different movies versions, ah, well. It's Monday.

... the part where Willoughby wants to give Marianne a horse is actually in the book. Mind you, it does indicate that he hasn't much interest in her reputation, but Marianne doesn't see that.

Regarding Mansfield Park, I didn't see the series, but in the book, Fanny's married cousin is supposed to have had a scandalous affair with someone.

Next time, I'll get it more together before posting.

it actually was NOT Marianne that Willoughby had sex with, but the Colonel's 15-year-old ward.