There was recently a discussion on the Regency Fiction Writers’ forum concerning historical accuracy. For a group whose courses mostly teach accurate historical detail (everything from architecture to dancing to cookery), there were a number of authors who commented that they didn’t believe a historical novel needed to be 100% accurate.
The discussion began with someone looking for a name for a Regency romance as lacking in accuracy as the Bridgerton television show. (In case you aren’t aware, the show is wildly inaccurate from costumes to the music—classic-fied 21st century pop and so much more.) The poster thought it might be Romantasy, but it was then pointed out that Romantasy is an entirely different genre that has its own rules. But her point was that since Bridgerton first aired on television, there have been an influx of Regency romances where it is painfully obvious the author did absolutely no research at all.
For those of us who have been writing historical novels for many years, this sort of disregard for historical accuracy is incredible. So many authors (including myself) have read original sources, visited the places we are writing about, taken courses, and have done everything we can to make our books as historically accurate as possible. And then these new authors pop up and know absolutely nothing and don’t seem to care.
Should we care?
As someone who has, as I’ve said, conducted extensive research into my time period, I say yes and no.
Yes, it is important to get the basic facts of the historical time correct. Know how titles were used, what sort of dresses the women wore, and what the social mores of the time were. But then, once this knowledge is obtained, you will know how and where you can diverge from strict historical accuracy.
This is similar to painters who must learn the basic techniques of painting so that they can then twist them to their own style. It is similar to writers who must learn the rules of grammar, punctuation, and the craft of writing so that they can then ignore some rules and use others. You need to have the fundamental knowledge in order to choose not to use it.
If authors were to stick absolutely to the rules of an historical time, it is quite likely that they will offend a reader’s modern sensibilities. In the 19th century, women did not have the rights we do today and were truly considered to be incapable of complex thought and women accepted this. Many agreed that they should not be allowed to be independent. That they needed a man to make all of their decisions for her. But if a hero of a modern novel were to spout these ideas and treat the heroine as such, and the heroine not only accepted it but had no problem at all with such treatment, the book would probably get a lot of negative reviews and do very badly.
So, while we try to get everything else as accurate as possible, there are something that I don’t think need to be accurate at all. Where would a romance novel be without its plucky heroine?
When writing historical works, we also don’t necessarily need to be so detailed as to describe things that we would find distasteful today—the smell of people who only bathed once a week, if that. The stink of city streets that were filled with refuse from people and animals because there was no drainage system. Food that looked exactly like what it was originally—chicken served with the head and feathers reattached, and so on do not need to be described in all their gory detail.
So many people, upon learning what I write, have asked me whether—if time-travel was invented—I’d like to go back to the early 19th century. The answer is absolutely not! I like sanitation and bathing, and I would be stifled by all the rules and mores that I can happily disregard in my writing.
The point is you must know the rules in order to break them. You must know the history in order to disregard it. So, if you write historical fiction, be sure you do research because you will be caught if you don’t.