Historical fiction provides the unique opportunity for a writer to choose subjects where they can assume that the reader has prior knowledge of an outcome. If a story is set on the Titanic we instantly think 'iceberg'! We're alerted to the possibility that the characters may not survive and our interest is raised by the high stakes. We're hooked. Of course, there are plenty of wonderful stories relating to pockets of history that are likely to be unfamiliar to the reader but choosing well-known events gives the historical writer the chance to tap into a Superpower not available elsewhere.
Writers are canny prospectors. They know a goldmine when they see one and this unique opportunity of the reader's foreknowledge can be turned to all kinds of advantage to give the reader a satisfying experience. In Birdsong, Sebastion Falks' World War 1 novel, the author initially gives us a detailed insight into the characters of the illicit lovers Stephen and Isabelle in a civilian setting, yet he skilfully keeps the awareness of the coming war in the back of the reader's mind. In one scene he describes a boat trip on the canal. The atmosphere is uncomfortable as the lovers are under the eye of Isabelle's husband and this unease and sense of impending doom is exacerbated by the brooding description of the canal. Its mud sides, shuttered with boards and populated by rats, strike a chord with the reader aware of the nature of the trenches. A shadow is laid over the excursion, a suggestion of an external force that will tear the lovers apart. The writer has used the reader's existing knowledge to foreshadow what's to come in the narrative.
Admiring Falks as a master of the genre, when writing about the First World War myself I tried to work with a similar technique. The hero of The Moon Field is George, an eighteen year old innocent who has no idea what he's getting into when he is swept up in a wave of patriotism and decides to join up as an infantryman along with a group of enthusiastic friends. The reader, of course, knows all about the slaughter that took place and this lends pathos to a pub scene with its paper union jacks on the bar and the boys' optimistic belief that they'll be like the heroes in the comic, Valour and Victory.
Set alongside the reader's foreknowledge their naivety is poignant. Later, they travel on a train carrying both men and horses to the Front. When another train rushes by them in a tunnel the horses in the next wagon panic and one falls and is trampled. My intention was that the passage would get its power from the reader's prior knowledge of trench warfare: the elements of thunderous noise and flashing lights, the confined space and the screaming horse take on a nightmare quality, prefiguring what we know is likely to happen on the battlefield. Writers can thus exploit prior knowledge to create different effects: here, for pathos or to build dramatic tension early and quickly.
It's interesting to note that knowing what's likely to happen in the future of the story in a broad sense doesn't seem to sap the reader's interest. Whereas we might say that one of the reasons for reading on is 'to find out what happens in the end', what we want to find out is the specific effects of the historical event on the particular characters we've engaged with.
More interesting still is the fact that even if the specific 'end' for the character is known in advance we may still find the story compelling. If a reader chooses a book about Anne Boleyn or Catherine Howard they know in advance that it isn't going to end well for her (!) but may be fascinated to learn how the steps towards the scaffold play out. Knowing the outcome, rather than being 'a spoiler', can actually raise dramatic tension right from the start of the story.
Sometimes writers work things the other way round; i.e. they obscure the historical event until the end so that the reader's realisation casts a different light back over the narrative. For instance, if one wrote a story set against the background of a house fire, referring to the address only at the end of the story as 'Pudding Lane', it would change the seriousness of its careless start to something with city-wide consequences. I remember a good short story (though sadly the details of title and author escape me) which was built on this 'historical twist' premise. Set in Austria, it concerned the birth of a sickly baby boy and a doctor's attempt to save him. At the end of the story the mother is asked what she intends to call the baby and she replies 'Adolf', leaving the reader with a moral dilemma as they re-assess the sympathies they have felt up to that point.
A master of the short story form, and of tapping into the Superpower, is Rose Tremain. Her story The Crossing of Herald Montjoy is one of my favourites. The story is prefaced with the words A piece of ground near Agincourt. October 1415.
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| By Sir John Gilbert 1817-1897, Wikipedia commons |
Most readers will be familiar with this famous battle and its result: the French losing catastrophically to the English. This knowledge invests Herald Montjoy's visit to the English camp to pass on the Dauphin's message to the King with an awful irony, as he tells him that the French forces outnumber them five to one and that he should ransom himself and save his army from slaughter. The Dauphin's boasts about his own and his army's physical prowess read as hubris. If the reader has the further knowledge that the English won through erecting a fence of sharp stakes that impaled French horses charging too fast to turn or halt, then the apparently casual mention that Montjoy hears hammering in the English camp on his visit to sue for peace, takes on a dark foreshadowing. In this way, a writer can include historical references that may or may not 'land' with the reader but will add a further layer of enjoyment for those who recognise them. For those who don't, all is revealed by the end of the narrative.
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| Ghirlandaio Portrait of a Lady |
As a side issue, I should also say that the real genius of this story lies in the interleaving of Montjoy's other 'crossing', his journey three years earlier to propose to Cecile (- she of the coloured shoes and the gossamer bee-keeping veil that falls to earth around her and that fires him with fantasies of her with nothing on underneath it). The tenderness of these interleaved passages contrast sharply with the life of the battlefield and endear Montjoy to the reader, drawing us into his life and loves. For those who want to read this marvellous story for themselves, it's in Tremain's collection, 'Evangelista's Fan'.
For a writer, being aware of the historical facts that readers are likely to already know provides opportunities unique to the genre. They can use this knowledge to enhance their writing; e.g. to hook readers in, to create an extra emotional charge or to manipulate an atmosphere. In a writer's armoury the reader's foreknowledge is truly a Superpower and is one of the reasons I love both writing and reading historical fiction.