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Did you ever imagine yourself living in the Middle Ages, in a drafty, magnificent castle with unicorn tapestries on the walls? My childhood playmates and I weighed the glories of that life against the lack of modern medicine or plumbing. We always pictured ourselves as princesses, never as scullery maids.
My friend Tom in college Latin class said he’d rather be learning medieval pronunciation than classical, just in case he woke up in a medieval monastery. I advised him to drop Latin and study Old Norse, as he was just as likely to wake up a prisoner on a Viking warship. Maybe it’s the contrarian in me, but it’s struck me that we imagine past lives of fame or privilege or adventure more often than lives that are nasty, brutish, and short. You’re more likely to have been a serf than a castle dweller. I rarely see historical fiction about the lives of serfs. Is it because they were too dull to contemplate, or because they were so alien that our imaginations can’t stretch that far?
20 Comments
5/30/2016 11:05:44 am
Excellent post as always, Sarah. It left me wanting more. Why do we romanticize the past as "the good old days?" What's the dividing line between romanticism, pseudohistory, and plain old error?
Barbara Whitney
5/30/2016 08:20:32 pm
I'd be very interested to read a story about the serfs. Little House on the Prairie was about regular people. I'd find it interesting too. Stories of pioneers were indeed regular people, but with some independence and even potential for land ownership. I DID imagine leading Laura's life. And we get stories about selected poor-and-powerless groups - post-Columbian American Indians, slaves in Uncle Tom's Cabin - maybe told to make a point more than to entertain.
George Faunce
5/30/2016 08:40:31 pm
When I imagined myself transported to the Middle Ages, I always saw myself as a knight. I would trot home from school in the second grade as though on an armored horse, and kept my left arm strapped to an invisible shield. I can't envision ANY person choosing to go back in time as a serf. (Even if they did, their current overlords wouldn't allow them.)
Lisa
6/3/2016 08:39:46 am
I gave a one-hour presentation at a family reunion last weekend... about our 19th-century Swedes. No one squirmed or fussed. It's up to the presenter / writer to find out what's interesting about them. Even the lowly had challenges and joys which we can relate to today (somewhat, if offered up right). Come to think of it, I never imagined myself as a princess or knight...
Lisa
6/6/2016 09:59:38 am
HA! I had to look up this use of "thrall" in the dictionary. The Middle Ages isn't a time that calls to me. Or, well, the European Middle Ages anyway. Maybe I wasn't in (what is now) Sweden then! But I did tell the cousins that I felt more Swedish than I've ever felt when I read that human settlement in southeast Sweden goes back to the Stone age. So we could have genetics that go back 8,000 years in that neighborhood... which made me briefly think I should have that DNA done after all... This year we read The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro for book discussion. I surely identified with those people, even I couldn't have come up with that story myself. Lisa, I love that you identify with stone age ancestors! If you do get your DNA done, please let me know if your maternal ancestry is in branch U5 (as mine is), U5 shows up mostly in Scandinavia and especially Finland, perhaps brought by reindeer-hunting-and-herding Saami from Siberia. We may be distant cousins.
Lisa
6/6/2016 11:09:00 am
Do the Sami people pre-date the Middle Ages? I have Swedes on both sides, with both parents being half Swedish. The Saami of today have a high proportion of the same (U5) lineage, about 50%. And the map shows this lineage coming into Scandinavia from the east, so apparently someone moved that direction from Asia; nomadic ancestors of the Saami seem likely. Maternal lineage is all the program checks this far back (for women; paternal via Y chromosome for men).
Lisa
6/6/2016 11:21:49 am
Sarah... back to your original post. We also read a book on the bubonic plague a few years ago, told from the viewpoint of villagers who were quarantined. I identified with them, too. Am I one of the odd ones, that I more identify with the common folk? Or more interested in reading about them? Do you remember the name of the book? I'd like to read from the perspective of quarantined villagers. The two I discussed on May 23, "Two Tales of Venice," showed urban folk (professionals, craftspeople, or the wealthy) affected by the plague. I'm sure I've read more stories about people who escaped to the countryside to avoid infection than people who were living an impoverished rural life in the first place.
Lisa
6/6/2016 07:53:45 pm
I've sent an email to Leah Fritche, head librarian in Deerfield and facilitator extraordinaire of our book discussion group. Copied you...
Lisa
6/8/2016 12:11:59 pm
Sorry to have taken this outside the blog for a moment. The name of the book I mentioned is Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Not the middle ages, but 1666, small village, plague.
I've requested Year of Wonders from the library. Looking forward to it.
Lisa
6/8/2016 03:42:30 pm
Well, I suspect times have changed... but, back to your original post... I think there does have to be SOME adventure, whether within or without, and whether about the obscure or the notables. Not everyone wants to read about Miss Read's day. I just finished Year of Wonders. A good book; Lisa, thanks for the recommendation. (Not too much of a spoiler to say I was surprised at the end, and am not sure it totally convinced me.) Set in the context of the plague, it is full of lives that are nasty, brutish,and short. The protagonist is not the poorest of the poor - she owns her home and flock, while some villagers are tenants - but she is certainly an "ordinary person."
Lisa
6/22/2016 10:43:08 am
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AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. Archives
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