As an avid reader of historical novels, I am always surprised whenever people say, “I just don’t like historical fiction” – not because I can’t imagine others having different literary tastes from myself, but because such a blanket judgment suggests that they are talking about just one thing – that every novel set in the past belongs to the same homogenous, barren landscape, of little relevance to contemporary readers.
For my part, many happy hours spent in the company of Hilary Mantel, Robert Harris, CJ Sansom and others, have convinced me that the reality is very different. Far from sharing a set of identical, or even similar, qualities, books counted among this genre – one requirement being that the action take place at least 60 years before the time of writing – encompass stories from many traditions.
In the work of those writers just mentioned and others, many of them Irish, including John Banville, Martina Devlin, Lia Mills, Joseph O’Connor, Lucy Caldwell and others, I have found myself immersed in tales of detective fiction, romance, family sagas, philosophical debate, war stories, feminist polemics, political thrillers and more.
The whiff of condescension which often greets historical fiction, even today, is nothing new. Since the novels of Walter Scott helped establish the genre in the early 19th century – Maria Edgeworth being an even earlier proponent, her Castle Rackrent predating Scott by over a decade – its status has waxed and waned.
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As enthusiasm for Scott’s novels grew, a glut of inferior imitations flooded the market – formulaic, cliched melodramas in exotic settings, rushed out by publishers eager to capitalise on the trend. The quantity of historical novels soon outstripped the quality, the entire genre scorned by critics as formulaic, sentimental and escapist, suitable for entertaining the masses, but short on thematic depth or literary merit. Henry James dismissed it as “all humbug” and observed that “The real difficulty of the historical novel is that it must be more than the mere transcription of documents and facts. The novelist must breathe life into the past, must not be content with a mere ‘parade of events’.”
I am convinced that if James were to read contemporary historical fiction, he would agree that many of those novels do “breathe life into the past”. And more, by showing how the dynamics of the past, explored through fiction, can provide insights into the concerns of our own day.
Not all historical novelists set out to do this, to make conscious links between the past and present. Mantel was firm in resisting the notion.
“The past is not dead ground, and you cannot just walk away from it. But nor is it a mirror held up to our own times.”
Yet her Wolf Hall trilogy delves into the same patterns of power and politics, propaganda and religious fanaticism, that we see played out around the world today. Perhaps it would be more accurate to consider historical fiction, not so much as a mirror of the present, than a lens forged from the experience of the past, through which we may view the concerns of the present with renewed clarity.
Some writers are explicit about their intentions. Harris has acknowledged that he meant his Cicero trilogy to be “a kind of West-Wing-on-the-Tiber” and that he wanted to highlight “universal rules and themes in politics” that are found in every era and culture – as acute in a post 9/11 world, say, as in 67 BC. Then there are Sansom’s Shardlake novels, set in Tudor England, whose themes have echoes today – religious fanaticism, authoritarianism, social inequality and more.
When I embarked on writing my novel, Aftershock, I did not intend to explore the dynamics of leadership or the clash of world views. Rather, I set out to tell a story about one of the greatest disasters of modern times, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755; and to explore the rise to power of Dom Sebastiao José Carvalho e Melo, later Marquis of Pombal, who emerged from the ruins to become de facto ruler of the country.
Yet in the telling of the tale, I found myself thinking about elements of the political crisis that arose in the wake of the catastrophe, in the context of our own time: about the kind of leaders we need, or want, in times of turmoil; about what happens if the strongman leader refuses to relinquish the reins of power when his service is no longer required; about how far ideology or religious conviction should influence public policy. Somewhere, in our 21st-century world, these questions are as urgent now, as they were to the people of 18th-century Europe.
On All Souls’ Day, 1755, a massive earthquake, estimated at 8.5 – 9 on the Richter scale, destroyed Lisbon. A tsunami followed and for five days a fire storm raged, leaving the city in ruins and 40,000 people dead. The loss of life, the destruction of the physical infrastructure and the accompanying threat of social collapse, presented a colossal logistical and political challenge.
On the very day of the catastrophe, Dom Sebastião Carvalho e Melo, an obscure, 56-year-old politician of relatively humble origins and future Marquis of Pombal, stepped forward and declared his intention to “heal the sick and bury the dead”. Within a few days, he had set in motion a massive rescue and relief operation, and in the months and years that followed, went on to oversee the reconstruction of the city.
Before long, with the approval of the king, he had assumed control of every branch of government. His ascendancy marked a seismic shift in the social order, shattering the foundations of the old regime by introducing principles of the Enlightenment – scientific inquiry, faith in progress and shared humanity among others – but at the cost, paradoxically, of individual and societal freedoms.
Historical fiction really can speak to our own world and era – to here, and now
— Liz McSkeane
In his lifetime, Pombal was both lauded as a visionary who rescued the country from chaos and vilified as a dictator who crushed all opposition. Even today, he remains a controversial figure, both popular and expert opinion divided on whether he was hero or villain.
The scale of the catastrophe, the enormity of destruction and loss of life, had an immense psychological impact on European consciousness, and not only on the people who lived through it. Eminent thinkers who had only read or heard eyewitness accounts, agonised over how to reconcile such devastating human suffering with the existence of a benevolent deity.
Among them was Voltaire, who was deeply affected by the tragedy. His novel Candide satirises the philosophical optimism in vogue at the time, summed up in the platitude that “all is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds” – a mantra repeated throughout the novel by Voltaire’s biting caricature of the optimists, Doctor Pangloss, as he stumbles through the ruins of the city.
Explanations for the causes of the disaster, and judgments about the kind of action that should be taken to relieve the suffering, soon formed opposing battle lines in an ideological war. For the clergy and the faithful, the earthquake was a manifestation of the wrath of God, a punishment visited upon the people of Lisbon for their sins, the only possible response being to fall to their knees and pray for His mercy.
In contrast, rationalist thinkers influenced by Enlightenment principles of science and reason – among them the Marquis of Pombal – viewed it as a natural phenomenon that called for investigation and action, supported by research and scientific inquiry.
Such fundamentally opposed world views could not coexist. This clash of ideologies – Enlightenment rationalism versus submission to Divine Providence – and the consequent actions of their disciples, became the epicentre of a political conflict which culminated in the terrible events that followed, and cast a dark shadow over the remaining years of the ascendancy of the Marquis of Pombal.
In the story of the tragic events of All Souls’ Day, 1755, and the role played by the charismatic leader who both rescued and enslaved his country, there is surely a cautionary tale for our own times: the danger of committing unwavering, fanatical belief to any creed, perhaps; or the risks inherent in granting leaders, however acute the crisis, sweeping, unchecked powers. And more. All of which reinforces my conviction that historical fiction really can speak to our own world and era – to here, and now.
Aftershock by Liz McSkeane is published by Turas Press
