Alert students will often tell teachers and university lecturers that there is sometimes a significant discrepancy between the same historical characters, settings or incidents in historical fiction and nonfiction. An illustration of this point arises with hugely successful author Bryce Courtenay’s work of historical fiction, The Potato Factory (1995), and a subsequent work of nonfiction, which sought to put the record straight on Isaac (Ikey) Solomon, one of the principal characters in Courtenay’s novel. Judith Sackville-O’Donnell, a Melbourne author, challenged Courtenay’s depiction of Ikey Solomon, who was also believed to be the model for Charles Dickens’s fictional villain Fagin.
Sackville-O’Donnell’s The First Fagin: The True Story of Ikey Solomon (2002) sold about 1500 copies. While a commendable publishing feat, this fares very poorly in comparison with Courtenay’s The Potato Factory, whose sales exceeded manyfold that of The First Fagin: ‘The Potato Factory was last year [2003] listed by Angus & Robertson as 17th on Australia’s 100 favourite books. Gold Logie-winner Lisa McCune was among the stars in a TV mini- series based on the novel’ (Schwartz, 2004).
This is just one example of where a dedicated and motivated professional historian can take issue with the historicity of a piece of historical fiction.
Clearly, if the sales of The Potato Factory are an index to the success of the novel then the demonstrated warping of historical fact does little to offend the
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reading public. Do people prefer the ‘history’ they read in historical fiction?
Apparently many do. But can they trust it for its historical veracity?
truth and deception in the writing of history
To begin, a short narrative of the changes in points of view. For example, during the 1950s and 1960s British and American points of view in history dominated the content in the school curriculum: for example, the causes of the Second World War. For me, as a secondary school student in New South Wales during the 1960s, a dominant and influential text was Winston Churchill’s The Second World War (1953). In his six-volume history of the conflict that appeared between 1948 and 1953, Churchill established the accepted interpretation of the origins of the Second World War: that Hitler launched a war of conquest. Rossi states that, ‘In 1950, Time magazine, then at the height of its power and influence, named Winston Churchill “Man of the Half Century”. His reputation was at a peak because of his leadership of the Allied cause in World War II and his role in alerting the Free World to the threat of Communism by his “Iron Curtain” speech in early 1946’ (Rossi, 2002).
But what did Time magazine write about Churchill sixty years later? In a review article headed, ‘The ugly Briton: a scholarly account of Churchill’s role in the Bengal Famine leaves his reputation in tatters’, Shashi Tharoor reviewed Madhustree Mukerjee’s new book, Churchill’s Secret War (Time, 29 November 2010, p. 43.) The review article is an enlightening account of many things to do with literature and history, not least, of the changing attitudes of Time magazine to India.
Why the change? For one thing, the global balance of economic power has moved decidedly in India’s favour during the past several decades. India’s role as a prominent trading partner with the US, and that country’s emerging economic power, is now significant. Tharoor writes that ‘Churchill said that history would judge him kindly because he intended to write it himself’. After
all, Churchill coined the phrase, ‘history is written by the victors’. But Tharoor (2010) is far less enthusiastic about Churchill’s multi-volume history of the Second World War than were my History teachers back in the 1960s. She writes: ‘the self-serving but elegant volumes he authoured … led to the Nobel committee, unable in all conscience to bestow him an award for peace, to give him, astonishingly, the Nobel prize for literature — an unwitting tribute to the fictional qualities inherent in Churchill’s self-justifying embellishments’
(Tharoor, 2010).
Many people recognise the prestige and authority a Nobel Prize bestows, notwithstanding the complex and contested effects and legacies of the Prizes in a broader context. Tharoor goes on to argue that ‘few statesmen of the 20th century have reputations as outsize as Winston Churchill’s, and yet his assiduously self-promoted image … rests primarily on his World War II rhetoric, rather than his actions as the head of a government that ruled the biggest empire the world has ever known’ (Tharoor, 2010).
Churchill wrote in his history of the Second World War: ‘no great portion of the world population was so effectively protected from the horrors and perils of the world war as were the people of Hinduism’ (quoted in Tharoor, 2010). In turn, Tharoor wrote that ‘few people during the immediate post-war decades, reading this last paragraph would have doubted this being the truth.
We were continually told in schools and in the media the British Empire — later the British Commonwealth — existed in order to improve the lives of the people of the empire’. According to Tharoor,
British imperialism had long justified itself with the pretense that it was conducted for the benefit of the governed. Churchill’s conduct in the summer and fall of 1943 gave the lie to this myth’ … ‘I hate Indians,’ he told the Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery. ‘They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The [Bengal] Famine was their own fault’, he declared at a war cabinet meeting, for ‘breeding like rabbits’.
Tharoor, goes on to suggest that ‘Churchill’s only response to a telegram from the government in Delhi about people perishing in the [Bengali] famine
was to ask why Ghandi hadn’t yet died’ (2010). Tharoor goes on to say that ‘in 1943, some 3 million brown-skinned subjects of the Raj died in the Bengal famine, one of history’s worst’. As part of the war effort, Churchill ordered the diversion of food from the starving Indians to already well-supplied British soldiers, and to stockpiles in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, including Greece and Yugoslavia: ‘And he did so with a churlishness that cannot be excused on grounds of policy’ (Tharoor, 2010).
Tharoor writes: ‘Some of India’s grain was also exported to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to meet needs there, even though the island wasn’t experiencing the same hardships’. Tharoor asked what did Churchill care about starving Bengalis? ‘Australian wheat,’ he wrote, ‘sailed past Indian cities (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation littered the streets) to depots in the Mediterranean and Balkans; and offers of American and Canadian food aid were turned down’ (Tharoor, 2010). Unimaginable today was the control Britain had over the lives of everyday Indians: ‘India was not permitted to use its own sterling reserves, or indeed, its own ships to import food’ (Tharoor, 2010). Tharoor (2010) makes a strong case against Churchill’s treatment of this topic. It is almost as if his treatment belongs to the realms of historical fiction.
MacMillan’s assessment offers corroboration to Tharoor’s slightly later work, showing how Churchill created ‘a sweeping and magisterial account which glossed over many awkward issues’ (MacMillan, 2009, p. 40). From these accounts, it seems that Churchill’s history of the Second World War may well suffer for want of ‘truth’, the very point which some critics have condemned historical novels.
Indeed, the discrediting of Churchill’s work — his grand narrative — supports Hayden White’s views about the writing of history. In reviewing White’s Fiction of Narrative: essays on history, literature and theory 1957-2007 (2010), Inga Clendinnen writes:
For all its wistful aspirations, history was not, never had been and never could be a science. It was an art, and its closest kin was poetry. …
There is no such thing as a real story. Stories are told or written, not found. And as to the notion of a true story, this is virtually a contradiction in terms. All stories are fictions. Which means, of course, that they can be true only in a metaphorical sense and in the sense in which a figure of speech can be true. (2011)
Clendinnen concludes — in words that resonate for the above discussion about Churchill’s history of the Second World War — that:
White’s recognition of the covert seductions of narratives created to sustain nation to the fantasies of special destiny shaping individual biographies (and, alas, autobiographies) remains essential knowledge, especially in view of the advice being given to younger historians by older ones that if they want to challenge the market dominance of the historical novelist, they had better get back to storytelling. (p. 28) Most politicians are aware that histories are essential in nation-building.
‘History as fiction’
‘If the past is another country, historical novels are forged passports,’ wrote Frank Campbell in The Australian in 2008. Campbell began his critical article on historical fiction by pointing out the debate on the veracity of historical fiction has been in the public discourse for at least a century. He writes that the ‘perceptive American critic, Brander Matthews, said in 1897: “the historical novel is aureoled with a pseudo-sanctity in that it purports to be more instructive than a mere story. It claims ... it is teaching History”. But it is not history: we cannot reproduce what has passed’ (Campbell, 2008).
Campbell added:
‘How can we know the past?... After all, psychology 101 suggests that even simple events are reported inaccurately. Aren’t there as many realities as witnesses? If present matters of fact are opaque, how can we possibly re-create the culture of a Manchester police station of 1973, or 19th-century naval life, let alone the world of Claudius or Spartacus?
But we have uncertainty of the present, also, Campbell counters. Indeed,
‘How do we know we exist at all? … I might exist, but the evidence for you is unconvincing. One more drink and we’ll all be phenomenological postmodernists, whose grip on reality depends entirely on the next coffee’
(Campbell, 2008).
Campbell reiterates the argument that ‘historical fiction is said to tell us more about the present than the past’. Historical novels are really scenarios or dramas — Campbell refers to them as ‘lectures’ — about how the present sees the past. He uses the example of Gone With The Wind (1936), and how it stereotyped ‘the antebellum American south and still shapes perceptions’
(Campbell, 2008). But while the historical novel often has been dispatched to the rubbish pile, for me it re-emerges, as is evident in the vigour and popularity the genre enjoys today.
But how does this debate affect children’s appreciation of history? I argue that History teachers should seek for our students to develop multiple viewpoints, and to become critical readers of history. Groce and Groce (2005, p. 101) show not only that children’s reading of historical novels enhances their appreciation of novels generally, but also enhances development of the values underpinning an understanding of history. The researchers suggest students may benefit from understanding multiple viewpoints in history in two ways: they may exhibit increased tolerance for others in contemporary society as well as an increased ability to evaluate our own culture. For Groce and Groce, historical fiction helps to achieve this because, as Nawrot (1996) argues, it depicts life beyond the context of the student’s own lives and time.
Thus, with the enhancing of children’s understanding of historical developments, their reading of historical fiction often requires teacher guidance.
And this is particularly so with historical fiction portrayed through film. As far as the pedagogical use of film in the History curriculum is concerned, most commentators will argue there usually are very different approaches (see Marcus, ed., 2003). What of classics such as C.S Forester’s Hornblower series (1938-67) or Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander (1970), or Robert
Graves’s I Claudius (1934), all of which went on to become classics of cinema and television? Erudite teachers have long used clips from the DVD versions of these much-acclaimed productions to use as key components in their teaching/learning strategies for their History lessons. So for Campbell, and for me, all is not lost. At its best, historical fiction is ‘a delicate arrangement of lies designed to spell truth. Historical fiction, the most elaborate embroidery of all, can illumine the past rather than traduce it, but requires detachment from the present as much as immersion in the past. Journeymen and propagandists need not apply’ (Campbell, 2008).
A deficit model of historical writing?
But what motivates authors of historical fiction to write their work? There exists the suggestion that some do so to ‘fill in the blanks’ left by authors of nonfiction histories. For example, what motivated Tolstoy to write War and Peace and structure it in the manner he did? The work is, in my view, one of the most sublime creative literary efforts ever produced. There is every reason to believe Tolstoy wrote from a deficit model of historical writing. In his Some Words about War and Peace, published in 1868, he wrote that one motivation in writing War and Peace came from common misinterpretations of the social and cultural characteristics in Russia of the period covered by the novel (1805- 20):
If we have come to believe in the perversity and coarse violence of the period, that is only because of the traditions, memoirs, stories, and novels that have been handed to us, record for the most part exceptional cases of violence and brutality. To suppose that the predominant characteristic of that period was turbulence, is as unjust as it would be for a man, seeing nothing but the tops of trees beyond a hill, to conclude that there was nothing in the locality but trees. (Tolstoy, 1868, trans. A. Mandelker, 2010, p. 1310)
Hence, Tolstoy structured his novel with narratives about war and peace,
from the Bezúkhovs, the Rostóvs, the Bolkónskys and the Kurágins provide some of the most memorable literary characters readers ever encountered.
Indeed, in the case of the search for historical truth, whatever that may be, in some instances historical novelists have sought to improve upon extant historical accounts. Mandelker shows that in the case of War and Peace, Aylmer and Louise Maude, in their centenary edition of Tolstoy’s complete works (Centenary Edition of Tolstoy’s Works, Oxford, 1928-37) write that ‘Tolstoy consulted many other authorities and private letters, diaries, and memoirs of the members of his own and other families that had engaged in the [1806 French/Russian and Austrian] war. These private sources sometimes enabled him to correct mistakes he judged that the historians had made’ (cited in Mandelker, 2010, p. 1325).
Often, the deficit motivation for writing historical novels continues into the present-day. Speaking at a University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) seminar on history and writing, academic Paula Hamilton discussed what she label the
‘deficit’ model of history writing. Here, she refers to historical novelists who contend that they have turned to fiction because of a perceived ‘gap’ in the historical record they feel driven to fill. Hamilton argues it is the apparent limits of history that make writing possible; the role of the writer is to fill in the blanks left unattended by the writers of nonfiction histories (Hamilton, 2003). Nelson states that ‘in practice, the “deficit” argument takes various forms in which the writer supplies the interiority or atmosphere deemed to be missing from history, or manufactures actual historical events that lack the necessary proofs to count as history’ (Nelson 2007).
Writers of nonfictional history, and some serious professional historians, may rail at this approach to their craft. As Nelson contends, ‘One of the central problems with the “deficit” argument is that it speaks to a very naturalised theory of history, in which historians labour altruistically in archives to unearth relics of the past, which are converted into an historical record conceived as truth’ (Nelson, 2007). Indeed, ‘in this sense, it is merely the writer’s job to extend the edifice, to make it more “perfect”, more “complete” — without
“gaps”’(Nelson, 2007). In short, this model entails fictionalising the unknown detail in the archival sources, as developed in the narrative: for example, types of clothes being worn by various characters.
Inga Clendinnen is one such historian who declares this model to be anathema to the craft of the serious historian. While she admits the need to be close and personal with her readers in her narrative, the larger ‘difference between History and Fiction is the moral relationships each establishes between writer and subjects, and writer and reader’. The historian of nonfiction has a moral obligation to be strictly ‘nonfictional’ (Clendinnen, 1996). For Nelson, the fictionalising of the detail should not be an issue with the historical novelist: ‘the factual events of the story could be altered and improved, but the period details had to be as realistic as possible’ (Hamilton, 2003, cited in Nelson, 2007).
‘mining’ and ‘pillaging’ historical knowledge
Kate Grenville once quipped that ‘as a [historical] novelist, my relationship to history has always been pretty much the same relationship the Goths had to Rome. History for a greedy novelist like me is just one more place to pillage’ (Grenville, 2005). She is not suggesting there is a recklessness about her historical research, or a general disregard for convention. Do the spoils of that ‘pillage’ — the historical knowledge gained from reading her historical novels — offer any general worth? Or to put it another way, how much can the knowledge gained from historical novels be of value to the general populace, or indeed, a History curriculum?
Grenville — far from endorsing recklessness — confessed to an abiding regard for historical truth: ‘When Jill Roe said of history “Getting it right means you can’t make it up”, it was a reminder to novelists like me that, although we might use history, we also have to respect it’. Indeed, ‘it’s all very well to play fast and loose with historical truths, but there comes a point when we have to get it right, or try at least’ (Grenville, 2005). Here Grenville is addressing an
important issue in the writing of history, an issue historiographers for decades have been addressing. The historical novelist need not be ‘playing’ with history any more than does the professional historian, notwithstanding the novelist’s obligation to storytelling.
Generally, historians take their craft very seriously. They even have gone to ‘war’ over substantial issues in what they perceive to be appropriate recording and interpretation of history. Many students will be aware of the term ‘history wars’. The term was coined in the United States in 1994 to describe the argument between those who favoured a triumphalist account of American achievement and those urging a more muted and critical stance. Australia had its own ‘history wars’ beginning sometime around 2000 (Windschuttle, 2002). In considerable part, this had to do with debates over so-called ‘three cheers’ versus ‘black armband versions of history. Part of the debate involved the relative veracity of historical nonfiction and historical fiction.What could historical fiction add to the debate?
When Grenville claimed The Secret River (2005) would rise above the parochial squabbles of the then raging history wars by getting ‘inside the experience’ of the past, she provoked a strong response from some academic and professional historians. For Collins (2008), ‘this ire was particularly surprising in the case of Mark McKenna and Inga Clendinnen, two leading historians noted for the eloquent reflective, literary quality of their respective books on the intimacy between Indigenous and settler Australians’ (Collins, 2008).
Clendinnen (2003) and McKenna (2002) strongly questioned Grenville’s views on the role of her historical novel with regards to her claims to historical truth over that of their own profession. Indeed, it is this very jousting over the province of historians and historical novelists to historical truth that has led Gay Lynch to assert ‘historians would be better placed to study King Canute than attempt to prevent fiction writers working in their field’ (Lynch, 2007, p. 2).