I have a feeling I've written before
about missing the fucking point. Surely it must have come up, at
least once in this blog, that far from being the respectable face of
Literature, Shakespeare was a filthy minded bastard writing for a
group of people who were considered little better than whores? That
theatre, far from being an institution, was something known to
contemporaries as 'The Anti-Christ's lewd hat'1?
This actually hasn't come up?
Nah, it must have done.
So, I shan't bang on about tidying up
the past, about assuming things were simpler and more respectable
than they were2.
I shan't make a fuss about the mistaken concept that those really
pretty clothes confer some kind of moral value upon a time period, I
will simply say that I get it.
Honestly, I do get it, this need to
romanticise the past. I get that if we don't romanticise something
we might as well give up now. On a
day-to-day basis, this ability to imagine is sometimes what makes it
worth getting out of bed in the morning.
So, by
all means – enjoy your fiction about Lords and Ladies, lusty
gamekeepers, great artistic genius, the Golden Age of chivalry or
whatever it is that floats your boat. But two small requests? Bear in mind it had fuck all basis in reality. And,
please, please don't
make my sense of irony jump down my throat and drown me in my own
misspent bile.
This
is particularly relevant when it comes to books, and to writers.
There is a significant and important line between “dreamy eyed fan
fic” and “what is actually going on in the fucking novel”. Of
course, Henry Tilney is the perfect man, and life would be a much so
much duller if I... *ahem*, I mean one... couldn't
indulge in the odd teenage style daydream complete with anachronistic
attitudes to gender and pre-marital sex. However, one really should remember that – while it is about marriage - Northanger
Abbey is far more satire
than romance. Have as many wet dreams as you
like about Fitzwilliam Darcy but do take care to remember that Austen
was an acerbic and potentially cynical woman. And don't buy this.
Please, don't buy this:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/115163054/honoring-jane-austen-this-pillow?ref=v1_other_2
However
that particular travesty of literary interpretation is not the reason
for this little rant. Not even slightly. No, this weekend past I
found myself back in my old stomping ground of North Kent and
managed, somewhat against my intentions, to wander into the centre of
Rochester in the middle of its Dickensian Christmas extravaganza.
Now,
Rochester is very proud
of Dickens and, while he's not my personal cup of tea, I do think
it's nice that a local writer gets the full treatment of adoration
and civic display3.
So, for one weekend only, Rochester turned out into its Victorian
best. Crinolines abounded. The odd Gothic minded young women did a
passable (and potentially inadvertent) impression of a demi-mondaine.
Soldiers wore those terribly impractical but wonderfully smart red
uniforms4,
and one wanker missed the point entirely and turned up with a pair of
goggles on his topper5.
Okay,
there were very few rickets. There was no ostentatious penury, infant
mortality or displays of brutality. There were not even the
plimsolled, soot-faced waifs that frequent May's Sweeps' Festival6.
And, yes, omitting all these is to downplay Dickens' role as a
writer pushing for social reform but, I'll concede that good clean
fun and late 19th
Century conditions of deprivation are perhaps mutually exclusive. Then I saw it. Letters three feet high, blazoned across a refreshment
marquee:
Miss Havisham's Tea Tent.
You...
you don't mean that?
Right?
Wanker with the goggles? Come back. All is forgiven.
1No.
Seriously.
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300088841
2Or,
indeed, grimier and more miserable.
3Actually,
I'd rather we did it rather more often, only with less of the
attendant nationalism, but you know...
4And
pith helmets, which was a little unexpected outside of the colonies
(and no, it wasn't a Home Service helmet.) but maybe they were
supposed to be on leave.
5Actually,
I love steam-punk, but that is now the OMT for steam-punk garb at an
historical event.
6Well,
it was a bit chilly and certain agencies would complain if the
council pushed historical accuracy to its fullest.
