When Historical Novels Get It All Wrong

[Wifetheif]

This post is half vent half cautionary tale. I just finished the well-reviewed and popular novel by Sally Magnusson entitled "The SealWoman's Gift. It is based on a true incident. In 1627 Barbary Pirates invaded Iceland and carried some 400 men women and children away to slavery in Algiers. Among those captured was a Lutheran minister, his wife Asta, and two children. Asra gives birth to her fourth child while under sail in the hold of the ship. (An older daughter escaped capture.) Unusually, the group, except the eldest son, who is claimed by the local Pasha, are purchased as a unit by a Moor named Celliby. The pastor husband is then sent off to Denmark to raise a ransom for the captives. At the time Iceland was a Danish colony. We know all this because the husband wrote a first-hand account of his capture enslavement and sale. He spends the next three years traveling to Denmark to petition the king only to be told that because of the recent Danish war with Germany, the coffers are empty. He then sets about to raise the money himself. The upshot -- Asta spends ten years in an Algiers harem and is only one of forty or so Icelanders who eventually return home. NONE of the children, who are forcibly converted to Islam are allowed to leave. Magnussen tries to give voice to Asta's experience and there is where the novel starts to fall apart.
We get what is essentially a "love" story between Asta and her owner. Most absurdly Celliby waits THREE years before he makes a move on Asta who, inspired by Scheherazade in 1001 Nights, uses her knowledge of the Icelandic sagas to delay the inevitable even longer. Starting to see the problem? Ransom coming or not, the Moor is going to make use of Asta. She would have had PTSD from the moment she was abducted and forced into the hold of the ship. She is fair-skinned, fair-haired, and quite attractive attributes that make her very valuable as a slave in the Ottoman Empire. The most likely scenario is that within days or weeks of her husband's departure, Celliby WOULD have had Asta horizontal no matter what her own thoughts on the matter were. BUT a PTSD victim repeatedly traumatized does not make for compelling reading, Magnususson pulls every punch. The idea that she could fall in love with her owner when he literally controls her destiny has robbed her of her identity, freedom, and self-agency is so ahistorical as to be almost offensive. Feelings can develop between captors and captives but what Asta experiences is clearly not Stockholm Syndrome. The Koran commands men to lie with their wives and concubines as often as possible, but Magnusson never learned that fact. Such an offensive love story would not appear in say a novel written about slave and master relations in the antebellum south! Just because the Barbary slavery was hundreds of years earlier doesn't mean it was materially different.
In this case, the novel would have been greatly improved had Sally Magnusson asked the most pertinent question, "Why would a man want to own a female slave in the first place?" The Seal Woman's Gift COULD have been an important meditation on the nature of power and submission, of free will versus the loss of all personal agency, and the conflict between Islam and Christianity. Instead, it is a huge swing and a miss.

 

[stickygirl]

So Asta escapes a tedious christian life living in a miserably cold environment, where herring and whale blubber are the staple, to a world that's warm, where they have baths, silk and fresh food. She was going to be a slave where ever she lived, why not somewhere nice?

Sorry the book disappointed

 

[TheRedChamber]

Not familiar with the book, but guessing the author and a lot of the readers were happier with pulled punches and Harem-lite life. Common enough with historical stuff.

Sometimes the dissonance of history as presented and history as you know it was gets so great as to render the whole thing absurd.

 

[Wifetheif]

So Asta escapes a tedious christian life living in a miserably cold environment, where herring and whale blubber are the staple, to a world that's warm, where they have baths, silk and fresh food. She was going to be a slave where ever she lived, why not somewhere nice?

Sorry the book disappointed

That's one aspect of the novel, but here too the author pulls punches, Her older husband is portrayed as a gentle, kind, and loving soul who never forces sex on Asta. Yet we are supposed to believe that the SAME thing occurs with a guy with two wives and an extensive harem? Algiers is portrayed as a sunny Eden. (An Eden where men and women are sold into the worst chattel slavery and are not permitted to retain their or their parent's beliefs.) She wants it both ways. OOh, Nice weather, running water, and great food! Also, this guy who owns me never lays a hand on me and expects nothing in exchange for housing, feeding my children, and me. He's SO handsome and a great father. I guess I'll just open my legs for him.

 

[lovecraft68]

Speaking of history portrayed all wrong; that Woman King movie is an appalling example. Making slave traders and cultists into heroes. They could have made up a tribe, or picked one with a less infamous history, but they went with the worst and are trying to rewrite who they really were. Sadly the twitter generation will believe it

Lupita Nyoung'o(Most famous for Black Panther) was the original pick, but when she did some research walked away disgusted. Viola Davis couldn't take the role fast enough and is now perpetuating the lie of the movie and pretty much betraying her own alleged causes.

Fiction has to fiction, but when Fiction decides it needs to glorify horrible people and events, that's as low as it gets.

Don't get me started on the endless amount of Manson movies and documentaries that make the spineless disgusting little midget into some kind of 'cool' figure. To a lesser degree they do it with Bundy.

We live in a society that demonizes heroes and glorifies sadists and villains.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The idea that she could fall in love with her owner when he literally controls her destiny has robbed her of her identity, freedom, and self-agency is so ahistorical as to be almost offensive. Feelings can develop between captors and captives but what Asta experiences is clearly not Stockholm Syndrome.

FWIW, "Stockholm Syndrome" is largely if not wholly a myth invented to discredit an inconvenient woman.

Long story short: bank robbery turned into a siege with hostages, police took a very aggressive approach that left the hostages fearing for their lives, and they were pretty lucky nobody got killed. One of the hostages was pissed enough about it to criticise the police afterwards, and the police psychiatrist who'd consulted on the "negotiations" invented a brand new psychiatric condition and stuck it on her as an explanation for why she was criticising his work. (Without even speaking to her... usually an important step in psychiatric diagnosis!)

Such an offensive love story would not appear in say a novel written about slave and master relations in the antebellum south!

Sorry to say, it has appeared repeatedly. One of my friends who does romance reviews has turned down multiple books along those lines.

One of the better known in the genre is Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings. (Hemings was Jefferson's slave and around 14-16 when their "relationship" began.) That relationship got a TV series, too:



In a similar vein, folk have even tried to romanticise the Holocaust. A few years back there was an award-nominated "romance" in which a Jewish prisoner in Theresienstadt falls in love with an SS colonel and converts to Christianity.

 

[oggbashan]

When I write historical fiction stories, and I have done quite a few, I try hard to get the details and the attitudes correct. Occasionally I make mistakes - a DVD in the 1960s was my worst (like Shakespeare's chiming clock in Julius Caesar).

But comments sometimes criticise things that I know are right e.g. claiming the word 'pussy' was never used in 1960s London to describe female genitalia. I know it was. I was there then as a Lit legal adult, and 'pussy' has been used in England since the 17th Century (Dictionary of Slang).

 

[stickygirl]

That's one aspect of the novel, but here too the author pulls punches, Her older husband is portrayed as a gentle, kind, and loving soul who never forces sex on Asta. Yet we are supposed to believe that the SAME thing occurs with a guy with two wives and an extensive harem? Algiers is portrayed as a sunny Eden. (An Eden where men and women are sold into the worst chattel slavery and are not permitted to retain their or their parent's beliefs.) She wants it both ways. OOh, Nice weather, running water, and great food! Also, this guy who owns me never lays a hand on me and expects nothing in exchange for housing, feeding my children, and me. He's SO handsome and a great father. I guess I'll just open my legs for him.

Well the author has written a book called Horace and the Haggis and may not have written that with much research either

I must accept your summary of the book and the flaws you highlight, in particular the fairy-tale depiction of both men.

OTOH Placed in a historical context, what agency did women have in the sixteenth century? You've projected some very modern rights onto her - freedom, identity and agency that I suspect she would have lacked. Given that she never expected to be rescued, had two or three children to care for, then maybe she had to do what many women do to survive, by making the best of her situation? Who knows, maybe Celliby was too busy shagging his harem and saw her as a novelty, plus she was breast feeding her newest arrival.

Early Arab culture was far in advance of medieval Europe in terms of mathematics, science and medicine and many of our commonly used words are based on their language: alchemy, sugar, cotton, coffee... Slavery had been an established trade for centuries but if he'd invested in 'a commodity' it doesn't follow he raped her every day out of spite.

Having said all that, and having played your devil's advocate, it does sounds like a shit book! Thanks for giving us the heads up.

 

[Lifestyle66]

This post is half vent half cautionary tale. I just finished the well-reviewed and popular novel by Sally Magnusson entitled "The SealWoman's Gift. It is based on a true incident. ....

Expecting someone might learn history from a fiction novel is probably a mistake.

"Based on a true incident" does not mean it has anything to do with an accurate historical retelling of that incident. It's fiction. People getting their history from TV or movie dramas causes such emotional distress when they are told "it wasn't that way in reality." They reinvent and re-remember the past through "rose colored glasses."

 

[TheRedChamber]

OTOH Placed in a historical context, what agency did women have in the sixteenth century? You've projected some very modern rights onto her - freedom, identity and agency that I suspect she would have lacked. Given that she never expected to be rescued, had two or three children to care for, then maybe she had to do what many women do to survive, by making the best of her situation? Who knows, maybe Celliby was too busy shagging his harem and saw her as a novelty, plus she was breast feeding her newest arrival.

Early Arab culture was far in advance of medieval Europe in terms of mathematics, science and medicine and many of our commonly used words are based on their language: alchemy, sugar, cotton, coffee... Slavery had been an established trade for centuries but if he'd invested in 'a commodity' it doesn't follow he raped her every day out of spite.

I suspect that viewed from 16th century Icelandic values it isn't much better - maybe community, religion and family. It sounds like she's lost contact with two of her four children and her husband, the only community she's ever lived in, not only will she not initially speak the language and have little concept of the society she's in, she'll also have been likely taught that non-Christian's are practically the devil and equate any of the nice things she's given as temptations. There's probably an interesting book to be written about the experience to be sure, but it's still likely to be deeply traumatising. Although women clearly did not have the same agency or rights they do today, there is clearly a difference between 'your hopefully loving father finding you hopefully a good match for a husband according to the standards of the community you've been raised in and raising shared children in a monogomous relationship' and 'being violently abducted from your home into a society whose rules you have no idea of, and being scared about the safety of yourself and your children'

Of course you can flip it around and write a story about a woman being abducted from an abusive family and finding that she's been bought by a good man and is actually a lot happier there, and that could work fine, but that doesn't seem like this story.