Archaic language and men in historic fiction

[AnotherDayAnotherIdea]

Hi everyone!

I'm reading a novel at the moment and it is currently 1909. The protagonist is working class and from the middle of the UK but usually classed as Northern.

To my mind (I am 40) 1909 wasn't that long ago. Yet the language seems really archaic. Phrases like "for I shall" and things like that. My great grandmother was born at around this time and certainly didn't talk like this.

I'd love to hear others' opinions on this.

How can we find out how people talked at a certain time? I feel that if enough writers print enough books with forsooths and so on, there will eventually be a body of work that future generations will read and will assume that they are accurate depictions of the time, iyswim.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe people really did talk like this??

My second observation is that in historical fiction there do seem to be a lot of men who are borderline if not full blown rapists/ molesters. It seems like a glimpse of ankle sends men wild with lust or anger. Do these men not have daughters of their own and so know how to control themselves?

Maybe I'm choosing the wrong books, I'd love to hear other opinions.

You would see something like "forced to surrender" in here from time to time

Mind you I always think it sounds a bit off when I see it !

This made me curl up! Whose translation was that?!

I honestly can't remember, picked it up in the university library and disturbed the stacks with loud snortling so beat a retreat.

It stayed with me though

But who is speaking in all these instances? And who are they speaking to? That’s going to affect their register, formality etc. A fussy, pompous older man trying to assert his respectability in a court room is going to be more longwinded and use a more formal register and a larger vocab than an uneducated working class child talking to a friend, say.

Some words carried on with families if not the wider community. My Grandfather who fought in WW1 still used the Dickensian W for V. Welwet for velvet. Never heard anyone else IRL
Slightly off topic: In Wikipedia an obit for Imogen Holst quotes her as saying that one of her teachers was 'Topping', another 'Ripping'. She was about 10 in 1919.
Angela Brazil??

I agree with you Op about the examples you've posted, they seem very stilted. That was a period of increasing modernity. Maybe people still spoke like that, but I think it would be remarked on by the other characters as pompous. I think E. M. Forster is a great model for natural dialogue of that time and an example of how the old and the new were intermingling then. A Room With A View (1908) and Howard's End (1910) are good examples, if you haven't read them.

@midgetastic I don't think "they're standard English" is good enough here. It's not just interchanging words, it's the whole structure of the sentences. The quality of dialogue for characterisation or to capture a time period is far more subtle than whether the words are standard English or not.

Btw I haven't read the book but I wonder if she is deliberately going for a more camp-y, gothic-influenced, theatrical vibe, and the characters are meant to sound a little ironic and self-conscious? That's just from looking at the blurb and reviews so I could be way off.

My grandparents were born in that era in Stoke on Trent and did use "shall" and also thee, thou and thy. It was and maybe still is dialect in some parts of the country.

And rape is pretty common now and men routinely get away with it. Why would you think it was any better then or that men were any different?

I don't know that they sound particularly out of place, certainly not for an older or educated character (born in the late 19thC); as PP have said, so much depends on context.

I've been reading a lot of local newspapers from that period and the level of verbosity/range of vocabulary is extraordinary in the hundreds of reports diligently filed and typeset each week - it was still a society where communication was largely written down, and many people still went to church, so even if people didn't speak formally to each other in casual conversation, I'd argue that there was a stronger sense of when to dial up the formality, and what it sounded like.

Read some novels written c. 1909 to see how authors at the time made people speak (novels don't usually represent real speech, which is too fragmented btw). As to the predatory men in historical fiction, you are obviously reading the wrong sort - they sound like what used to be called 'bodice rippers'. Try some more nuanced historical fiction which isn't into psychopathic males - I like Bernard Cornwell, the men are not modern but they are not psychopaths either (though I would not start with the Vagabond series, set during the 100 Years War, there are some upsetting scenes, though probably historically accurate in theme even if made up).

That is unkind to indie-publishing, which can be equally well-researched. But as a rule of thumb people should not speak 'forsoothly' in a historical novel. Fairly plain speech, with the odd contemporary word, which is either self-explanatory or you explain it (or the reader 'gets' the gist) e.g. Thomas Coachman saw the figure emerging from the dusk on Hampstead Heath. Urging on the horses he hissed to the boy beside him, 'Get the blunderbuss, Jake. That looks to be a suspcious cove.' Jake pulled forward the trumpet-mouthed gun and primed the firing pan with gunpowder, his hands shaking the while. A highwayman! Just their luck.
I can't bear US historical novels of the Regency-kind either. They are always wrong about everything - and they don't have to be self-published to be that!

Slightly off topic: In Wikipedia an obit for Imogen Holst quotes her as saying that one of her teachers was 'Topping', another 'Ripping'. She was about 10 in 1919. Angela Brazil??

Standard schoolgirl (and possibly schoolboy) slang for the time. See also the Chalet School. Can't imagine why it was thought to be worth remarking on.

I can't bear US historical novels of the Regency-kind either. They are always wrong about everything

I don't think I've ever read a UK set historical novel by a US author that didn't have major howlers. No excuse now that it's so easy to research via the internet. Most recent one I gave up on was a WW2 set novel in which there was an RAF officer with the rank of Major and the heroine set out to travel from London to NE England from Victoria Station.

And names that are totally wrong for the period are a major peeve of mine.