How to help the reader wrestle through historical atrocities which would be considered normal to the POV character
I'm writing historical fiction which is set in ancient China. My MC is a historical figure who really did go into battle as a woman.
Women in the ancient world were abused and mistreated. Males slaves were often valued more highly than women. Even though my MC managed to rise above this, we know from history that she never truly developed a sense of self-respect. After she returned from battle, the first thing she did was to take the initiative to bring a mistress home for her husband. She even brags to her parents about how good of a wife she's being by going the extra mile to satisfy her husband's sexual appetite. Once she returns from battle and resumes her role as a wife, she submissively concludes that her only role for the rest of her life is childbearing. Sadly, women in ancient China had no sense of self-respect.
If I continue the story as an unbiased narrator, the reader is likely to be shocked. I want to condemn these atrocities and help the modern reader understand how far society has progressed. Yet, I don't want to have to step in as the narrator and have to speak to the reader and help them understand this culture. I wish I could have the characters do this for me... but this was so commonplace that it was rarely discussed. Thus, any dialogue I could insert feels forced.
This event is well known enough that people the most familiar with China's history are sure to notice its absence. Deleting this event requires me to significantly alter later historical events or end the story before all issues have been resolved.
There are many stories (usually dystopian) where the MC is forced into a terrible world and the reader comes away inspired. I wish I could do that with this story. However, I'm really struggling with how to turn this one around without breaking the rules of historical fiction.
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I would say, trust the reader, and trust your character.
Although these things may not be "discussed", they can certainly be thought about by your POV character. She is doing something highly unusual, there must be (and have been) something highly unusual about her thinking.
What was that? Is she fearless when all other women are fearful?
A woman can be fearless (in the literal sense) and still want to behave as a traditional woman in her culture. In many cultures women accepted inequality without qualm, they believed in it themselves. They accepted that husbands sleep around, but women never did.
You shouldn't make your historical figure a paragon of early Female Equality, she clearly was not. If you want to stay true to the historical account, you need to find a coherent set of beliefs and mental traits (like not feeling fear), a driving purpose that lets her become a warrior out of necessity without challenging the role of women in her society, or even her role as a woman. She just has what is to her, a compelling reason to fight, and it is not pride, and not to prove she is the equal of any man, it is for something else: to save something or someone she loves.
If you have already made your historical figure a paragon of early Female Equality, then you have already broken with the historical record. You can continue to break with it by ignoring these later passages about "after the war" and a return to being subordinate. Personally I'd prefer the other approach, that would be a more interesting character.
Resolve the psychology. In a way, what you have is a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" challenge. Buffy (starting out) was a girly girl and wanted to be, but was also a consummate fighter in lethal combat.
Your challenge is to make a woman be a consummate soldier without saddling her with a bunch of male attributes. Fighting, killing, courage, and self-sacrifice are not the purview of only men. You need a woman that wants to be a woman in her culture, that wants to bear and raise children, that doesn't mind sharing her husband and sees a mistress as sharing the load in keeping him happy. In many such cultures the women aren't jealous because they depend on their husband's socially-enforced honor in his commitment to provide for his wife (or wives) and children; and they never expected the husband to be faithful. It isn't only China; check out the Old Testament; the male religious leaders were promiscuous as hell and never punished for it.
But at the same time, your character needs some driving reason to become a soldier, to protect something she holds dear (a principle or actual property or persons). And the mental traits that allow her to do what no other women do; defy the traditions she loves and fight, because she thinks those traditions will be lost if she doesn't step up. But once that war is won, she can lay down her sword, and become the traditional woman she wanted to be all along.
That is the nature of the internal struggle you need to portray, in her thoughts and to show in her actions. Yes, she fights, but when she is not fighting she does not behave as a man, she behaves as a women. Buffy wants to live the cliché pretty high school girl's life. She is denied that by the necessity of being a hero and saving the world, but she never becomes a man! Your character is similar, and needs to thread the same needle.
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Building on what was said by Sara Costa, perhaps there is a secondary moral to your story. A person can live a moral, self-respecting life independent of their culture. We who see ourselves as enlightened often assume smallness of character and misery where there was none.
Perhaps you could address your readers in an afterword. You could ask them to put themselves in your MC's place, and replace their modern culture's subjective values with the MC's values. What would they do differently? This seems like a difficult—yet useful—exercise.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48279. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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