Metaphorical Medicine: Diagnosing Lovesickness

Laura Vivanco

'Lovesickness' wasn't always thought of as just a metaphor. In the Middle Ages authoritative sources which were thought to justify the classification of lovesickness as a real disease included the works of Ovid, which 'taught that sickness could be an artful strategy in the game of love, and that unwanted love could be cured by his remedies' (Wack 1990: 15) and

the story of Amnon and Thamar in 2 Samuel 13 (2 Kings in the Vulgate) and the refrain in Canticles, “for I am sick with love” (Cant. 2.5, 5.8).
The biblical episode of Amnon’s love for his sister Thamar both portrayed the reality of lovesickness and, in its narrative details, offered a vision of the disease that overlapped with those of medicine and secular literature. (Wack 1990: 19)

Medieval physicians were of the opinion that love was

a disorder of the mind and body, closely related to melancholia* and potentially fatal if not treated. [...] The university physicians were trained to recognize symptoms of love. By interpreting signs in the patient’s body and behavior (for example, by testing his pulse to see if it changed dramatically when the beloved was mentioned) the doctor could diagnose the malady even if the patient were unwilling to reveal its source. He would then prescribe a regimen designed to restore the body’s strength and to distract the mind from its obsession. Baths, good food, wine, and sleep insured the return of physical vigor, while therapeutic intercourse, business affairs, legal difficulties, real or concocted, and various types of sports and games, like riding or chess, distracted the mind from its fantasies. If left untreated, however, the disease of love could degenerate into melancholia, thought to be even more difficult to cure than lovesickness. (Wack 1990: xi-xii)

That tastefully worded phrase 'therapeutic intercourse' refers to the fact that medieval doctors thought one of the most efficacious remedies for lovesickness was

intercourse with the desired person; if that is not possible, then with another. All the authors recommend it highly; Avicenna and Gerard claim that the disease cannot be cured perfectly without it. If the desired person cannot be obtained legally and according to the faith, then recourse was to be had to "buying girls, and sleeping with them, getting fresh ones, and delighting in them". (Wack 1984: 56-57)

It makes me wonder if some romance heroes also ascribe to this medical theory since there are a fair number who seem to believe that one night of sex with the heroine will help them get over their feelings for her and they're often quite prepared to resort to blackmail in order to get the 'cure' they desire.

Medieval doctors may not have understood the mechanisms by which illnesses were caused, and we may question the efficacy of many of their suggested cures, but they weren't completely wrong in their diagnoses. Modern doctors are concluding that the strange effects caused by love may be due to chemical changes in the brain:

Science is beginning to pay more attention to the chemical storm that romantic love can trigger in our brains. Recent studies of brain scans show that being in love causes changes in the brain that are strikingly similar to serious health problems like drug addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder. [...]

Studies in Italy looking at blood levels of the brain chemical serotonin have suggested that love and mental illness have much in common. They compared serotonin levels of people recently in love; patients with obsessive compulsive disorder; and a "control" group that was neither. The researchers found that the love-struck participants showed a drop in serotonin levels similar to those with obsessive-compulsive problems. (Parker-Pope 2007, Wall Street Journal)**

For all that medieval doctors' scientific knowledge was lacking by modern standards, their descriptions of lovesickness nonetheless demonstrate an understanding of the symptoms and feelings caused by love and in this respect they may have a lot in common with modern romance authors.

Most romance novels (with the obvious exception of medical romances) don't make accuracy in medical matters a high priority and it's perhaps better to think of many medical details in romances as having a strong metaphorical and psychological significance rather than view less than total accuracy as a flaw. I'm not suggesting that romance authors never bother to get medical details right, because many do make great efforts to ensure accuracy, but it's certainly not always the case. Some romances seem to use medical matters almost metaphorically, with the emphasis on emotion and psychological exploration rather than strict attention to medical detail. This really isn't very different from the ways that 'wallpaper historicals' use historical details and settings to create a romantic backdrop for the drama but are not overly concerned with total historical accuracy, or, to take some more literary examples, the way in which Ionesco uses the metamorphosis of his characters into rhinoceroses to describe the spread of fascism, or the role of cholera in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, where the disease can be read as an indicator of moral decay.

One of the most common romance medical metaphors concerns the location of the hymen. As Kalen Hughes observes,

Contrary to what appears to be popular mythology (at least among the writers of romance and erotica) the hymen is not a “barrier” (except in RARE cases that require surgery; 1 in 2000 per Blaustein's Pathology of the Female Genital Tract) nor is it up inside the vaginal canal as it is commonly represented to be in fiction.

Here's an example of a description of the piercing of a romance heroine's hymen:

Her hands were scrabbling through his hair [...] blindly seeking some course that would answer the tumultuous need within. And finally he answered it, lifting himself over her, knowing she was open to him, open and waiting tremulously, wanting the ultimate fulfilment of all he could give her, and she sighed with intense relief as she felt him push into her, felt her inner muscles contract around him, felt the glorious fullness moving slowly onward, meeting the resistance of her virginity, pausing.
Even in that brief moment of panic she couldn't bear the thought of him stopping. If there was pain, there was pain. She didn't care. (Darcy 2003: 95)

While this heroine has clearly got a hymen located somewhere anatomically impossible, the barrier here represents the way the heroine is letting down her emotional defences, opening herself to the hero emotionally as well as physically. Where she had previously avoided falling in love, now she is willing to take a risk, even if it causes her pain. Another medical condition common to romance is what Maria K labels 'AIR Syndrome':

The word amnesia may sound scientific and impressive but Amnesia In Romance (AIR) has nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with air-headed research. Many novels romanticize head injury and portray amnesia patients in a completely unrealistic manner.

I recommend you read Maria's article if you want to know more about the reality of brain injury and how it compares with the descriptions in romance. Maria concludes, with her tongue firmly in her cheek, that AIR Syndrome is probably

caused by conversion hysteria, some sort of confusional state or delirium, dissociative disorder or psychosis rather than a head injury, although romance authors seldom choose these alternatives. Someone might forget a traumatic event to protect herself from severe emotional distress or they might have a multiple personality.

I agree, and I think that yet again what the romance authors are trying to do is portray for the reader the emotional intensity involved in falling in love.

Another medical problem I've noticed in romances are heart conditions. A striking example of almost literal broken-heartedness can be found in Anne Mather's Jack Riordan's Baby. After Jack becomes estranged from his wife, Rachel, he tries to take his mind off his problems by devoting himself to his business (one can imagine that the medieval medical practitioners who suggested that the love-sick individual should be distracted by 'business affairs' would have approved), unfortunately the treatment is not successful (though his business flourishes) and he develops physical symptoms of heart disease, collapses and ends up in hospital. It also appears that, as feared by medieval doctors, his illness has almost developed into melancholia (a term which ancient and medieval doctors used to describe a variety of different mental health problems, including what we'd now term 'depression'*):

He certainly didn't believe the shrink who'd come to see him while he was in the hospital. Obviously someone who was recovering from an attack that had limited the amount of blood entering the heart might be suffering depression [...]. His diagnosis - that Jack's problems were possibly as much psychological as physical - hadn't won him any favours. [...] Okay, he [Jack] thought now, so maybe their estrangement had played a contributory role in the way his body was behaving now. Losing three babies [his wife had miscarried three times] and the wife you loved more than life itself could do that to you (2006: 155-156)

Once Jack and Rachel are reconciled Jack's health returns and in fact 'had never been better. He'd had a comprehensive check-up [...] and according to Dr Moore his arrhythmia had corrected itself' (2006: 181). I'm not sure what modern doctors would think about Jack's symptoms and his rapid recovery, but I'm sure that their medieval colleagues would have had little problem diagnosing Jack's problems as being caused by lovesickness, nor would they have been surprised by his swift return to health. There's another Jack with heart trouble in Maggie Cox's The Pregnancy Secret and here the heroine quite explicitly makes a connection between emotional heartbreak and his heart attack:

clearly Jack's lifestyle up until now must have been impossibly stressful to have caused him to need heart surgery at the too young age of thirty-seven [...] She already knew that he was angry and bitter about what had happened between them. If he'd been carrying around that rage inside him all these years and on top of that the stress of a demanding job, then no wonder he had suffered a heart problem!
Caroline had read in a self-help book she'd bought that one of the possible metaphysical causes of a heart attack was when a heart felt deprived of joy due to a person's pursuit of making money over everything else ... that, plus long-standing emotional problems that eventually helped harden the heart. (2006: 164-165)

If, rather than feeling upset at a lack of accuracy in modern romance novels, we treat the descriptions in the novels as metaphors which use medical terminology to describe emotional states, and accept that these texts are more concerned with describing emotion than with medical realism, we will have a more satisfactory reading experience. 'Heart-ache', 'Heart-broken', 'Lovesickness', 'Love is blind' are all expressions which do precisely the same thing: they use the language of medicine to describe the experience of falling and being in love.

* According to Jackson:

The term 'melancholia' suggests modern syndromes of depression, and it certainly did designate cases of psychotic depression and probably other severe depressions, but it also referred to a variety of what would come to be called functional psychoses, including schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychoses; and probably some disorders now recognized as organic psychoses were included. (1972: 289)

Medieval doctors also ascribed to the theory of the humours, and melancholia and lovesickness might sometimes be ascribed to an excess of black bile.

**There's more on this topic here (from The New York Times) and here (from the BBC).

• Cox, Maggie, 2006. The Pregnancy Secret (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon).
  
• Darcy, Emma, 2003. The Bedroom Surrender (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon).
  
• Jackson, Stanley W., 1972. 'Unusual Mental States in Medieval Europe I. Medical Syndromes of Mental Disorder: 400–1100 A.D.', Journal of the History of Medicine, 27.3: 262-297.
• Mather, Anne, 2006. Jack Riordan's Baby (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon).
  
• Wack, Mary F., 1984. 'Lovesickness in Troilus', Pacific Coast Philology, Vol. 19, No. 1/2: 55-61.
  
• Wack, Mary Frances, 1990. Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The ‘Viaticum’ and its Commentaries, University of Pennsylvania Press, Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania).

Image from the Medieval Woodcuts Clipart Collection. This particular image isn't actually of a doctor diagnosing love sickness. It shows a woman visiting a doctor (he's the one examining a urine flask) and is taken from the Mer des Hystoires, Paris 1488-89. In general medieval medicine considered lovesickness to be an illness which afflicted aristocratic males:'the sufferer was typically thought to be a noble man' (Wack 1990: xi).

What do you think's romantic?

We're coming up for Valentine's Day, so I thought it might be a good time to think about what we mean by 'romance' and 'romantic' in general, and also on the relationship between these ideas and the modern romance genre.

According to Jackie Stacey and Lynne Pearce

Despite the fact that the late twentieth-century has offered us many new possibilities for how we may conduct our interpersonal relationships, romance itself seems indestructible. While studies like Shere Hite's [...] reveal a dramatic increase in divorce, non-monogamy, couples living together outside of marriage, and other 'non-standard' relationships (including a noticeable increase in the number of gay and lesbian relationships), the trappings of 'classic romance' (love songs, white weddings, Valentine's day and so on) remain as commercially viable as ever. (1995: 11, my emphasis)

I think we'd all acknowledge the truth of the italicised part of that statement. In the US alone,

According to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 2007 Valentine's Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch for NRF, the average consumer will spend $119.67 on Valentine's Day, up from $100.89 last year. With 63.4 percent of consumers planning to celebrate the holiday, total 2007 Valentine's Day spending is expected to reach $16.90 billion. [...] Popular gifts include cards (62.8%), candy (48.4%) and flowers (36.7%). In addition, close to half of consumers (45.3%) will treat their loved one to a special evening out. (National Retail Federation, 2007)

As Pearce and Stacey noted, the increasing number of people who are 'out' and living openly in gay and lesbian relationships has not diminished the appeal of traditionally romantic gestures. In fact, in the UK where gay and lesbian civil partnerships give legal recognition to such relationships, there are now business targeting 'pink weddings' and 'one survey suggests the pink wedding industry could be worth as much as £600m by 2010' (BBC).

So romance and traditional concepts of the romantic are alive and well, though they may be given a modern twist by some. They can also have a downside:

It has been estimated that for one in ten new spouses, the anticlimax of married life is so severe it develops into what is known as postnuptial depression. This increasingly common condition can continue for months, leaving sufferers feeling disillusioned, confused and even questioning if getting married was a mistake.

But when so much has been invested in the wedding, it's no wonder so many people experience such a comedown. (BBC)

It's possibly worth remembering that some 'romantic' settings and objects have a relatively recent history whereas others are much more traditional. Almost all are also culturally specific. Diamonds, for example, did not always have the prominence they do now:

The diamond engagement ring was one of the greatest triumphs of mass consumer marketing. The "tradition" is said to date back to 1477, when Austria's Archduke Maximillian presented his fiancée, Mary of Burgundy, with a diamond engagement ring, but diamond ownership remained very much an aristocratic frill until the discovery of the South African stones. The South African boom "democratized" diamonds to a certain extent, and by the 1920s you find "Good Manners" manuals recommending diamonds for American brides. The big marketing push did not come until the late 1930s, however, when Harry Oppenheimer of De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., hired the N. W. Ayer advertising agency to boost diamond sales. Plans for the campaign were ambitious. The company arranged for movie stars to flaunt the company's jewels, and Hollywood screenwriters were approached to include "diamond themes" in movie scripts. (Proctor 2001: 390)

Epstein describes how this newly created tradition was introduced to Japanese society through highly successful marketing:

When the campaign began in 1968, less than 5 percent of Japanese women getting married received a diamond engagement ring. By 1972 the proportion had risen to 27 percent. By 1978, half of all Japanese women who were married wore a diamond on their ring finger. And, by 1981, some 6o percent of Japanese brides wore diamonds. In a mere thirteen years, the fifteen-hundred-year Japanese tradition was radically revised.

So what has this got to do with romance novels? Well, it seems to me that this 'commercially viable', 'classic' model of romance is perhaps one that non-romance readers associate with the romance genre. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, for example, among other definitions of 'romance', states that 'romance' can mean ' a book or film dealing with love in a sentimental or idealized way'. You literally can't get much more sentimental or idealised (or fluffier or pinker) than Barbara Cartland, who 'was known as the Queen of Romance, writing 723 books with estimated worldwide sales of one billion copies in 36 languages'. Here's a sample of her writing-style:

She had not imagined a kiss could make her feel as if a streak of sunlight ran through her body, making her pulsatingly alive.
It was so rapturous, so perfect, that she thought the angels she had heard singing at Letty's wedding were all round them, and the wonder of the Marquis's lips were part of the music, the beauty, and everything she had thought was out of reach (1978 : 138)

You don't tend to find writing like that any more in modern romance novels, but the stereotypes about the genre persist. In 2006, for example, romance author 'Emily Giffin, author of best sellers such as "Something Borrowed" and "Something Blue"' was quoted saying of the genre that "It's not all lace and moonlight and heaving bosoms. That's all nice, but it's about a lot more than that'. But clearly the very fact that she mentioned the 'lace and moonlight and heaving bosoms' is an indication that she believed that this was a perception which exists about the genre, and she was right. Harlequin Mills & Boon in particular have tended to be associated with this type of 'classic' or 'traditional' view of romance. One article written in 2005 about the Bombshell line which was then being launched noted that 'Harlequin Mills & Boon [...] are famous for giving women an easy read, filled with old-fashioned romance' (my emphasis). Another article, this time from 2006 and about a workshop for would-be Mills & Boon authors begins:

In a fairy-tale castle painted pink, romance is in the air. A dark, brooding hero with a cruel smile is toying with the affections of a girl who has a tiny waist and a trembling heart. Fear and desire tussle within her as he touches her blushing cheek with the rough fingers of a huge hand. Then, breaking the spell, the clock strikes 11am and it is time to stop for tea and chocolate biscuits.

Harlequin's 2007 Romance Report has been criticised for what it doesn't do:

Does the report talk about how smart romance readers are? Or how diverse they are? Does the report highlight books, trends in reading, or new authors? Does it uplift the genre and speak to the issue of credibility? No. It panders to every godforsaken stereotype about romance readers out there. [...] The report is about statistics compiled, not of readers and what they want to see in their books or covers that are appealing or topics and so forth. Instead it is a report of what 2,256 US adults think of romance.

The Smart Bitches weren't very impressed either and declared that Harlequin were Doing More to Damage the Cause than Puffypaint Sweaters.

It seems to me, though, that Harlequin's efforts weren't entirely illogical or misdirected. Given the perception that romance (in the sense of romantic gestures and ways of behaving) involves pink cards, lace underwear, chocolates, roses, moonlight and serenades, and the fact that Harlequin Mills & Boon, and by association the whole romance genre, is still very strongly associated with this sort of romance, it made sense for Harlequin to try to highlight changes in people's perceptions of what's romantic that reflect the wide range of situations that are to be found in modern romance novels. According to Harlequin we are now seeing the rise of ' the New Romantics – men and women who are searching for a type of romance that is more accessible and realistic, a type of romance that complements their own personal style and comfort level'. Some of these people would presumably be unlikely to approach the romance genre if they thought it was all about 'classic romance'. And, according to Harlequin, there are a lot of people thinking this way: 'More than four in five men (87%) and nine in ten women (93%) agree that it [romance] can be whatever you want it to be. As the numbers suggest, everyone is looking for a type of romance that is accessible and natural to them'. I suspect that Harlequin, with its wide range of category lines catering to different tastes, doesn't want to alienate any of them, so the report doesn't insult those who still appreciate traditional romantic gestures. Instead it states that:

Flowers and chocolate are still in, considering 72% of all men and 78% of all women disagree with the statement that traditional ideas of romance such as flowers and chocolate are outdated. The new romance is whatever you want it to be, so if the old classics are your style, then by all means keep it up. Just remember, especially this Valentine’s Day, there’s an entire world out there beyond flowers and chocolate.

I wonder whether there's any correlation (either positive or negative) between people's tastes regarding real-life romance and their preferences in romance novels. Are those with a penchant for red roses and candle-lit dinners more likely to look for romance novels with the more conventionally romantic settings and characters? Or could it be that those who in real life take a cynical view of romance prefer these settings precisely because they're different? Do real-life pragmatists prefer a bit of grit and realism with their Happy-Ever-Afters or do they opt for a greater degree of escapism in their fiction? I suspect one can't make generalisations, and although it's probably fairly obvious by now that my personal preference isn't for 'classic romance', I don't in any way wish to deride the tastes of those who prefer different sorts of books or romantic gestures.

In many ways this takes me back to my discussion about 'wallpaper' historical romances. I suspect that the more wallpaper-ish a novel is, the more it can omit the details which would seem less than romantic to some readers. This goes well beyond the way that issues such as those surrounding personal hygiene are often glossed over in historical romances. In a 'wallpaper' historical the characters can behave and think in ways which will seem more 'romantic' to 21st century readers. My reading of medieval chronicles has left me with the impression that most medieval noblemen were the equivalent of modern-day politicians, and there aren't many heroes or heroines who have that profession (All About Romance has a very short list of them), which makes me wonder if it's seen as less 'romantic' or 'heroic' than many others. Juliet Flesch reports that

Market surveys [...] have found that readers do not warm to politicians, athletes or actors as heroes. According to Emma Darcy, Alison Kelly, Joan Kilby and Marion Lennox, they are seen as self-absorbed, unlikely to make the commitment required of the romance hero or heroine to human relationships in general and one relationship in particular. (2004: 227)

I wonder if historical romances tend to feature aristocratic characters at least in part because many of the items which we associate with romance (lace, silks, candles, music, chocolate, expensive jewellery) would previously have only been accessible to the aristocracy in large quantities and high quality. Ironically, the poets, authors and aristocrats of the past often associated romance with the countryside and peasants, though in an extremely 'wallpaper' form. In pastoral literature the bucolic life is presented as the antithesis of the intrigue and political manoeuvring to be found at court:

The pastoral convention is an idealized version of country life that draws on Greek, Roman, and Biblical examples. Pastoral praises the freedom and contemplative life absent of personal ambition, the power struggles of the court, and fortune's vagaries. (William E. Smith, course materials for English 214)

Here's part of the Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to His Love:

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.

There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

(There's analysis of the poem here and here). Marie Antoinette

directed architect Richard Mique and artist Hubert Robert to conjure up a sylvan fantasy of artificial streams, grottoes and winding paths. (During nighttime galas, a Temple of Love rotunda and a glass music salon were illuminated by wood fires hidden in trenches in the ground.) In 1784, the two designers created what, from the outside, appeared to be a hamlet (the Hameau) of cracked and tumbledown cottages, which, in fact, were appointed with comfortable couches, stoves and billiard tables. (Smithsonian Magazine)

So, what do you think's romantic? And are there some settings or professions which you don't find romantic?
----

• Cartland, Barbara, 1978. The Problems of Love (London: Corgi).
• Flesch, Juliet, 2004. From Australia with Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels (Fremantle, Western Australia: Curtin University Press).
  
• Proctor, Robert N., 2001. 'Anti-Agate: The Great Diamond Hoax and the Semiprecious Stone Scam', Configurations, 9.3: 381-412.
  
• Stacey, Jackie and Lynne Pearce, 1995. 'The Heart of the Matter: Feminists Revisit Romance', in Romance Revisited, ed. Lynne Pearce & Jackie Stacey (New York: New York University Press), pp. 11-45.

P.S. For those of you who are really, really sick of 'classic romance', here's a link to the Be My Anti-Valentine site: 'The idea of the site is to provide an alternative card-sending service for all the people who think Valentine’s Day is sickly-sweet, exclusively coupley, consumerist nonsense or otherwise a bit naff' (from the FAQs). The creator of the site doesn't reject romance:

I’m not anti-love or anti-romance or anti-relationships. I’m against hollow gestures prescribed by people who are out to make money out of the holiday. [...] I’m against anyone with a vested interest telling us how and when it’s appropriate to be affectionate - say it with roses, a diamond is forever, if you REALLY loved her, you’d take her to Paris. [...] I hate the fact that flowers which are reasonably priced at any other time of the year suddenly rocket in price in February, only to plummet again afterwards.

The site may not stay up for long after 14 February, so here's a link to a blog-post giving the basic details.

History and “Wallpaper” History

In the past few months there has been a significant amount of discussion within the romance reading and writing community about historical romances, and much of the heat in these discussions was generated by the use of the term ‘wallpaper historicals’ .

As a reader, my preference is for historicals which appear to me to be relatively accurate in their depiction of the past. I say ‘relatively accurate’ because I don’t think it is possible for any work to be entirely accurate. There is so much we don’t know about the past, and reproducing the language and speech patterns of historical characters might well render a book extremely difficult for the modern reader to understand. Despite my personal preferences, however, I think it is important to acknowledge that the level of historical accuracy in a romance cannot be used as an indicator of either literary merit or entertainment value.

Determining which historical romances are ‘wallpaper’ and which are more accurate may require a considerable degree of historical knowledge on the part of the reader. Once a relatively accurate historical romance has been identified, however, its use of history sets the characters and the issues raised by the romance in a historical context. This enables the reader to take the long view on questions such as the role of women in society etc, and thus see how much, or how little, has changed in the intervening years since the era in which the book is set. Nonetheless, each historical romance is a product of its own time: while attempting to remain true to the period depicted, it is likely to deal with issues such as sexuality and male/female relationships from a perspective which is shaped by 21st century attitudes. Issues may then be perceived to be universal in nature, but expressed differently at different times and in different cultures. This sort of historical romance also offers a historical commentary on the period in which it is set. In that respect it is the literary equivalent of the more accurate historical reenactment societies, which seek to explore what life was really like in the past. Finally, the more accurate type of historical romance invites the reader to read it both in the context of the literature in the period in which it is set, and in the context of contemporary works, since it engages with both the past and the present.

The historical romance whose author has striven for accuracy and succeeded in bringing history to life is, then, potentially an extremely challenging text. This does not mean, however, that one should therefore dismiss all ‘wallpaper’ historicals as ‘bad’ literature and mere entertainment. We need to fully recognise the possibility that a work may be full of historical inaccuracies and still be a great literary work. The following defence of Shakespeare’s work could be equally appropriate if used to describe ‘wallpaper’ historical romances since it argues that the author

should not be criticised too heavily for misrepresenting historical events. His plays were works of fiction and entertainment, intended for performance in a specific arena and written according to a rigid style and structure.

Shakespeare is a good example of a writer whose depiction of history is far from reliable. One website, created by some ‘third and fourth year English majors at the University of Michigan’ is designed to show how:

Shakespeare, like many playwrights of his time, changed history to fit his artistic purposes. This website highlights those changes and their significance in the major English History Plays.

While it’s possible that some of Shakespeare’s inaccuracies are due to a lack of knowledge, some must be deliberate, and this leads scholars to ask why he would have wished to change the facts. What ‘artistic purposes’ did it serve? Here’s an example:

Like most of the history plays, many years are compressed into a short sequence of events. The rebellions that are portrayed in this play [Henry IV ] actually had years between them and were not as much of a threat to the throne as portrayed. But [...] making the atmosphere seem more tumultuous adds suspense to the major pressing question of whether or not Hal is prepared to become a strong monarch.

Wallpaper historicals may use a particular setting because it gives credibility to particular types of plot (e.g. the arranged marriage, or one which turns on the importance of virginity and family honour, and it may give the hero particular opportunities for showing his strength, chivalrous nature etc.).

Sometimes Shakespeare’s motives in making changes appear to have been as much political as artistic. He must have wished to avoid displeasing Elizabeth I and several of the English history plays deal with the period leading up to the accession of the Tudor dynasty, of which Elizabeth was a member. Wallpaper historicals enable an author to avoid engaging with potentially inflammatory topics in contemporary society. For example, a Regency hero may be depicted as a Whig without incurring the wrath of contemporary Conservative voters, since the policies of the Tory party now bear little resemblance to those of the 1800s. Writing a wallpaper historical can also enable an author to avoid engaging with the less pleasant realities of history, such as slavery and racism, thus ensuring that the society and characters depicted remain appealing to a contemporary reader. Wallpaper history can also be used to promote particular ideas about national identity. A wallpaper historical set in Scotland will probably reveal far more about the author’s ideas about Scottishness, than it will about Scotland’s history. Similarly, wallpaper historical romances featuring a hero who is a sheik or a native American will express ideas about ‘the other’, the exotic.

While a few authors of ‘wallpaper’ historical romances may just lack the ability to do historical research, it seems likely that the majority deliberately use just enough historical details to create a particular atmosphere and setting. According to Northrop Frye

The romance is the nearest of all literary forms to the wish-fulfillment dream, and for that reason it has socially a curiously paradoxical role. In every age the ruling social or intellectual class tends to project its ideals in some form of romance, where the virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines represent the ideals and the villains the threats to their ascendancy. […] Yet there is a genuinely ‘proletarian’ element in romance too which is never satisfied with its various incarnations and in fact the incarnations themselves indicate that no matter how great a change in society, romance will turn up again, as hungry as ever, looking for new hopes and desires to feed on. The perennially child-like quality of romance is marked by its extraordinarily persistent nostalgia, its search for some kind of imaginative golden age in time or space. (186)

It may be, then, that the historical inaccuracies of the ‘wallpaper’ historical romance are an indication of the particular ‘golden age’ or fantasy that the author and/or her readers prefers. A wallpaper Regency may suggest that both readers and authors have fantasies where they (and/or the hero) are rich, cultured and aristocratic. The wallpaper Western presents a fantasy of finding one’s ideal life partner in a very American setting where a man knows how to do ‘what a man has to do’. The wallpaper Scottish-set romance is often completely timeless, and while it may suggest that the author and/or her readers have, or would like to have, Scottish ancestry, it may simply be that they appreciate thinking about tall, rugged, warriors in kilts. Such fantasies are no less indicative of a lack of literary merit than is the use of a pastoral setting in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, nor do they prevent the author from exploring important themes such as personal autonomy, the nature of love etc. They may also reveal aspects of the type of life they would ideally like to lead and the qualities which the author and her readers feel are important in men and women. The historical setting is being used, then, as a convenient vehicle to convey ideals.