Kathy Waller has won a Slant of Light coffee mug. Congrats to Kathy Waller!
Thanks to Steve Wiegenstein for a glimpse at the Utopia experiment in 19th-century America. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
Relevant History welcomes Steve Wiegenstein, author of Slant of Light, published in 2012, and This Old World, its sequel, published in 2014. Steve grew up in the Missouri Ozarks, the setting for his novel series, and worked there as a newspaper reporter before entering the field of higher education. He is an avid hiker and canoeist who hits the trails and float streams of the Ozarks every chance he gets. Steve lives in Columbia, Missouri, but loves to speak at libraries, civic organizations, and other groups across the country. His books are available from major retailers and his publisher. To learn more about Steve’s books, check out his web site and blog. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
*****
Life is pretty much a mess, most of the time. People don’t behave as they should; they follow their own interests and desires, bringing them into disagreement with others and creating unnecessary heartache and conflict. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could agree in advance that they would act for the common good, setting aside their own wishes in favor of what’s best for everyone?
That is the essence of the Utopian ideal, and that’s why it has fascinated me for many years. I first got interested in Utopian movements when I read about the Icarians, a little-known group that lived in the United States for about fifty years in the Nineteenth Century. That interest led to a wider appreciation for the entire Utopian movement, which was a transatlantic movement inspired both by Romanticism and by the newly created idea of “social science,” both of which contributed important elements to the movement in varying degrees.
The Founding Thinkers
When I think of the foundations of this movement, three names come to mind: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, coiner of the memorable phrase “Property is theft”; Charles Fourier, the Utopian socialist whose concept of the “phalanx” inspired communities on both sides of the Atlantic; and Robert Owen, the Welsh reformer who put his ideas into action in Britain and the United States. The intellectual roots don’t attract me as much as the human drama, though.
The Icarians, like a lot of Utopian groups, originated with a charismatic leader who attracted a group of followers. But the Icarian movement was different from most others as well. For one thing, its founder, Etienne Cabet, hadn’t actually intended to form a settlement. He wrote a novel, Voyage to Icaria, largely to comment on the political situation in France and to keep his name in front of the French public while he served a period of exile. But the novel, in which he set forth his communistic ideas in the form of an imaginary community in the South Seas, caught the public imagination, and in 1848 Cabet found himself leading a group of immigrants to the United States to establish a real-life Icaria. The experiment was marked by equal amounts of strife and heroism, nobility and pettiness, but the last colony of Icarians didn’t disband until 1898, and their dogged persistence in trying to live out their ideal deserves our admiration, if not imitation.
The Fictional Appeal
Those of you who have read my first novel, Slant of Light, will recognize that situation as the starting premise of the book—a charismatic social reformer who founds a community, almost by accident. I depart from history at that point, but certainly one of the central themes of my book is the Utopian impulse that lives in us all, and whether that impulse can ever be realized. This Old World picks up that story after the devastation of the American Civil War, when the first wave of Utopianism died down as dreams of a radical refashioning of human nature felt to most Americans more like a cruel hoax than an achievable ideal.
Somewhere below the surface, the Utopian impulse has a dictatorial side—it’s the “I know best” impulse, the belief that life’s messes and strife could be avoided if only you would agree to what I know is best for us all. You can see hints of this impulse in the obsessive fascination with order that characterizes many of the Utopian theorists’ visions of the ideal community. Fourier’s ideal phalanx was to have 1,620 people, equally divided among male and female, and encompassing what he imagined to be all combinations of the common passions of humanity. To the social reformer, our human imperfections are a problem to be solved. But to the novelist, they’re what makes us so interesting.
The fictional inhabitants of Daybreak, the name of my fictional community in Slant of Light and This Old World, try earnestly to arrange their lives for the common good. They hold weekly meetings to vote on everything from whether to install windows in their cabins to whether to buy cloth for mourning dresses. They eat together, work together, travel together. But their communal urges keep getting thwarted by their human desires. They envy, they betray, they fall in love with the wrong people. It’s the struggle between these two sides of human nature—the desire to improve and perfect ourselves, and the desire to have what we want when we want it, regardless of others—that drew me to the Utopian experience of the Nineteenth Century as a microcosm of human nature.
*****
A big thanks to Steve Wiegenstein. He’ll give away a Slant of Light coffee mug to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available worldwide.
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
Janet Oakley has won a copy of Chorus of the Dead by Tracy Ward. Congrats to Janet Oakley!
Thanks to Tracy Ward for a chilling look inside the world of Victorian-era physicians and surgeons. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
Relevant History welcomes Tracy L. Ward, the historical mystery writer behind the Dr. Peter Ainsley Mystery series, gothic morgue mysteries played out in the dark streets of London. The fourth novel in the series, Sweet Asylym, was just released at the end of June and features the continuing story of Peter Ainsley, a young surgeon, and his high-born sister, Margaret Marshall, as they are pulled unwillingly into a mystery involving a young pregnant woman and her strange, ominous family. A former journalist, Tracy has been writing creatively for a number of years and currently has four novels and three anthologies to her name. To learn more about Tracy’s books, check out her blog, and follow her on Facebook.
*****
Chances are sometime during your lifetime you’ve required the services of a doctor. I would also wager that during treatment you were grateful for the doctor’s knowledge regarding your illness or medical needs. That gratitude stems from understanding that these individuals have amassed a great amount of knowledge and the fact that their pursuit of this knowledge has benefited you. The Victorians, on the other hand, did not hold reverence for the medical profession.
During the 19th century, a time of mass improvements within the medical field, the average person both young and old, distrusted the medical establishment with fervor. Gone were the days of the four humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm), but that didn’t mean the end of superstition and poor health practices.
Physician vs. surgeon
In Victorian times there were two distinct classes of doctor: the physician and the surgeon. A physician was a medical professional with a somewhat limited understanding of anatomy. Their main purpose was the diagnosis of illness and the prescription of various tonics. Physicians were seen by the average person as a more upper-class position, but that did not mean automatic respect. Physicians spent most of their days with illness and disease, which made their profession far less desirable. Despite society’s need for them they did not enjoy a robust salary nor were they welcome in all corners of society. This changed closer to the end of the century but before then physicians were not praised or revered by any means.
Surgeons were even worse off. Working in surgery meant getting your hands dirty. Unlike physicians, surgeons did the nitty-gritty of medical work, and the Victorian classes viewed this as labour. Before the time of gloves, surgeons often wore the mess of their trade as they traveled from patient to patient. Surgical uniforms stained with the evidence of prior surgeries were worn with honour, a tribute to the wearers experience at the surgical table. Handwashing as well was not widely practiced at this time, which contributed greatly to the spread of infection and in turn high rates of mortality.
In fact, until handwashing was proven as effective bacteria control, surgeons would move freely from morgue to labouring women without taking care to wash their hands. This practice has been proven to contribute greatly to infant and female mortality rates following childbirth. It was the experiments of Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister in the 1860s that convinced the medical establishment that germs could be abated and even eradicated if proper instrument washing and heat application techniques were used. These discoveries have saved many lives and changed medical practices irrevocably. (Photo taken by Tracy Ward: This case of obstetric tools used in the mid-18th century at Guy’s and St. Thomas Hospitals in London, England is currently on display at the Old Operating Theatre Museum.)
Women and their doctors
Despite advances in cell theory and anaesthetic development, there remained a huge gap in medical care available to women. Prior to 1850 all doctors were male and none were permitted to touch their female patients unless absolutely necessary. This applied not only to treatment but also research. Such moral barriers halted advancements in childbirth techniques and menopause treatments. So much of the female body remained a mystery that when locomotive engines were invented and installed throughout England, women were advised not to travel on them because of suspicion their uteruses could not handle the high rate of speed!
The first medical college for women was established in 1850 in Pennsylvania, US. It was 1870 before Edinburgh University in Scotland began allowing women to attend anatomy classes, but even then they wouldn’t permit any of the women to gain medical licenses until 1876. The introduction of women in medicine brought about swift change in how women’s health was studied and treated, which paved the way for advancements in fertility health.
Forensic police work
Prior to the 1800s formal police departments were rare both in North America and across the pond. A spike in crime rates in London in the 1820s highlighted the need for a unified police force to service the boroughs outside the City of London. This need paved the way for the creation of The Metropolitan Police, or more famously Scotland Yard (which was really the name of their building). By the mid-19th century an interesting partnership between surgeons and detectives had emerged. It had become apparent that the bodies of the dead could give many clues to the method of their demise through close observation both outside and in.
Post mortems were nothing new. The ancient Greeks had been studying the bodies of the dead, utilizing the Y shaped incision, long before the invention of forensic science. The practice of autopsies, which means “to see for one self,” fell out of vogue for a number of centuries due to strong Christian views regarding the afterlife. Medical schools were finally permitted to study the dead in the 17th century. Their cadavers were often procured via questionable means before strict laws were introduced in 1834 (England).
Using a highly skilled surgeon with an observer’s eye and a nose for clues, detectives in the 19th century soon realized how invaluable the right doctor could be. Forensic investigations were still limited though. Fingerprinting was at least half a century away, and DNA was more science fiction than proven fact. However the Victorian scientist knew a great deal about chemical reactions and the construct of anatomy. The quintessential text, Grey’s Anatomy, was first published in 1854 and is still used today. The second half of the century saw doctors relying less on superstition as many embraced the scientific method of trial and error and later the power of deduction.
The bulk of advancement within the medical field can be attributed to the Victorian scientists and doctors who often challenged long held, erroneous beliefs and ushered in a new era of scientific advancement. Were it not for the experiments of Pasteur and Lister, we’d view surgery as a definitive death sentence. I also have no doubt that countless murders would remain unsolved. So, this begs the question, have you thanked a Victorian surgeon today?
*****
A big thanks to Tracy Ward. She’ll give away an autographed trade paperback copy of the first book of her series, Chorus of the Dead, to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available in North America, including Hawaii and Alaska.
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
Kaye George has won a copy of Sword of the Gladiatrix by Faith Justice. Congrats to Kaye George!
Thanks to Faith Justice for showing us the historicity of women gladiators. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
Relevant History welcomes Faith L. Justice, who writes award-winning fiction and articles in Brooklyn, New York. Her work appeared in such publications as Salon.com, Writer’s Digest, and The Copperfield Review. She is a frequent contributor to Strange Horizons and Associate Editor for Space and Time Magazine. For fun, she likes to dig in the dirt—her garden and various archaeological sites. To learn more about Faith’s books, check out her web site and blog. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.
*****
Yes, really! Whenever I pitched Sword of the Gladiatrix as my “lesbian gladiator novel,” I encountered raised eyebrows and skeptical snorts. The first question everyone asked: “Were there really lesbian gladiators?” My answer: “Of course!” We know there were female gladiators fighting in arenas for several centuries. Some had to be lesbian.
What really surprised people was the fact of female gladiators. They rarely appear in popular culture. Despite the popularity of “Xena Warrior Princess” and the myths of the Amazons, female gladiators don’t come to mind in the media-soaked imaginings of brutal, bloody, gladiatorial games. Women warriors? Maybe. Women gladiators? No. Yet they are there in grave markers, classical literature, laws, and art. All you have to do is look.
The Writers
One organizer in Ostia brags on his tombstone that he was the first person to put women in the arena as fighters. Tacitus in his Annals mentions that Emperor Nero regularly had female gladiators in his shows. Suetonius tells us in his Life of Domitian that the Emperor once staged a performance at night where women fought other women by torchlight. Martial in his description of the entertainments in the Flavian Arena (the Coliseum) compared the women’s feats to those of Hercules.
These women fighters weren’t all captives, slaves, or from the lower classes. Juvenal in his Satires mocks women from the senatorial class who chose to join the gladiatorial ranks: “…and look how their little heads strain under such weighty helmets and how thick bandages of coarse bark support their knees.” Dio Cassius wrote of Nero, “There was another exhibition that was at once most disgraceful and most shocking, when men and women not only of the equestrian but even of the senatorial order appeared as performers in the orchestra, in the Circus, and in the hunting-theatre, like those who are held in lowest esteem…they drove horses, killed wild beasts, and fought as gladiators, some willingly and some sore against their will.”
The Lawyers
Some of the strongest evidence we have of female gladiators is in the law—recruiting and fighting women was banned, not once, not twice, but three times! Augustus, the first emperor, implemented lots of laws restricting women. Among them, in AD 11, he decreed that freeborn females under the age of twenty were forbidden from appearing on the stage or in the arena. In AD 19, he extended that to prohibit “gladiatorial recruitment of daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters of senators or of knights, under the age of twenty.” In 200, Emperor Septimus Severus banned single combat by women in the arena because of “recrudescence among some upper-class women, and the raillery this provoked among the audience.” These prohibitions probably made the fights all the more popular, human nature being what it is.
The Artists
Although we have no mosaics showing female gladiators, we do have a couple of art depictions: a bronze statue of a woman in gladiatorial dress and a stone relief found in Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum, Turkey) showing two women equipped as gladiators and fighting without helmets. The Greek inscription on the stone relief says Amazon and Achillia (obviously stage names) fought bravely. I saw this piece in the British Museum and the image of those two women haunted me. They were real women who lived and died centuries ago. Who were they? Where did they come from? How did they feel about their lives? That’s when I decided to tell their story. Well, not their story—no one knows their background or fates. I had to create my own characters.
One of the non-fiction authors I consulted felt Nero encouraged the expansion of women in the games, so I looked closely at his reign and found two remarkable events that happened, in the same time frame, at opposite ends of the Empire: an expedition to Kush and the British revolt. Both involved cultures where women were valued as more equal partners in life and government than in Rome, and both had powerful queens who defied Roman power—one unsuccessfully in battle, one successfully with guile. These cultures provided plausibly strong (both in body and character) female protagonists. I created Afra and Cinnia to stand in for those two women carved on the stone. I hope you enjoy their story in Sword of the Gladiatrix.
*****
A big thanks to Faith Justice. She’ll give away a copy of Sword of the Gladiatrix to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available worldwide. (A winner in the US or Canada may choose between an ebook or trade paperback.)
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
Warren Bull has won a copy each of Nobody Gets the Girl and Burn Baby Burn by James Maxey. Congrats to Warren Bull!
Thanks to James Maxey for showing us the ancient, historical roots of superheroes. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History last week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
Relevant History welcomes 2015 Piedmont Laureate James Maxey, whose mother warned him that reading all those comic books would warp his mind. She was right. Now an adult who can’t stop daydreaming, James is unsuited for decent work and ekes out a pittance writing down his demented fantasies, including the science fiction/fantasy hybrid of the Bitterwood series, superhero novels like Nobody Gets the Girl, the secondary world fantasy of the Dragon Apocalypse series, and the steam-punk visions of Bad Wizard. James lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina with his lovely and patient wife Cheryl and too many cats. To learn more about James and his books, check out his web site and Piedmont Laureate blog.
*****
Since Superman’s debut in 1938, superheroes have been an enduring fixture of pop culture. Superman started with a modest trio of powers, being fast, tough, and strong. Soon, his powers expanded, with flight, x-ray vision, and even super-breath. Some superheroes cloned these, like Captain Marvel. Others tried to carve out a niche. Plastic Man could change into anything, as long as it was red, yellow, and pink. Green Lantern had a magic ring that shot green flame. Doll Man could shrink to only six inches tall. By the 1960s, writers had to stretch to find new powers. Bouncing Boy turned into a large ball. Spiderman shot webs and clung to ceilings. This summer, we’ll get a film featuring Ant-Man, who fights crime on ant-back.
Tales of supermen can be found in some of the earliest myths of mankind. Gilgamesh, Samson, and Achilles had their tales written, but countless heroes preceded them in oral traditions. Cave drawings dating to 13,000 BC depict human/animal hybrids. Oral traditions in Stone Age cultures that have endured until modern times, such as the Maori, feature tales of magically powerful heroes. Even American folklore has stories of Abe Lincoln’s almost superhuman strength.
Why do these stories persist?
Evolution should leave us with an instinctive sense of our physical limits. Most of us would hop off a two-foot wall without thinking about it. Few of us would jump from a twenty-foot wall. We don’t expect the real humans we encounter to jump a mile into the sky, or lift a dumpster, or shrug off bullets.
My theory is that we owe our interest in these stories to another gift of evolution: we’ve evolved to be excellent at recognizing patterns. This is a powerful tool for a hunter-gatherer. It makes us able to spot game trails, and lets us know that when we find one type of flower in an area, we can start digging around for edible roots. But, it also left us looking for patterns of larger, more impressive events in the natural world. What explains the thunder and lightning? Why does the ground sometimes shake and belch flame? Our longing to see patterns left us ill-prepared to settle for the answer that, sometimes, these things just happen. Certainly, there must be something we’re doing that causes the thunder. Is it because I stole that gourd from my neighbor’s garden? Is it because my child was disrespectful of his grandfather? Perhaps it’s a warning of a coming attack from the tribe on the other side of the ridge.
Again and again, our ancestors found enough seemingly meaningful patterns that they discerned intelligence behind these mysterious events. Given our ability to see faces in something as simple as a colon followed by an end parenthesis, we couldn’t help but notice the faces in the clouds, in the rocks of the mountain, or on the moon. In culture after cultures, we gave names to the personalities controlling these forces of nature—Zeus, Thor, Ra—and gave them human shapes in our minds. We might seldom have caught a glimpse of them directly, but we saw all the signs that they were there.
Protection and punishment
We also knew, almost universally, that they were deeply concerned with our actions. We could make them angry by being unfaithful to our mates, or please them by offering up lambs and chickens. Behave well, and the powerful beings would protect us. Transgress, and punishment would surely follow.
This obsession with protection and punishment is, of course, the other thing Superman borrowed from his demigod predecessors. From his first adventure, he was a champion of the helpless, freeing an innocent woman from death row, then roughing up a wife-beater. Bank robbers fell before his fists, but he wasn’t above roughing up crooked industrialists or slapping around a corrupt politician. He was, perhaps, a bully, treating every problem he encountered as something he could solve with a hard enough punch. But, he was our bully. He was on our side.
In retrospect, Superman’s early adventures look hopelessly naïve. You can’t roughhouse a governor into granting a pardon and expect it to end well for anyone. Confessions gained by holding people by their ankles off the corners of tall buildings don’t hold up well in court, nor does the testimony of a man wearing colorful underwear who refuses to reveal his real name. But, that’s the cynical adult in me who shakes his head at the very idea of Superman.
But when I was a child? I slept a little better with a Superman poster on my wall. He was evidence to my young mind that there was someone big and strong looking out for the little guy. All was right with the world. I’m glad there’s still part of me that hasn’t let go of Superman.
*****
A big thanks to James Maxey. He’ll give away a trade paperback copy of Nobody Gets the Girl and Burn Baby Burn to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the U.S. only. (corrected)
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
Linda Price has won a copy of Patriots, Redcoats & Spies by Robert Skead. Congrats to Linda Price!
Thanks to Robert Skead for discussing one of George Washington’s greatest weapons against the redcoats. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
The monk in the middle of this picture is Geshe Sangpo, a Tibetan-born Buddhist, taking his oath of American citizenship in Raleigh, North Carolina. When he was a boy, he fled the repression in his homeland and made the iconic but arduous crossing of the Himalayas by foot into Nepal so he could pursue his calling as a monk—not unlike the Dalai Lama’s own journey. Until May 2015, when he became an American citizen, Geshe Sangpo was essentially a man without a country. However from now on, every Fourth of July will have special meaning for him.
What would you do for liberty? Would you leave family members behind and walk hundreds of miles in rugged terrain with little food? That’s what Geshe Sangpo did. At some point today, while you’re enjoying your holiday feast, the company of friends and family, and a fireworks display, pause a moment to think about all the people worldwide who are living in repressive regimes. And give thanks for the freedom you have.
I’m selling and signing my books in person today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Joel Lane Museum House’s annual Fourth of July celebration. I’m also an online guest in the following spots. Stop by and say hello:
Happy Fourth of July!
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
