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As someone who knows a bit about history, there are a few things that most historical fiction (pro or fan) gets wrong ALL THE TIME, and it really drives me batty. So I will be writing a few primers about basic details that people get wrong a lot, on an irregular basis. It will not be a systematic "everything you need to know" basis, but rather "these are the things that bug me the most." Unless otherwise specified, all these primers will refer to European and European-American culture and history. (So, for example, your standard Regency AU.)
My first primer was on Corsets and Undergarments.
Today we're going to talk about class, titles, and formal modes of address!
You've all read this scene. It's set in a different time period with really significant class differences. Our Hero is a noble/really rich, and talking with a servant/lower class person, and the servant uses their rank or title, and Our Hero feels uncomfortable! It's so stuffy and formal and weird! And so they tell the servant/lower class person to just call them by their first name. This is how you know that they are Egalitarian and therefore Good. (Often the villain, if there is one, is very insistent on maintaining the visible elements of the class structure.) And when the Good Egalitarian Aristocrat/Rich Person tells the Low Class Person to call them by their first name and treat them like they're friends and equals, the Low Class Person is happy with this and they become fast friends.
This is what we call "projecting modern views on history."
Here's the thing. Regardless of what you actually called people, class differences were a very real thing with very real consequences. I mean, this is still the case today, but it was WAY more true then. For example, today we respect the "self made man" who was born in poverty and rose to wealth/power through hard work and dedication. But throughout most of history, that has been discouraged. God created you in the class you were supposed to be in. Rising above your station (whether through marriage or work) was a bad thing, not a good one. They believed that people were naturally fitted to be whatever class they were born into. And almost everyone, rich or poor alike, resented or were suspicious of people who crossed class boundaries too much. Staying in your own class was the right, proper, and good thing to do. And there were infinite gradations of class and rank, based on a whole bunch of things.
This stratification of society had a huge impact on a lot of things. The way they saw society was one, but things like who could wear what, how you addressed people in your own social sphere, those above you, and those below you. What kind of education you got, and what you could do with it. All sorts of things. And while a few of those boundaries were legally enforced, most of them were socially enforced, i.e. you got ostracized if you didn't play by the right rules. This is not to say that friendships across class never happened, or that people never climbed socially, but rather that it was the exception, not the rule, and that it didn't make all those class issues go away.
You and I might think the whole thing is messed up, but to someone who grew up in that kind of atmosphere, not only is it normal, but their basic underlying assumption is that it's right and good and the way the world should be. This is true of good people, too, people who genuinely believe in fairness and justice and everyone being well-treated. Their view of fairness would be colored by their assumption that the class system was good and normal, it just needed to be humanely applied. And the higher you were up the class ladder, the more true this would be. As for people at the bottom of the ladder, they often didn't like their circumstances, but this usually manifested as "I wish I could climb the social ladder/had more opportunities," not "we should completely take apart the social system to make it more egalitarian so that everybody would benefit."
If you or I were suddenly sent back in time to the 1800s in England and everybody started calling us "Lady/Lord _____," and curtsying all the time, we would be seriously weirded out. It would be strange, and the whole idea of the class system would really bug us. BUT. If someone from that era came forward, they would probably find our modern egalitarian notions and first-name culture to be just as weird and strange and uncomfortable. So, the chances of someone of that era being uncomfortable with using titles and respectful forms of address are pretty small. (Unless the character used to be a servant who married a noble and thus climbed a lot of ranks in one fell swoop, in which case their problem would still probably not be with the very notion of social class and rank, but rather with their newfound place in that schema.)
But let's assume that, for some reason, you do have a noble in a Regency AU or whatever who wants his low-class associates to call him by his first name. Would those low-class associates be glad of it, or would they be uncomfortable? Fandom often assumes glad. But realistically, most of them would have been uncomfortable.
Look at it this way. Ever had a boss that wanted to be your friend? First name basis, curious about your personal life, all the trimmings? Yeah. Sometimes that's nice, but a lot of times it's really uncomfortable. Because they're still your boss. They still have a lot of power over you. And pretending that you're equals and just friends doesn't change that. But say you go along with it, and you pal around with them, and one day you're relaxed and not watching your mouth and you say what you really think about something they disagree on, and it offends them. And then you're screwed, because they have all this power and they can use it against you so easily, sometimes without even realizing that's what they're doing. They're the ones who broke the rules of hierarchy, but you're the one who'll get punished for it. Because they have more power than you, and being on a first name basis talking about your significant others didn't change that. You may think your boss has too much power and there should be better protections for employees against retaliation. But, without those better protections, you will probably choose to stick to more formal relations as much as you can out of self-preservation, at least until you know the boss well enough to know you can trust them not to be a dick with their power if you say something they don't like.
The class system and all its rules was very confining, especially for people on the bottom end. But following its rules also gave them some protection from the caprices of those above them. Not much, but better than nothing. Which is why most people on the bottom end of society preferred and did their bit to enforce those rules even if they thought them unfair. Until you get into a time and place with mass movements of workers uniting for better conditions and the like, and hence the possibility of retaliation diminishing, you are not going to get many poor/low class people going "oh, my Lord/Lady/Employer/Rich person wants to be on a first name basis, awesome!"
In fact, in a society with a rigid class system it is entirely possible (probable!) for a rich guy/noble wanting to cross class boundaries being a sign that he is a villain. Because he already has lots of power that he can use in entirely unethical ways, and the way the class system works, encouraging people below him to cross class boundaries makes it easier to abuse them.
Now, if you want to completely ignore all this and have your Regency AU just be modern people in weird clothes, that's cool. But if you actually want it to matter that they're in the past for anything more than "oh, fancy parties, cool," please keep this in mind.
My first primer was on Corsets and Undergarments.
Today we're going to talk about class, titles, and formal modes of address!
You've all read this scene. It's set in a different time period with really significant class differences. Our Hero is a noble/really rich, and talking with a servant/lower class person, and the servant uses their rank or title, and Our Hero feels uncomfortable! It's so stuffy and formal and weird! And so they tell the servant/lower class person to just call them by their first name. This is how you know that they are Egalitarian and therefore Good. (Often the villain, if there is one, is very insistent on maintaining the visible elements of the class structure.) And when the Good Egalitarian Aristocrat/Rich Person tells the Low Class Person to call them by their first name and treat them like they're friends and equals, the Low Class Person is happy with this and they become fast friends.
This is what we call "projecting modern views on history."
Here's the thing. Regardless of what you actually called people, class differences were a very real thing with very real consequences. I mean, this is still the case today, but it was WAY more true then. For example, today we respect the "self made man" who was born in poverty and rose to wealth/power through hard work and dedication. But throughout most of history, that has been discouraged. God created you in the class you were supposed to be in. Rising above your station (whether through marriage or work) was a bad thing, not a good one. They believed that people were naturally fitted to be whatever class they were born into. And almost everyone, rich or poor alike, resented or were suspicious of people who crossed class boundaries too much. Staying in your own class was the right, proper, and good thing to do. And there were infinite gradations of class and rank, based on a whole bunch of things.
This stratification of society had a huge impact on a lot of things. The way they saw society was one, but things like who could wear what, how you addressed people in your own social sphere, those above you, and those below you. What kind of education you got, and what you could do with it. All sorts of things. And while a few of those boundaries were legally enforced, most of them were socially enforced, i.e. you got ostracized if you didn't play by the right rules. This is not to say that friendships across class never happened, or that people never climbed socially, but rather that it was the exception, not the rule, and that it didn't make all those class issues go away.
You and I might think the whole thing is messed up, but to someone who grew up in that kind of atmosphere, not only is it normal, but their basic underlying assumption is that it's right and good and the way the world should be. This is true of good people, too, people who genuinely believe in fairness and justice and everyone being well-treated. Their view of fairness would be colored by their assumption that the class system was good and normal, it just needed to be humanely applied. And the higher you were up the class ladder, the more true this would be. As for people at the bottom of the ladder, they often didn't like their circumstances, but this usually manifested as "I wish I could climb the social ladder/had more opportunities," not "we should completely take apart the social system to make it more egalitarian so that everybody would benefit."
If you or I were suddenly sent back in time to the 1800s in England and everybody started calling us "Lady/Lord _____," and curtsying all the time, we would be seriously weirded out. It would be strange, and the whole idea of the class system would really bug us. BUT. If someone from that era came forward, they would probably find our modern egalitarian notions and first-name culture to be just as weird and strange and uncomfortable. So, the chances of someone of that era being uncomfortable with using titles and respectful forms of address are pretty small. (Unless the character used to be a servant who married a noble and thus climbed a lot of ranks in one fell swoop, in which case their problem would still probably not be with the very notion of social class and rank, but rather with their newfound place in that schema.)
But let's assume that, for some reason, you do have a noble in a Regency AU or whatever who wants his low-class associates to call him by his first name. Would those low-class associates be glad of it, or would they be uncomfortable? Fandom often assumes glad. But realistically, most of them would have been uncomfortable.
Look at it this way. Ever had a boss that wanted to be your friend? First name basis, curious about your personal life, all the trimmings? Yeah. Sometimes that's nice, but a lot of times it's really uncomfortable. Because they're still your boss. They still have a lot of power over you. And pretending that you're equals and just friends doesn't change that. But say you go along with it, and you pal around with them, and one day you're relaxed and not watching your mouth and you say what you really think about something they disagree on, and it offends them. And then you're screwed, because they have all this power and they can use it against you so easily, sometimes without even realizing that's what they're doing. They're the ones who broke the rules of hierarchy, but you're the one who'll get punished for it. Because they have more power than you, and being on a first name basis talking about your significant others didn't change that. You may think your boss has too much power and there should be better protections for employees against retaliation. But, without those better protections, you will probably choose to stick to more formal relations as much as you can out of self-preservation, at least until you know the boss well enough to know you can trust them not to be a dick with their power if you say something they don't like.
The class system and all its rules was very confining, especially for people on the bottom end. But following its rules also gave them some protection from the caprices of those above them. Not much, but better than nothing. Which is why most people on the bottom end of society preferred and did their bit to enforce those rules even if they thought them unfair. Until you get into a time and place with mass movements of workers uniting for better conditions and the like, and hence the possibility of retaliation diminishing, you are not going to get many poor/low class people going "oh, my Lord/Lady/Employer/Rich person wants to be on a first name basis, awesome!"
In fact, in a society with a rigid class system it is entirely possible (probable!) for a rich guy/noble wanting to cross class boundaries being a sign that he is a villain. Because he already has lots of power that he can use in entirely unethical ways, and the way the class system works, encouraging people below him to cross class boundaries makes it easier to abuse them.
Now, if you want to completely ignore all this and have your Regency AU just be modern people in weird clothes, that's cool. But if you actually want it to matter that they're in the past for anything more than "oh, fancy parties, cool," please keep this in mind.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 02:18 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 03:23 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 03:41 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 09:50 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-25 12:08 am (UTC)From:But for fiction, yeah. One of the things with "Emma" is that Emma believes that class boundaries matter less than her opinions about people -- and she's wrong, PAINFULLY wrong, BRUTALLY wrong, and hurts a lot of people along the way.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 09:48 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 11:30 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-25 12:11 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-25 12:59 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-30 09:38 pm (UTC)From:also in the fiction category; the buccaneers by edith wharton deals with the subject of girls from "new money" families in the US going to england to get men with titles.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 05:38 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 09:52 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 06:25 am (UTC)From:I think I see it less often with protagonists themselves (or perhaps I make more allowances for protagonists!) than with the heroine's Good Egalitarian Aristocrat mentor. And 'Sue' makes for a great example, because generally anyone with any name longer than a syllable will insist not only on their given name but a nickname, too. (IRL, of course, using a nickname would be even more incredibly rude than using their name at all.)
I would add that then-contemporary views of the class structure could be more complex than uncritical acceptance; e.g., it's one of the many things Mary Wollstonecraft targets in her works, and that in particular was popular in left-wing circles—it's why there was so much sympathy for the French Revolution among the sort of progressive literati in England). In a more restrained way, Elizabeth navigates it in P&P: she's equally appalled by Caroline suggesting Wickham's low birth has any bearing on his character, and by Mr Collins presuming to speak to a social superior.
In fact, in a society with a rigid class system it is entirely possible (probable!) for a rich guy/noble wanting to cross class boundaries being a sign that he is a villain. Because he already has lots of power that he can use in entirely unethical ways, and the way the class system works, encouraging people below him to cross class boundaries makes it easier to abuse them.
This is an excellent point. It's probably strong to term Henry Crawford a villain, but that does underline a lot of his interactions with the Prices. We even get a faint version with Isabella Thorpe, whose immediate insistence on being 'Isabella' and 'Catherine' is one of the many dubious things about her.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-24 09:59 pm (UTC)From:Nicknames! Gah! It's like when I read a Captain America fic where Steve, just out of the ice, is relieved to get into some jeans because they're more comfortable. And I just look at it with disbelief at the sheer ignorance betrayed by that detail. We are more comfortable in jeans and nicknames; that can't be said of our grandparents, even, much less any earlier generations!
no subject
Date: 2016-09-30 09:49 pm (UTC)From:it was harder because it was modern people trying to fill those roles & not really understanding them.