Some years ago, I visited the Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, India. It’s an impressive building, centuries old, set on the top of a hill. The main courtyard was where the business transactions, legal disputes and political strategy of the region took place. This area, we were told by our guide, was restricted to men. The women, who had no place in politics, lived in the rooms above the courtyard, in the harem, away from the decision making.
When we visited those upper rooms later, I wandered away from the guide and peeped through the windows down to the place of power. From below, the stone lattice work of the harem windows had rendered the women invisible. But from the harem itself, I had a perfect view of the courtyard. It was very easy to hear as well as see what was going on.
It struck me that the women who were officially excluded were, in fact, secret participants to everything that happened below – always present and aware of what was going on and, perhaps, able to influence events thanks to what they had learned from their hidden vantage point.
Since then, I have always asked myself: ‘Where are the women?’ It is very easy to overlook women in historical accounts of important events, where men make decisions and hold the power. We readily assume that the women were off-stage, and therefore that they knew nothing and had little to contribute. This is a line of thinking that needs some challenging. It needs challenging in historical fiction too.
It’s been wonderful to see A Thousand Blows on TV, bringing the women of the Forty Elephants into view. Not much has been written about these incredible, terrifying South London thieves, but I read everything I could lay my hands on – books about the London underworld and criminal court accounts in newspapers – when researching for my novel, The Dazzle of the Light, which highlights the experiences of two very different women in the aftermath of the First World War.
Mid-eighteenth-century history gets a bad press from anyone forced to study the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution at school, but it’s a period rich with detail and interest once you look beyond the spinning jenny and patterns of crop rotation. My research for the Lizzie Hardwicke novels has taken me into the history of sex work, Dan Cruickshank’s book, The Secret History of Georgian London was a great resource, as was Hallie Rubenhold’s Covent Garden Ladies – which lay behind another TV series, Harlots. I’ve also read about gamblers, shopkeepers, church architecture, theatre design, food and clothing. What women wore, for example, is significant to how they moved. That sounds obvious when you think about it, but it’s crucial to remember when your protagonist needs to travel at speed. I’ve discovered some wonderful details along the way that I’ve tried to incorporate: how women curled their hair, the existence of second-hand shops (Vinted for the 1750s?), how stage actresses relied on wealthy patrons and lovers as much as raw talent, how women were employed in trades like tavern-keeping or bookbinding, for example.
From my research, I’ve tried to bring out women’s real lives, enabling them, I hope, to be real people, and not simply wives and lovers of the men who got to do the stuff in the public square – or solve the crimes.
The newest instalment of the Lizzie Hardwicke Series A Viper in the Nest is available for pre-order here.