I really like what you have to say here. I'm somewhere between you and Em, I like the wonder side of things most, but I need to have some details sorted to feel comfortable -- hence the two weeks to find out how far a mediaeval army could move in a day if their food and support was coming by land, vs coming by water ;-)
When the question of whether it is possible for a modern reader to find sympathy with someone who has blatantly racist or sexist views was brought up during a later panel--one actually on inequalities in race and gender--the unanimous response was a resounding no, we cannot find them sympathetic. If we sympathize with these people it implies that we are sympathizing with their ideals, which are backward to our way of thinking.
I think that's a ridiculous argument, and one that fails real-world tests. All of us know someone in our real lives who is dodgy, but we love them anyway. Most of my family is so politically correct it hurts, but my maternal grandfather was constantly mistrustful of any Japanese person over the age of 50, having travelled through South-East Asia in the years immediately following WWII and meeting many victims of the occupying Japanese. He didn't like the Germans, either, after having RAF-fed his way through WWII in Europe. And while I never sympathised with his blanket racism, I did sympathise with him, as his experiences were scarring.
It's the same with reading Victorian literature. I am always staggered by people who accuse Arthur Conan Doyle of being a vile racist, because he is actually very good by the standards of the time, and is similarly quite decent with women. Martin Amis's attitudes to women are far more shocking, as he is about the same age as my Mum and she was a serious Feminist and Lesbian Activist and I spent my childhood at very loud protests in which she and women like her yelled and threw things and set fire to things when needed, so how he can see women in the way he does when he grew up in a world she was in -- makes no sense! ACD grew up in a different world, in which women activists wore corsets and politely wrote letters setting out why they should have the vote far more often than they threw themselves in front of racehorses.
That sympathy is not an endorsement of attitudes that today would be reprehensible, rather, it's an understanding of the fact that people and societies change. To think otherwise is in fact an act of cultural imperialism, and makes me worry how those people look at other cultures in our contemporary world.
It's the way things could have been if the world were moved 15 degrees to the left on a summer day in 1852.
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Date: 2010-09-09 11:48 am (UTC)I think that's a ridiculous argument, and one that fails real-world tests. All of us know someone in our real lives who is dodgy, but we love them anyway. Most of my family is so politically correct it hurts, but my maternal grandfather was constantly mistrustful of any Japanese person over the age of 50, having travelled through South-East Asia in the years immediately following WWII and meeting many victims of the occupying Japanese. He didn't like the Germans, either, after having RAF-fed his way through WWII in Europe. And while I never sympathised with his blanket racism, I did sympathise with him, as his experiences were scarring.
It's the same with reading Victorian literature. I am always staggered by people who accuse Arthur Conan Doyle of being a vile racist, because he is actually very good by the standards of the time, and is similarly quite decent with women. Martin Amis's attitudes to women are far more shocking, as he is about the same age as my Mum and she was a serious Feminist and Lesbian Activist and I spent my childhood at very loud protests in which she and women like her yelled and threw things and set fire to things when needed, so how he can see women in the way he does when he grew up in a world she was in -- makes no sense! ACD grew up in a different world, in which women activists wore corsets and politely wrote letters setting out why they should have the vote far more often than they threw themselves in front of racehorses.
That sympathy is not an endorsement of attitudes that today would be reprehensible, rather, it's an understanding of the fact that people and societies change. To think otherwise is in fact an act of cultural imperialism, and makes me worry how those people look at other cultures in our contemporary world.
Love that wording!