“But It’s Historically Accurate:” Why This Argument Doesn’t Work

I do a lot of critique for historical fiction, but most prominently, for Outlander and Bridgerton. Every time I bring up an issue with the books or series for either of these shows (and I really am not exaggerating, I would be shocked to find any of my posts with criticism of either that didn’t have this in the comments), someone or a lot of someones come in with:

“But it’s historically accurate!”

This is an argument that gets put up a lot, and it doesn't work. Here's why.

First off, it isn't the inclusion of that story beat that’s the issue. Usually. Having a character rape his wife is totally something that can happen in a book, and it could be accurate to the times. Where we run into trouble is when that behavior is depicted as good or romantic or OK, as it is with Jamie when Claire asks him to stop in the first book of Outlander, and he doesn’t. He pushes harder, in fact sexually assaulting her since she’s already stated that she wants him to stop.

That isn’t dissected or questioned. In fact, it’s portrayed as arousing. Claire even says that the next time they have sex it is a “continuation of the lesson so brutally begun the night before. Gentle he would be, denied he would not.” It is an explicit threat that Claire knows he would and could and will resort to violent means if he doesn’t get what he wants, ie. sex. Gaining sex through threat, even if both parties have an orgasm, is not ok, and it never was. Portraying it as romantic or sexy is flat out dangerous. It further cements in the heads of everyone who reads it that that kind of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and manipulation is all right. Sexy, even. Especially if the guy is hot.

And if you think that media isn’t affecting people, that it isn’t convincing them to think like that, or encouraging them not to question it when it’s presented, I encourage you to look at the comment section of any thread about my next example.

Daphne rapes Simon in Bridgerton. I go more in depth about this in my post “Call a Rape a Rape,” so I’m not going to hash out again why this is so clearly the case. The crux is that he does not consent (in the book, he can’t, and in the show, he even tells her “wait.” Twice), and yet, it is completely glossed over. There is no moment of outrage from Simon that she would use his body, no shock or repercussion for him or for her that she violated him. All anyone is worried about is Daphne’s feelings over being lied to, and the Duke’s fears and anger that she might have gotten pregnant. It furthers the idea that men aren’t victims of rape and sexual abuse, that women aren’t perpetrators, and it is irresponsible to include it without any critical examination. The amount of people who don’t see this as a rape at all is the exact reason our media needs to be more responsible with it’s depictions of sexual assault and other difficult and important topics.

How does that relate to the historical accuracy thing? Well, the larger point is that accuracy isn’t the issue. Media doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and there’s more at stake here than just what people feel like putting on a page or on screen. There’s a social responsibility, which absolutely can and should be fulfilled. It can be while being historically accurate as well. What’s happening in Outlander, in particular, is actually the opposite of historical accuracy. It’s a misogynistic ideal masquerading as the truth.

The real truth is that even in the 1700s, women didn't feel good when they were raped, even if they had no way of getting out of it or didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it. We see that with women to this day, who haven’t or can’t acknowledge that what they went through was a rape. They blame themselves, or they don’t want to put a name on what they experienced. It’s terrifying and vulnerable. And that happens now, when we are actually making strides toward dismantling rape culture. But people are people, and they were back to the beginning of time. It’s irresponsible and foolish to portray survivors of sexual assault as somehow less affected by it simply because they existed in the past. Desensitized, perhaps. But the effects of rape, even when it was blamed on the woman, have been felt by every generation of women from the time we had autonomy. Animals don’t like it when you do something to them they don’t want — why would human beings be any different?

And yet, that’s the argument that I see. As though, because the prevailing culture viewed women as property, because of women’s internalization of that idea, somehow makes it all right to depict women as though they didn’t notice when their will was being stepped on. As though they didn’t care when they were violated. Even if they didn’t think they had a right to say no, I guarantee they noticed when they were forced to do something they didn’t want to.

The danger in including this in media, in addition to not portraying female characters as real human beings, is that we further this idea, that we teach women and men who consume this media in our modern times that because society has deemed something to be right, it therefore is.

Because Jamie is Claire’s husband, he has a right to her body, and that she would be fine with him ignoring her when she begs him to stop. That wasn’t any more right in 1743 than it is today, just because it was accepted. Are the rapes and murders of young women all right in Afghanistan because the Taliban believes they are right in doing so? Should we say that’s acceptable because the culture surrounding those young women says it’s all right? Absolutely not.

Because Daphne is a delicate girl, and big, strong men like Simon don’t get raped. All that, because it’s supposedly historically accurate? Well frankly, it isn’t even that. It’s a damaging and patriarchal idea that has seeped so deeply into our collective consciousness that we bring it into our media and allow it to continue.

Moreover, historical accuracy isn't enough of a reason to include something in a book anyway. It's not a textbook; there needs to be story, character, or thematic reasoning, as well as a fleshed out story around the situation that does justice to the trauma, voices, and perspectives of the person or persons involved. Directly related to that is the overuse of rape, especially in historical fiction. Was rape common? Absolutely. Just because it happened a lot back then doesn't mean you can exploit that so that something exciting can happen every few flips of the page.

Too often, the bodies — overwhelmingly of women and people of color — are used and brutalized with the casual need of “something” to happen. Writers and directors and producers want something exciting, and they again and again turn to rape, sexual assault, and sexual violence. It’s sensational, it’s dramatic, and it’s wrong to use it as such. In the exact same way that in far too many action films, the main male character loses his wife and/or children as the inciting incident, it reduces those “characters” as an excuse for violence.

Boy howdy, do we see both of those in Outlander. Jamie uttering “kill them all” after Claire is raped is supposed to be a height of badassery for him. She is used as an excuse to exert violence. Even when Claire doesn’t want one of the men killed, Jamie essentially says “tough” and kills him anyway. Because Jamie’s anger is more important than Claire’s perspective as the actual victim. Because an excuse for violence and a way for something exciting to happen is almost always the point of rape, especially in a series that has the sexual assault counts in the dozens. The point of having Claire raped, again, is…what? That it’s dangerous to be a woman in those times? Have we not proven that with Jenny’s rape? Claire’s first sexual assault by Black Jack Randall? Her second? Her sexual assault by the deserters? Her rape by the King? Mary Hawkins’s rape? Brianna’s rape?

Or is it something else? That there are bad people? Are there not a dozen other ways to depict that concept without exploiting a strong, female character to another bout of sexual assault? To show the variety of rape survivors and perpetrators? Great, that’s a worthy cause. Stop describing or depicting in horrifying detail the way it happens. Let us know it happened, but don’t display it and exploit it. Don’t depict a rape scene as some strange mix of rape and sex (looking at you, Geneva scene in both show and books). Honestly, I am sick to death of media that I love bringing in sexual assault just because they can’t think of another storyline. Try harder. I’m done with this.

Another aspect I want to draw attention to is that the media we’re discussing is not something that happened in the 1700s or 1800s. It's a work of fiction written, produced, created, quite recently. Therefore, modern ideas and standards don’t go out the window just because someone sets it in the past. If you set something in the Reconstruction Era American South and have a freed slave as a rapist and prowler out to steal and harm white women who is valiantly killed by the Ku Klux Klan, that is still a problematic stereotype that plays into dangerous ideas and fears that are still with us today. Just because it’s set back then doesn’t mean you’re A-Ok to use all the problematic, racist, sexist, and generally awful ideas of the time to tell your story, at least not without some examination or questioning of these ideas. Basically, it doesn’t give creators the right to be racist, sexist, homophobic, or further other problematic ideas simply because they’re writing something set in a time where those ideas were prominent.

Still more, we actually do hold actual historical figures accountable for behavior that was condoned then. Just because slavery was legal doesn't mean it's ever been right. We can take into consideration the time the person lived. Is it shocking that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves? Not really, considering the times. Does it make it all right that he did so? Of course not. Even his fellow founding father, George Washington, who owned slaves himself, took issue with the institution and ended up freeing his slaves. It was never right to do so, and people were saying it wasn’t right back to Aristophanes and before. People don’t get a free pass in the eyes of history simply because human rights were generally less acknowledged. No less can we do for fictional characters.

I’m certainly not asking characters to behave anachronistically, but for as long as there have been abuses, people have been speaking out against them. As we can see with George Washington in the example above. Where's the representation of that in these books, if historical accuracy is so important? For things like slavery, there are a few feeble attempts at paying lip service to the opposing opinion in Outlander. Claire’s lukewarm opposition is drowned out in favor of a romantic moment between Jamie and Claire. And still less effort is given to dismantling the problematic ideas of rape and sexual assault. Where are my Mary Wollstonecrafts? Where are the feminist protests back to the 3rd Century BCE when women came en masse to the Roman forum to fight for their rights?

There are many historical errors in the Outlander and Bridgerton books and shows that we readily excuse because it's a story. And that is perfectly acceptable. I’ll say again: they’re not textbooks. But the same people that happily excuse wolves and witch trials in 1743 Scotland or beautiful but wildly inaccurate costumes in Bridgerton are the ones that often turn around and excuse media that is racist and sexist because it's "historically accurate."

It’s not a concern for historical accuracy; It's just a way to justify the inclusion of regressive ideas.

I am not looking for whitewashing of history. Portray the rapes. Portray the horrors of slavery and racism. Portray the sexism keeping women down. But portray it well. Portray it carefully and with consideration to those who have experienced it. Portray it with diverse perspectives and voices that add to the conversation and dissection instead of just contributing to existing, problematic ideas. And if you’re exceptionally concerned with historical accuracy, make sure you include the voices of those who are going against the grain. They’ve always been there.

Growing as a society, developing our social consciousness, is hard. It is often vulnerable and scary. It means confronting our own, internal issues and often times admitting when we were wrong or thought about something in a way that we now disagree with or know better of. When I first read the scene between Jamie and Claire, when she cries out “Stop, please, you’re hurting me” and Jamie still brings her to orgasm, I found that incredibly sexy. I look at it now, realizing all the ways that it confirmed to me the same messages I was raised with, that I didn’t have a right to say no, to stop in the middle, that if you were sexually assaulted by a guy who was hot, it wasn’t as bad as if it was a guy who was ugly (thanks to my 8th Grade teacher for that lesson), I am horrified. My mind has broadened and changed with more information and maturity, and at times, that’s been hard. What’s coming will be hard, too, as I continue to stretch and try to grow.

I love historical fiction. I think it’s a beautiful and unique and powerful way to tell a story. As a writer myself, I would want to use things that happened in the past as a way to challenge readers to think deeper about our modern world, not to further problematic ideas still prevalent in our society today.

When we let these issues slide in our media, when we shrug our shoulders, it’s contributing to damaging ideas that are hurting us and the generations to come. I’m not saying every person needs to dedicate their every waking minute to fighting social justice issues in media, but when it comes in front of you, support it. Don’t shut down the voices of those who are fighting for it. And maybe, before you take to a comment section with vitriol to say “But it’s historically accurate!” take a second look at that idea. Or a third, or a fourth. Because nothing changes in a day, and we have a lot of work yet to do.