Harry Potter; or The 18th-Century in a Modern Cinema

As I mentioned last post, I'm rather busy at the moment and haven't had much time to go through my materials to put together a really theoretical post-- our next major topic to cover is going to be either "History and Memory" (one of my favorites!) or "Public History" (also really fun!) depending on how I feel once I sit down with my old papers/notes/articles/experiences.

But for now, I don't want to leave you without some historical fun, so here it is-- The Harry Potter midnight opening as an 18th-century playgoing experience. What? you think. It's a cinematic release. Cinema didn't exist in the 18th century. And the movie takes place in a very modern world despite the magical aspects. How is this at all 18th century?

In the 18th-century, audience members attended the theatre to see-and-be-seen. The lights remained lit through the entirety of the show, so wearing your best clothes, sitting in the best seats you could afford, and speaking with the best people you knew ensured your position in society. Whether an aristocrat in a box seat, an artisan who saved up for a seat in the pit, or a chimney sweep in the gallery, the theatre was about seeing and being seen. Additionally, like in the modern cinema (though not in the modern playhouse) food was allowed in the theatre. Thomas Jefferson paid for bowls of punch to be served in the pit with his friends, and Richard Cross, the prompter at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London, writes about actors being pelted with food from the rabble in the galleries-- or, alternately, not being pelted with food. And, though not exactly a sentimental age, in the 18th-century the plays made people really laugh and really cry. Men note in their diaries how this or that tragedy reduced them to tears; the idea of a stiff upper lip or stoic manliness had not entered into the collective mindset. Perhaps most alien to us, people talked during the show. Aristocrats often carried on with games of cards in their boxes during the mainpiece, leaving your seat to visit with friends during the performance was not unheard of, and the "gallery gods," as the poorer sort were known, dictated what they wanted to see on the stage. Often they were the fruit-throwers, they called for encores, or certain epilogues, and they cheered or jeered every actor on the stage. Audience members also shouted out well-timed jeers, praises, or heckles which could sometimes get as big a laugh as the actor onstage; sometimes the actor responded back, much like at a stand-up comedy show. Also, audience members knew the actors on stage-- if not personally, they had seen them perform any number of times live, before their eyes-- and they had seen most of the plays probably a dozen times. The idea that they had some kind of personal connection to the performances, actors, and characters permeated theatrical events. The theatre was a noisy, rowdy place compared with our ideas of quietly observing a show.

(Hogarth's print of an 18th-century audience)

So how does this connect to Harry Potter?

I'll grant you, the cinema aspect changes things a bit, and so does the sitting in the dark. In fact, there are 100 thousand differences-- this is the 21st-century after all, and that was the 18th. I'm not trying to say that I felt transported back to an 18th-century theatre because trust me, I know, and I didn't.

But overall, I think the Harry Potter midnight openings might be the closest approximation to experiencing what it felt like to sit in an 18th-century audience of anything else available today. Sure, there are recreated 17th and 18th century theatres that would give us an idea of what it looked like for the audience members, but we still retain our 21st-century sensibilities while attending those shows-- we respectfully, almost passively, watch the action on stage. We clap politely during the curtain call, perhaps giggle at funny bits, but otherwise we remain an orderly, quiet audience. This is especially true in movie theatres, where the experience is one of anonymity, entering with the theatre already rather darkened, sitting quietly munching popcorn, glaring angrily at the teenage girls carrying on a conversation in the middle of the film. Even the idea of dressing to the 9's in a theatre or cinema has disappeared; on Broadway jeans are now acceptable. Moreover, during most professional plays that we see we do not know the actors or the characters; even during most cinematic releases, even if we like a particular actor, we have only two hours in which to come to know a certain character. It's only after buying the DVD and watching the film ten more times that we really, really love the characters on screen.

But at the midnight opening of the 7th Harry Potter film, the entire audience knew the characters on the screen. We love Harry, Hermoine, and Ron, we hate/love Voldemort. We know what to expect from the story since we've read the books, we feel as if we know Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson personally; they grew up in front of us. Each of us feels some sort of personal connection to the movies because for most of us in that theatre, Harry Potter defined our childhood and young adulthood. I know I started reading the books at 11 years old-- the same age as Harry Potter in the 1st book-- and here I am at 23 excited to see the boy wizard I grew up with in his second-to-last film. But it's not just that we have a personal connection to the performance, it's that we flaunt it.

Even before the show starts, something is different. Instead of wearing normal jeans and a t-shirt, most of the audience members are dressed up. Some theatres even have costume contests. Here, the movie becomes not about seeing the performance, but also about observing your fellow audience members. Who has the best costume? The most creative? Who knows the books well enough to understand the Luna costume or the Tonks costume? And inside the theatre, groups of friends laugh and talk loudly before the show, popcorn and candy and soda abound. Every time the theatre manager (who knew most of us, actually, since I saw it in a very small town) entered to make an announcement the packed theatre erupted in cheers. Once the film started the cheering almost never stopped. We cheered the Warner Bros. logo, we cheered when Harry, Ron, and Hermoine all appeared on the screen together for the first time, we whimpered in sadness at the vaguely heartwrenching moments, we screamed at the top of our lungs in fear at the scary moments, we laughed uproariously at somewhat lame jokes (because it's George and Fred Weasley, and we love them and want to support them!). And, when a certain character which most people like died, at least half of the theatre cried audibly. A few people even shouted things at the screen (which did annoy other theatregoers, as it did in 18th-century theatres, if we can judge from personal letters and diary entries).

And can you imagine if the projector had broken or something? There would have been a riot (very 18th-century).

At the end of the night, I realized that going to see a play in a recreated playhouse would teach me much about the technical and practical aspects of theatricals in the 18th-century, but no modern audience would ever treat actors on stage with the same noisy, loud, and what we might consider 'disrespectful' attitude of an 18th-century audience. We don't allow plays to throw us into a passion-- how many people proudly claim that movies don't make them cry, or shamefully admit they do? But for some reason-- maybe the movie, the hour, the audience composition-- the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had just such an audience. They were loud, excited, passionate, and involved.

By positioning the Harry Potter opening in such a historical context, I felt that I, and all of us in that theatre, were part of a larger, ever-continuing human experience. While I don't recommend that we start playing cards during plays again, or walk across the stage to greet our friends, maybe every now and then letting ourselves be collectively taken over by a performance experience might be a good thing. What actor wouldn't appreciate an entire theatre crying over his character's death scene? What actor doesn't love to hear laughter and applause during his funniest moment? What audience member doesn't like to imagine that just for the night they are part of something larger than a solitary, passive moment?

(Photo from here)

What's in a Name?

I'm afraid I haven't had much time to put together a very theoretical or even informative post during the past weekend-- it was very busy and a little crazy-- so instead here is a post written purely for fun: names in the microfilm. Oh yes, I have seen some absolutely ridiculous names come up while going through all of these 18th-century Court Order Books, and everyday it seems that someone else has a name that makes me wonder what their parents were thinking. In some cases they just simply weren't, and in other cases, they had no idea how we here in the 21st-century might construe their child's name.

(Photo Found Here; our post titles are purely coincidental)

First of all, there are the first-name-last-name names. So far, I have come across Owen Owens, William Williams, and Alexander Alexander. Seriously? Who on earth thought this a good idea? Interestingly enough, lots of William Williams' and Alexander Alexanders' must have been running around colonial America, because two other men by those same names built one of the earliest colonial theatres for David Douglass (pardon me for bringing in my thesis).

Then there are the anachronisms. William Wallace I noticed right off. That name conjures up images of Mel Gibson in blue face paint, and when William Wallace's last will and testament came up in the court records, I felt sure he must have yelled "FREEDOM" as he died. Except that, this wasn't the William Wallace. He just happened to have the same name. But that's not so bad-- maybe his parents were just exhibiting some Scottish pride after the '15 or the '45, depending on when they came to America. (Note: the '15 and '45 refer to two major Jacobite uprisings in 1715 and 1745, both of which the English Whig government quelled, the latter of which the government quelled and then destroyed the Highland Scottish way of life... what was left of it, anyway, after nearly all of the clans were wiped out at the Battle of Culloden.)

But what about Charles Dickens? How could his parents have known? Or-- one of my favorites-- Barnabus Bailey. Barnum and Bailey, the circus, would not exist for another hundred years or so... but now poor Barnabus Bailey's name makes me think of a ringmaster, dancing elephants, and a bearded lady. And, one of the worst, though not exactly an anachronism-- a girl named Delina Devine. That just... sounds like a stripper name. Clearly, her parents did not expect her to star in low-budget pornos or to dance on a pole-- that concept would have been extremely foreign to them-- but really? Delina Devine.

Then the Biblical names. That's not so bad, you think, we have those today. However, when two brothers named Zebulon and Reuben Harrison come up together, you just have to wonder if they had brothers named Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Napthali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Benjamin, and Joseph. And did Joseph have a really awesome coat? And what about Napthalum Gregory? Now that's an epic name!

And some people just have funny last names, which they can't help. A man with the last name of "Took" made me think of Pippin the hobbit in The Lord of the Rings, and Alexander Tadford, Jr. just sounds adorable. And poor, poor David Lairdass. At least, I think there was an "i" in the first part, but I was trying to be generous. It sure looked a lot like... well, you get it. And, while not strictly a last name, the combination of Casper Clemmons makes me smile.

But then. Then there are the parents that you just have to wonder about. The first name that made me go "Ehhh??" was Enonomous Decker. At first I thought, "Oh, the man must want to stay anonymous in this case." But then I realized that, no no, his name was Enonomous Decker. He came up several times, even, in a debt case and acknowledging a deed of bargain and sale (or something or other). You can't remain anonymous with your last name right there, nor are you allowed to anonymously be a defendant or anonymously acknowledge certain things in open court. That concept just... wasn't there. His name was Enonomous. What???

The name that really takes the cake, however, is this: Grizzle Cale. She came up in the records when she and her husband, Jacob Cale, acknowledged a deed of lease and release. Grizzle. I did a double-take. I tried to make the letters say something else. But no. Grizzle Cale. She even came up a few years later in the records, doing something or other with Jacob, and still-- Grizzle. What were her parents thinking??? I told my friend Macs about this one, and I said, "Perhaps they didn't want their child getting confused with all the other Marys and Anns and Elizabeths and Sarahs" and he said, "Well it worked, didn't it? 200 years later and here we are, still discussing their little girl."

Somehow, Grizzle Cale intrigues me more than all of the others. How did she and Jacob meet? Was it arranged or did they love each other (hey, companionate marriages were on the rise!)? Was she pretty? Shrewish? Kind? Funny? Obedient? Fiesty? Could she read or write? Who were her friends? What did she dream of?

And why did her parents choose the name Grizzle?

Just a few fun historical tidbits, here at Why History.

George III, Part II

Recap: George III, King of England, pretty tyrannical. Here's his picture again, for those of you who are still a little hazy (or lazy, and don't want to scroll down to the previous post).

So last time, I told you about how this man was tyrannical and idiotic. The Whigs detested him, he detested the Whigs, and it appeared that he wanted to destroy the Parliamentary system as it had operated for centuries (sort of). He wanted to be a benevolent despot. He even threatened to the leave the country twice because he was unhappy with the way things were going for him. But then, what if all of the tryanny was a simple misunderstanding? What if George III was simply misunderstood?

Let's look at his upbringing. First of all, the House of Hanover had been established in England in 1715 after the death of Queen Anne. George's predecessors were quite Germanic and in their home they ruled as absolute monarchs. Even though George had been born in England and spoke English as his first language, he was both a constitutional monarch in Great Britain, and an absolute monarch in Hanover. Plus, he was brought up in Kew Gardens (it's a house, not just a garden) by his mother, Augusta, and-- get this-- Lord Bute. Interesting, no? His mother and Bute kept him from Court, kept him from politics, kept him even from his grandfather King George II, and taught him to despise constitutional monarchy; Augusta herself revered Frederick the Great. She told him to fashion himself as "The Patriot King" of the people and to free himself of the Whigs, who purported to speak for the people and to defend the constitution. And there were rumors that Augusta and Lord Bute carried on a torrid affair...

So, when George became king in 1760 at the age of 22, he didn't really know anybody involved with either the court or parliament. He had been too sheltered. He didn't really know anything about being king, especially not as a constitutional monarch. He was a young, unknown king who needed guidance, which made politicians believe that they would have the upper hand for awhile. What actually happened, though, was that George dismissed them and put Lord Bute in their place, because he needed someone near him that he could trust. Lord Bute was literally one of the only people he knew who had the qualifications necessary for politics. He just wanted someone near him that he could trust. Plus, after interviews with Chatham and Newcastle-- the Whigs he dismissed-- he cried. They were just too much for him.

Moreover, he was shy, he stammered, he was physically frail, and had a chemical imbalance in his brain which we now know was porphyria, an extremely painful disease which now we can treat. It manifests as a neurological disorder, or "madness", though the patient isn't actually mad. We know that now; then, however, they just knew that he passed purple urine sometimes and had bouts of insanity. Given all of this, no one really took him seriously. They thought he would die soon, so they searched for an heir and regent-- politicians listened to Augusta and her friend, the Duke of Cumberland, but not George. This was upsetting to the young King.

And here's another a kicker-- he didn't inherit a united Whig party. His chaotic government can't exactly be blamed on his dismissing the Whigs, because though they presented a united front until 1760ish, looking back to 1756-1757 we can see that their public unity hid the fact that Newcastle and Chatham hated each other and that the Bedford faction ran their own brand of politics. If anything, we could accuse George III of not having enough experience to impose unity on the factionalism he inherited. (Seriously, there were more Whig parties and coalitions and factions than you can shake a stick at. Perhaps one day I'll actually try to explain it all, but right now it's just too much and not pertinent to my defense of George.)

Oh, and that General Warrants affair, in which he arrested John Wilkes? He didn't just pull that concept out of the air. He consulted with Lord Halifax, a senior lawyer, about what to do with the insulting and somewhat subversive situation, and Lord Halifax suggested that the best legal recourse would be general warrants. He was actually trying to work within the boundaries of the law that time!

The American situation, of course, came hot on the heels of the general warrants affair, and George III wanted to win badly, even after the rest of the country had given up. Why? Well, to use a Cold War anachronism, he thought it would create a domino effect. If the 13 colonies went, then next might go the West Indies, Canada, and all of Britain's empire... and he was kind of right, because in 1779-1782 Ireland rose up in a serious patriot movement. And those Whigs, who sympathized because they believed George a tyrant? They provoked his hatred by parading around court in buff and blue, the colors of Washington's army.

Finally, the forcing out of the Fox-North coalition seemed to George within his rights. The monarch, at the time, selected the prime minister. It was his prerogative. But the Whigs had challenged that prerogative by forcing themselves on George and 'storming the closet', as it were. George, in fact, said that their coalition challenged the constitution, which they themselves swore to protect! As King, he felt that he had the right to dismiss them after their behavior. Perhaps he didn't do it in the nicest way, but Charles James Fox had been one of those Whigs who but a few years earlier paraded around court in his buff and blue. But then, he and Fox never got along.

In fact, during one bout of porphyria, everyone knew he truly had gone mad when he called Pitt the Younger his enemy and Fox his friend. CRAZY!

Overall, you could argue that George III defended the traditional role of a monarch. Many things he did, which Whigs construed as controversial, had never been contested by any parliament in the past. He really felt that he had done nothing wrong and that it was Fox and the Whigs who affronted constitutional practices... but don't forget that I did tell you that he despised constitutional monarchy and wanted to be a benevolent despot...

So what do you think??? Was George a tyrant or misunderstood? And remember, as my tutor Leslie taught me, every professor (or person who writes blogs?) is a con-man. We want you to believe our point of view, so we are going to present evidence which upholds our arguments. History is kind of like one big debate round, where each side tries to establish a certain truth which might have never even existed, or, if it did, only for a brief long-past moment.

Just another little lesson on taking sides, from your friend here at Why History.

George III, Part I

See this man? This is King George III of England, of the House of Hanover.

You may have heard of him. He was king during the American Revolution, that "tyrannical" King George we Americans hear about so much when studying the war. Well, of course, the American revolutionaries looked at Parliament as tyrannical before they started calling the King tyrannical-- Olive Branch Petition, anyone?-- but you get the idea. He's the one who ruled Great Britain while we over here decided to become our own nation.

The thing is, a lot of Britons weren't huge fans of him during that time, either. Whigs called him tyrannical, too. And they had reason. Or did they?

When I studied abroad, I took a tutorial called "Georgian Politics and Society in the Long Eighteenth-Century" (or something like that) at University College, Oxford, with the remarkable Leslie Mitchell. Each week I had to read quite a bit of assigned reading, then write a paper on the given topic, such as "Crime" or "National Identity" or "Parliamentary Reform and the Great Reform Bill" or "The Whigs and George III." The first few papers I wrote I tried to cover everything I had read, making it a very objective affair with facts and no heart. Leslie told me to try again, to put some life into these papers. Then, for the George III paper, I thought I had it. From everything Leslie had assigned us to read I knew, I knew, that the Whigs and the Americans had been right about the tyranny of George III.

Let me explain why (from the Whig point of view): The man acts like an absolute monarch! He's out to destroy the Parliamentary system, let me tell you! Fact: in 1760-62 he removed the Newcastle Whigs and the Chatham Whigs from office-- shocking, I know-- but worse, he replaced them with the reviled Lord Bute. A Scotsman, with basically no property, whose family had been at the Jacobite uprising in 1745!!! The Jacobite cause wanted to remove the Hanoverians from the throne and restore the Stuarts, but now a member of the house of Hanover was making a man with Jacobite connections the Prime Minister? All of this is Bute's fault, Bute must have told George that his father had had his hands tied by evil Whig counsel. So, in an effort to take more power, George had removed them. Clearly, this man is both an idiot and an absolutist.

Then things get worse. His government was more unstable than any government had been since 1720, with ministers going in and out and coalitions left and right. Was not this his fault for dismissing the Whigs? Then, in 1763, there's the "General Warrants" affair. On April 23rd, George arrested a Member of Parliament, John Wilkes, for "seditious libel" when Wilkes attacked a speech given by the King (but written by Lord Bute) in issue number 45 of The North Briton, Wilkes' anti-Bute weekly newspaper. The King, feeling insulted, issued a general warrant for Wilkes' arrest, along with everyone else who worked on the newspaper. Wilkes, however, asserted the unconstitutionality of general warrants and gained much support-- Leslie told me that one colonial American assembly even sent Wilkes a tureen of turtle soup to be delivered to him in jail. Do you think they made it in America and shipped it, or just sent the money for it to be made in England? :)

It doesn't stop there. The War of American Independence starts, and by the end only George III is left wanting to fight it. The rest of the nation is resigned to losing the colonies, but George refuses to let go until the last bitter second. And, during all of this, he comes to detest the Whigs even more, since they sympathize with the American patriots and agree that George is being tyrannical!!!

Next, in 1782-1783, several things happened: George split the opposition to upset Parliament and take more power for himself. Then the Fox-North Coalition, a Whig government, was finally in power after years of being in opposition. George III didn't like this, as he and Charles James Fox were bitter enemies. George also didn't want the East India Bill passed. After it made it through the House of Commons, he made known that he would consider a personal enemy anyone in the House of Lords who voted for the bill. The bill was defeated by 8 votes-- and vote was taken at 2:00 AM, when many Lords didn't even know it was happening. As soon as it had passed he dismissed the Coalition-- and I mean AS SOON. At 3:00 AM he sent messengers out to tell Fox and North they had been dismissed. Leslie said they found Fox drunk and playing whist at Brook's Club, and North had been soundly asleep in bed.

Doesn't this seem tyrannical? Don't you agree that George has no redeeming qualities and that he was out to destroy the Parliamentary system and English liberty as we know it (or, er, as they knew it)???

But what if that's just one side to the King? Let's find out in the next Why History!

A German Lesson

Since I've been working on my thesis non-stop (18 pages of the first chapter, plus five pages of an introduction, plus two pages that exist but aren't connected anywhere, yet-- all written since last Tuesday) I decided to take a bit of break to write about... history.

So last time I talked about how there were at least two sides to every story. My next lesson in this concept came while I was studying abroad. During Spring Break several of my friends and I traveled first to Galway, Ireland, then to Munich, Germany. It was a seriously amazing week. From Irish donut-stand vendors drinking their second Guinness of the day at 10:00 in the morning, to rainbows over the Aran Islands, to a wonderful city walk of Munich seeing nearly every tourist site, a visit to the Teddy Bear museum, German coffee and cakes, and an extremely tasty Hofbrauhaus experience, I couldn't have had a better Spring Break.

One of our days in Germany, we four girls on the trip decided to take a day-trip to Garmisch, about a two or three hour train ride from Munich, while the boys did whatever it was they wanted to do that day. We had a great time-- it's a little Alpine city, with a chocolaterie, cute little shops, and beautiful views and walks. As we were exploring, we saw hidden up a hill a large, ornate building and farther below a playground where German mothers and fathers played on the swing-set with their kids. We decided to go up the hill to see what the building was.

It was a kind of church-- absolutely gorgeous-- and also a memorial chapel for World War II. Every available space on the walls of the building were covered with pictures of young men, most in uniform, some on tractors on their farms, or with their families. All had died during the war-- the oldest I saw was 24, the youngest 17. Hundreds upon hundreds of these pictures, all mounted on the walls of this empty, nearly hidden memorial. It felt incredibly sad.

Then I looked more closely at the young men-- all of the uniforms had swastikas.

Suddenly, I was confused about how to feel. These were the bad guys. These were the guys who had propagated the Holocaust. These were the guys that had shot at my grandpas. But in the pictures they looked so young, some no older than me at the time (I was 20). They were just boys. How many of them really understood what Nazism was, or what their government was doing? But they had to die; they had to be sacrificed in order to stop Hitler. If they were going to fight for him, there was no other choice but to stop them. And yet, they looked just like the pictures of American World War II soldiers, so young with so much life ahead of them. Especially the ones on the farms, standing next to their fathers.

From the memorial chapel, I could see the playground below, where German parents not much older than me supervised their toddlers. I thought about how different our conception of our family histories must be, and what they might say to their children about the past. For me, I am proud to say that both of my grandfathers fought in World War II. I know that they fought for freedom and for life and they prevailed. For the parents and children on the playground-- for all of Germany-- it's a time they have tried to forget, both on a social and even legal level (no German child is allowed to have the name Adolph).

I'm not sure I can even do justice to the immense confusion I felt when I realized what side the men in the pictures had fought for. Even now, I can't quite process my emotions in a cogent way. I know, of course, the history. WWII, at least to my mind, has a clear right and wrong. But still... how deeply sad. The shame of the past. The hundreds of young men. The infamy. Sometimes I still feel sad thinking of those pictures. For each one of them, somewhere there is an American, a British, a Free French boy who died, too, whose picture might be mounted somewhere. But their families can feel proud of them, without a second thought. There are many Jewish families carrying around pictures, too, who tell their stories with sadness, but without shame or guilt. There are the Austrians and the Poles, and many, many more. A thousand different sides to the story. A thousand different stories.

Many Sides to the Story

Today I had a meeting with my adviser, Professor Whittenburg, about my thesis. I think it just might work. Just maybe. Possibly, I will have a draft of the first chapter by November 9th. That's my personal goal. I have an outline-- new and revised-- and two slightly more focused chapters with an epilogue. The trouble now will be fitting it into 70 pages, but Professor Whittenburg said just to write and worry about technicalities later. "Tell your story," he said.

My story. Remember how I said in the last "Why History?" that every person has their side of the story? Well, Professor Whittenburg is the one who first introduced me to that *incredibly important* concept. When I entered William and Mary as a bright-eyed freshman I knew that I wanted to be a history major, so I signed up for Professor Whittenburg's freshman seminar fondly known as "Saturday class." Yes, I had class every Saturday my first semester of college. We met at 9:00 or so in the morning, ate donuts and had a presentation from a student, then headed off in a big white van to some location in the Tidewater area. We went to Jamestown, Westover and Shirley Plantations, James City Courthouse, Historic St. Mary's in Maryland, Yorktown, and a thousand other places in our quest to discover Virginia from 1607 to the Revolution. (If you want to read my NIAHD Journal-- essentially all of the papers I wrote for the class-- click here.)

The first week of the seminar we were assigned three readings: "Environment, Disease, and Mortality in Early Virginia," by Carville V. Earle (found in Thad W. Tate & David L. Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society (1979), pp. 95-125.), "Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown," by Karen Ordahl Kupperman (found in The Journal of American History, Vol. 66, No. 1. (1979), pp. 24-40.), and “The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18” by Edmund S. Morgan, (found in The American Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (1971), pp. 595-611.)

All of these readings are on the same subject: why people died in Jamestown. But, even though these authors wrote on the same topic, and the readings came out in the same decade, and all were printed in respectable publications, they couldn't be more different. Which begs the question-- how? Shouldn't they have the same conclusion? Isn't there one right answer? How can the same phenomenon have three extremely different articles written on it? Shouldn't one author be right? Which one is right?

The thing is, none are right. And all are right. In short (VERY SHORT), Earle blames the deaths on the water in Jamestown, getting extremely technical with the science of the environment and the way pathogens work. Kupperman blames the deaths on the fact that the men who settled Jamestown felt like prisoners of war and fell victim to psychological illness. And finally, Morgan blames it on the fact that the men who settled Jamestown were soldiers unused to having to produce their own food or take care of themselves in such an unsettled area. Normally they would pillage or the state would provide sustenance for them.

I think somewhere in all of the readings, combined together, we might begin to scratch the truth of the matter. But the point is, there is no simple answer to history. Moreover, just as these three authors have their three opinions, the men at Jamestown were not homogeneous in their mindsets. Perhaps some did feel like POWs, while others did expect England to send them ships full of food. And perhaps most just succumbed to bad water.

History is sticky and you can't take anything at face value. Behind every story there is another side to the story, as history-- both the actual occurrences and the writing of it-- is filled with complexities and composed of unique individuals with their own ideas and biases. The point of history, as my tutor Leslie told me in Oxford, is to pick a side and argue it as best you can. Believe in what you say. Because you'll be right. But someone else might be right, too. And that's not something you learn in an ordinary high school history class.

Want more proof? Tune in to the next Why History!

Why History? Part 3

When I was fifteen, I went to London for the first time. This was a huge moment for me. London had been the center of my universe since the day I began to learn about the Tudors (Elizabeth I in particular) and Shakespeare. It also had the pros of being the city of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, and James Barrie’s Peter Pan. Since this time, London has only grown more important in my life; I’ve found a thousand other books, movies, and historical figures that lived there who I have come to idolize. It features quite prominently in my thesis, to the point that I’ve looked up things in archives there. Not just London, but all of England has captured my heart—especially Bath and Oxford— as well as parts of Scotland and Wales. But when I was fifteen, London made an indelible impression.

Perhaps the most important moment in my historical education up to that point occurred in London. Before this moment, history had been a subject in school—one that I enjoyed, but nothing more. That, or it had been not history but historical fiction. Felicity Merriman wasn’t real, nor were the girls in the Dear America series. Even the movies I watched fictionalized reality—Evita, Elizabeth, etc. These people had been real and logically I knew this, but their lives were stories; they were portrayed by actors. In a way, history was nothing more than pretty costumes and an “A” on my report card.

So what happened?

Within the Tower of London, there is a tower called the Beauchamp tower, and here is where Robert Dudley, later Earl of Leicester, was kept imprisoned during part of the reign of Mary Tudor. While there, he carved his name into the stone of his room, as well as an oak tree. As I stood staring at the carved words “Robart Dudley” my dad said, “Just think, all that separates us from him is time. He stood right here, he touched this wall. If we could turn back time we would be standing right next to him.”

This concept floored me. It was as if I was just a little late to meet him. It was the same thing as missing someone by five minutes because you’re running a bit late. That person exists, you just missed them. Robert Dudley had existed, I just missed him. Suddenly, history came alive in a way that it never had before, even through listening to my dad talk about the Civil War battles or watching a movie. History existed personally. These people had all walked, and talked, and felt the sun just as I was doing (it was exceptionally good weather in London that trip). They had good days, bad days, cried, caught colds, laughed, danced, sang, felt embarrassed, felt exhilarated, felt scared, felt comforted, fell in love, fell out of love, slept, ate, drank, everything! They had friends, they had enemies, and they had their side of the story. And I didn’t see it happen to them because I was just a little too late.

Before I had been infatuated with history; now I was falling in love.

Why History? Part 2

Flashback to a fifth-grade birthday party for my friend, Jamie. For the party, we were all going to see a movie. Jamie wanted to see Practical Magic. I wanted to see Elizabeth—again. Yep. I was that kid. The kid who dared to be different. The one who never wore jeans because everyone wore jeans, and who chose to buy the soundtrack of the latest Broadway musical instead of the new N*Sync album. Also, I was a nerd.

But a nerd in the best possible way. I was the one who wanted to know the history behind the movies. When I saw Evita I found myself spending hours learning about Eva Duarte Peron and where the movie accurately portrayed her and where it took dramatic license. When I saw Pocahontas—well, let’s just say I learned quickly not to believe everything you see on the screen. In fact, I researched most every historical story I ran into. When I saw The Scarlet Pimpernel (the musical, though I recommend the book highly—it’s one of my favorites) I became briefly infatuated with the French Revolution. When I saw Hercules I learned everything I could about actual Greek mythology. This was aided by a program I was in called EER; in fifth grade, we studied Greek city states (my focus was on Corinth). The year before we had studied the plays of Shakespeare… and thus began another love in my life. More on that later.

Anyways, when I saw Elizabeth, I had found a role model and a life passion. Immediately, I looked up everything I could about the real Queen Elizabeth I. I bought a book called Beware Princess Elizabeth, which was “her” diary, I spent hours on websites finding out information about her, and from there a whole world of Tudor History opened up for me (you’ll forgive me for not going out and buying John Guy’s or Christopher Haigh’s books at that time—I was eleven). Already I had read a play that my parents had on our bookshelf called The Six Wives of Henry VIII, so I knew a good deal about her parents’ relationship in a dramatized form, and had a base layer of Tudor-ness under my belt. And, let’s be honest, how can you not love someone so strong and so, well, crafty? I’m not saying Elizabeth was a good person; not that she was a bad person either. But she was incredibly intelligent, powerful, brave, and strong. She was someone who knew what she had to do to get what she wanted and to keep her life and her crown. And Cate Blanchett made her damn sexy.

Then, in sixth grade, I saw The Lion in Winter in New York City starring Stockard Channing and Laurence Fishburne. I immediately checked the script out of the library and read it over and over; freshman year of high school I read Alison Weir’s biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine and used a segment of the play for Speech and Debate. Eleanor is another strong woman, but her tenacity wasn’t the only thing that attracted me to the play. I also loved Alais, the princess of France. She has one of my favorite lines in any play: “Kings, queens, and knights everywhere. I am the only pawn. I have nothing to lose. And that makes me dangerous.” Not that that is necessarily true of her, but isn’t it wonderful rhetoric?

Junior year of high school I read The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and found the fictional Lady Brett Ashley both tragic and compelling. Arguably, of course, she is not a good role model at all, but the book—and my love of Shakespeare, before I had read The Sun Also Rises— led me to the real life Sylvia Beach, who singlehandedly published James Joyce’s Ulysses from her American bookshop in Paris, called Shakespeare and Company. I also spent some time learning about ex-patriot Paris and the roaring ‘20s after ‘meeting’ these two women.

There were many other influential historical figures in my life (and I haven’t even gotten to the men!!!), but I’ll mention just two more: freshman year of college I saw the movie Out of Africa and set out at once to learn about Isak Dineson/Karen Von Blixon, and junior year of college I met Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire, whose short, beautiful, tragic, amazing life never fails to move me.

I just remembered: we also had to write a “tragic hero” monologue for theatre class freshman year of high school, and I wrote mine in the voice of Marie Antoinette, complete with French accent—throw-back to my French Revolution phase.

The point is, around the time I was eleven years old my obsession with Tudor England began, which led to my obsession with English history in general, which—combined with my love of Felicity Merriman and the American Revolution—has landed me pretty much smack dab in the middle of my thesis. There were many critical steps in between, but those two moments in my life (plus the Shakespeare thing) were the jumping off points.

Next time on Why History?: The story that first changed the way I view history. PLUS, when I decided to become a history major!

Why History? Part 1

So the first few parts of “Why History” are going to be autobiographical, but then we’ll get into some actual concepts and maybe even some historiography! Plus, we will explore in depth some of my favorite parts of history and talk about writing a thesis. Here goes….

I got started loving history at an early age, which isn’t surprising if you’ve ever met my dad. He’s a huge American Civil War buff; we had paintings of generals and battles all over our house (both Union and Confederate), a Confederate Generals coffee mug, actual letters written by our ancestor Amos Camden Riley who died fighting for the Confederacy in Georgia, and my dad has portraits of Lincoln and Grant next to his bed. So yeah. Civil War history is all over our house. Seriously, how many children learn to play chess on a Civil War chess set? Not many.

But oddly enough, Civil War history didn’t really strike the same chord with me as it did with my dad. I like it fine, but I really got into the history of the American Revolution when I was about eight years old and never went back… well, I did go back… further in time and to another continent… but the American Revolution still plays a large part in what I study and where I chose to spend the last six years of my life.

You see, I fell in love with the American Girl Felicity Merriman. I saw her picture in a catalog and knew I had to have her. I read all of her books, which are set in Williamsburg, Virginia, during its colonial/early Revolutionary period, and when I was about ten years old my parents brought me to Colonial Williamsburg for the first time. I immediately fell in love with the place. Clutching my Felicity doll, I wandered up and down Duke of Gloucester Street taking in the sights. I learned to play with a hoop and stick and was rewarded for my skill with a silver musket ball from a reinactor (he gave it to me, he didn’t shoot it at me). I dressed in a little eighteenth-century dress, and we spent an afternoon with Felicity’s teacher, “Mrs. Manderly.” She taught us the proper way of performing the tea service, but of course I took hot chocolate like a true patriot (though now I see that the books left out a ton of complexities about “patriot” and “loyalist” and also you wouldn’t give a child chocolate in the eighteenth-century… but whatever, as a kid they shaped my life).

Most importantly, after I read about Felicity wishing she could go to William and Mary (it was for boys only in the eighteenth century), I knew that’s where I wanted to go. I even wrote about Felicity in my college entrance essay when I was seventeen. So in a way, this one simple American Girl doll influenced the course of my whole life up to now…

But not entirely. Because at age eleven, my dad took me to see the movie Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes. And thus began a whole new phase in my historical timeline.

To be continued…

Why History?: An Introduction

Quite frankly, a lot of people find studying history boring. A lot more people find public history interesting, but have never looked through an academic book (and those people probably have never thought about the difference between public history and academic history, or the fact that not every history book is academic). Even more people have no idea what someone would do with a B.A—let alone an M.A.—in history. All of this inevitably leads to polite nods when people find out what I’m studying, an instantaneous discussion of what I think about the latest period drama or History Channel show (usually based in an era or on an event which I don’t study at all), or a bewildered, “So you want to teach, then?”

The answer to that last question is no. Or, at least not in a school. We’ll get to that.

Since this is so commonly the case, and I’m sure many budding historians have run into these scenarios, I thought I would do a blog mini-series on why I love history, what got me into history, and what makes studying history so compelling (to me). I mean, why do history at all? Beyond the obvious joy of pointing out glaring inaccuracies in historical movies and television shows (The Tudors, anyone?) what is studying history really contributing to anyone and are we actually doomed to repeat it? Hopefully, I will answer these questions and more over the course of the next few weeks or months, depending on how often I write these posts.

“Why History?” will not be published daily or even uninterruptedly, because I will of course keep writing about other things in between “Why History” installments, but I feel like these blog posts might help clarify what exactly a graduate student in history—or at least, this graduate student—really thinks and feels about her chosen field.

Welcome to “Why History?”

(EDIT: As this was originally a mini-series on another blog, some of the information about it-- such as that it won't be published uninterruptedly-- is now void.)