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!
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