![]() The examples that follow are admittedly extreme, but they illustrate some of the pitfalls awaiting women in male narratives of history. The assertion that history, and more specifically historical narrative, is a hostile element for women may require some support. Popular fiction or so-called “triviallitteratur” has not been ignored, since such books reveal a great deal about public taste. ![]() The writers included here occupy a spectrum from famous to obscure. The implications of these choices are of particular interest to the present study. Thus their narratives are even more clearly the result of choices and judgments made in order to imagine a space for women in history. Writers of fiction are liberated to a greater degree than professional historians from the tyranny of fact. ![]() Hayden White has argued that most narratives of history begin with a moral judgment on the part of the writer: “Where, in any account of reality, narrativity is present, we can be sure that morality or a moralizing impulse is present too.” What kind of story one tells depends on whether the writer feels the facts support a tragedy or a comedy, for example. This essay examines the narrative strategies used by Twentieth- Century Swedish women writers who have made forays into historical fiction. However, if history has been a male domain, it remains a hostile element for women. ![]() Women writers together with professional historians have been able to reclaim a role for women in history. ![]() Happily much of this changed in the late Twentieth Century. Women were effectively silenced and “herstory” seldom, if ever, was told. Until recently, history was written by men about events in which men played the prominent roles. PRE-PUBLICATON DRAFT – DO NOT CITE!!! Gender and the Historical Novel by Susan Brantly History has traditionally been something of a male domain. ![]()
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