Historical Fiction - Part II - The Characters

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of a good story in historical fiction. The historical novel I recently finished, My Dear Hamilton, is a stellar example of how to weave history and fiction together to create a good story and believable characters. The authors, Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie, write that "fiction can go where historians rightly fear to tread." Novelists posit characters' motivations, attitudes, and decisions--an interior life that is unknowable where journals and diaries are non-existent.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

Truth is stranger than fiction, as Mark Twain wrote in his brilliant play, Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the true parts of My Dear Hamilton are the most unbelievable, as the authors write, "the most outlandish bits are the true ones... battles, duels... scandals, riots, plagues, and mental illnesses." All these are true.

So most of the events as depicted in My Dear Hamilton are based on historical facts. The characters, especially Eliza, Alexander, and Eliza's sister Angelica, also ring true. We believe their words; we understand their reactions; and we grow to care about them. Well-rounded characters with rich interior lives who make mistakes, change their minds, and sometimes rise to meet the challenges confronting them, appear to us like people we know. They are like the people we are.

Knowing that Alexander Hamilton cheated on his wife with a woman named Maria Reynolds is a fact of history, but depicting the revelation of this betrayal, and following Eliza's reactions, causes the reader to sympathize with Eliza and excoriate Alexander. The reader is allowed to hear Eliza's thoughts when her husband admits to adultery. Alexander keeps talking and asking for forgiveness, but Eliza is off in her own world, wondering if Maria Reynolds is beautiful, wondering what they did together in bed, wondering if he ever really loved her. Eliza does not grant him the forgiveness he seeks, but meets his pleas with silence.

This is fiction--we don't know how Eliza reacted to this news of her husband's infidelity. But it feels real; it has veracity; and we are drawn in to care. Eliza does not come to forgive her husband until they both almost die from yellow fever. That conforms to personal experience as well. I wonder how many reconciliations there were after 9/11. When we are faced with our own mortality, we focus on what's really important, and we want to be close to those we love.

From My Dear Hamilton -- as Eliza decides to forgive her husband:
"But first, I forgave my husband because I was a Christian, because I loved him, and because I must never allow Maria Reynolds to define us" (Dray and Kamoie 342).

One of the most important ingredients in a good historical novel is believable characters we come to love (or hate)! Is this someone I could imagine sitting down with for a cup of tea? If they pass this test, to me they are believable characters and I, too, can predict their moves. I'm either gratified to be right, pleasingly shocked to be surprised, or aghast that the characters I knew could disappoint me. Either way, I feel like I know them, and I want to learn as much as possible about them. I'm hooked!