Just Because I Wasn’t Written About, Does it Mean that I Didn’t Exist?: Reimagining History in Period Adaptions

In our push to create more equal representations on screen, period and historical dramas have proved to be a bit  problematic for gender.

I have heard people say that we need to stop making period pieces altogether  “they just reinforce images and ideas of inequality”. I guiltily gaze at my collection of period dramas on my shelf that I have collected since I was 18 with a heavy heart,  hoping that it doesn’t come to that!

I do think something needs to be done. However, I have come to a slightly different conclusion; the answer is not to stop making historic films, and period dramas. What I am proposing is that we just start to create a more complete picture.

There have been a lot of wonderful pieces of work on screen and in theatre that have sought to tell the women’s stories, with  female perspectives and focus. Gentleman Jack, Call the Midwife, to name a couple, and I am in complete admiration of all them. If for so long the stories have been male focused, then it is quite right to try and balance them out.

Jumping on the same bandwagon, Lin-Manuel Miranda once stated in an interview that his biggest regret was not making Hamilton female. Currently, we are moving towards a solution which looks like counteracting male dominance with female heavy productions instead. 

But what if we just created worlds where both men AND women were equally represented? Or  worlds where the women’s stories were as important as men's? Flipping the seesaw isn’t the only thing we can do; we could start making work that shows both sides as they would have existed too.

For me, I would be as happy if Lin-Manuel Miranda had just fleshed out the historical, female characters that already existed in the play so they didn’t only sing about men. Also, I  watched nearly the whole play thinking that Eliza was a sweet, helpless wife and mother at home, cheated on by her husband. Then right at the end Eliza sung her final song and I thought: “Hang on a minute! She co-founded the first private orphanage in New York and was the one who  made sure her husband’s work was defended after his death?! That was really thrown in at the end wasn’t it?”. It’s a shame, because it becomes clear that that story was carved by both of them.

A common response to historic pieces like this is:  ‘Well that was of the time. It was a patriarchal society, That’s how it was” . 

Women may have found  themselves in a patriarchal society, but that doesn’t mean that their thoughts  and inner beings are only focused on men. It also doesn’t mean that they only existed for 10% of the time on earth that men existed, (which translates to about 20 minutes on stage).

Similarly filmmakers often use historic adaptations as an excuse for having male heavy casts. We need to make it ‘historically accurate’ is often the reason that is given. 

Dunkirk is a great example of this.  Stunning cinematography. Incredible soundtrack. But it was  nearly an all male cast (bar the two women who had one line offering tea and sandwiches to the soldiers on the boat). 

To be honest,  I just want to see war films that show that we actually won the war together; Men fought and women ran the country while the men were away. We couldn’t have done it without each other. 

Male heavy casts in historic films also create this bizarre warped picture where the world was populated with more men than women  and where women existed without affecting anything around them (because they sure ain’t affecting this film narrative, that’s for sure!) 

History books are biased or one sided. We all know that. Old news.  We also know that a lot of women’s stories have not been heavily recorded. So rather than leaving women out for fear of historical inaccuracy, maybe we just need to use our imaginations a bit. 

If we continue to make historical films based only on the historical evidence that is documented, then we are creating an inaccurate picture anyway as we only have half the story to go on! 

By using our intelligence, we can imagine what those women’s lives were like in that context and flesh out their stories. There would probably be more truth in our fictitious attempt to imagine, than in our current attempts to be ‘historically accurate’ with only half the story available for us.I have often said that I have found more truth in fiction than non-fiction.

It is time to reimagine history; not so that we are further away  from reality, but so we are closer to the truth.