Mantel: Writers are wrong to make historical women strong

Booker Prize winner tells fellow female novelists to resist the temptation to turn victims into winners

WOMEN writers must stop rewriting history to make their female characters falsely “empowered”, Dame Hilary Mantel has said.

Dame Hilary, the Man Booker Prizewinning novelist, said writing about women in history has “persistent difficulties” for her contemporaries, who “can’t resist” retrospectively making them strong and independent.

Anyone “squeamish” about the difference in male and female roles in certain historic periods should, she suggested, try a different job.

Dame Hilary, author of Wolf Hall, singled out her own gender for criticism, questioning whether writers should “rework history so victims are the winners”.

Speaking in the second of her five Reith Lectures, recorded at Middle Temple, London, on Tuesday night, Dame Hilary said: “Many writers of historical fiction feel drawn to the untold tale. They want to give a voice to those who have been silenced. Fiction can do that, because it concentrates on what is not on the record. But we must be careful when we speak for others…

“If we write about the victims of history, are we reinforcing their status by detailing it? Or shall we rework history so victims are the winners?

“This is a persistent difficulty for women writers, who want to write about women in the past, but can’t resist retrospectively empowering them. Which is false.

“If you are squeamish – if you are affronted by difference – then you should try some other trade.”

She added: “A good novelist will have her characters operate within the ethical framework of their day – even if it shocks her readers.”

Dame Hilary did not single out any particular author but Philippa Gregory, who has written bestsellers including The Other Boleyn Girl and The White Queen, has been praised for her strong female characters.

Gregory has previously said: “The more research I do, the more I think there is an untold history of women.”

Dame Hilary’s five Reith Lectures, entitled Resurrection: The Art and Craft, will air on BBC Radio 4 from June 13 at 9am.

♦ A “feminist ideology” could have the unintended consequence of making endings too predictable because the woman would always come out on top, warns Gerard Lee, who co-wrote Top of the Lake. But at an advanced screening of the second series of the hit BBC Two crime drama at the British Film Institute in London, fellow writer and Palme d’or winner Jane Campion, called his view “complete rubbish”. She said film could change for the better overnight if 50 per cent of all public funding went to female filmmakers.

‘A good novelist will have her characters operate within the ethical framework of their day’