"Nasty, brutish, and short. . . ."

[Fnord]

Economics is my field, and I have spent a good amount of my life reading and re-reading history through that lens on the side (I'll save my rants lamenting the abysmal lack of history in graduate economics curricula for another day) but recently stumbled upon this passage near the beginning of Matt Ridley's book "The Rational Optimist" where he discusses the idyllic vision of the "country cottage" many people hold for life in the past:

"Oh please! Though this is one of the better-off families in the village, father’s Scripture reading is interrupted by a bronchitic cough that presages the pneumonia that will kill him at 53 – not helped by the wood smoke of the fire. (He is lucky: life expectancy even in England was less than 40 in 1800.) The baby will die of the smallpox that is now causing him to cry; his sister will soon be the chattel of a drunken husband. The water the son is pouring tastes of the cows that drink from the brook. Toothache tortures the mother. The neighbor’s lodger is getting the other girl pregnant in the hayshed even now and her child will be sent to an orphanage. The stew is grey and gristly yet meat is a rare change from gruel; there is no fruit or salad at this season. It is eaten with a wooden spoon from a wooden bowl. Candles cost too much, so firelight is all there is to see by. Nobody in the family has ever seen a play, painted a picture or heard a piano. School is a few years of dull Latin taught by a bigoted martinet at the vicarage. Father visited the city once, but the travel cost him a week’s wages and the others have never travelled more than fifteen miles from home. Each daughter owns two wool dresses, two linen shirts and one pair of shoes. Father’s jacket cost him a month’s wages but is now infested with lice. The children sleep two to a bed on straw mattresses on the floor. As for the bird outside the window, tomorrow it will be trapped and eaten by the boy."

As an avid fan of fantasy literature and role-playing games, this was fun to read. Though I've never harbored the idyllic image of "shire-like" villages of simplicity and pastoral life, I thought this quote was sufficiently jarring in that it pushed all those elements together. Sometimes, as an amateur writer and world-builder for my roleplaying game groups, I need to be ripped away from my rosy-tinted vision and be reminded what medieval life was actually like.

Do any of the Mythic Scribers write particularly gritty fantasy like that and if you do, what are your inspirations and challenges (especially since magic can somewhat assuage some of the above conditions)? I'd like to capture more of this atmosphere.

 

[sashamerideth]

I'm looking at a society influenced by more knowledgeable powers, Mid 1800's equivalent, but with the benefits of the knowledge we have gained since. It's easy for us to gloss over the daily hardships and life far worse than what we imagine abject poverty to be, all for the sake of sending our people on a merry jaunt through the forest.

I don't plan to shy away from the things mentioned above, but with a people that know about diet, hygiene, an alternative technological development, it will be different than how Earth was back then. Dirty and gritty in different ways. I would send you to my Showcase entry, but it's not yet on my Fantasy world, still on my Sci-Fi one.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Do any of the Mythic Scribers write particularly gritty fantasy like that and if you do, what are your inspirations and challenges (especially since magic can somewhat assuage some of the above conditions)? I'd like to capture more of this atmosphere.

I don't know if things were quite that dire all the time. The life expectancy quote is one of those tidbits that particularly rankles me, because the life expectancy at birth accounts for all the children who die of childhood diseases; but for those who lived past childhood, the life expectancy was much higher. For example, in ancient Rome.

 

[Steerpike]

For inspiration, read Joe Abercrombie's books. I particularly like Best Served Cold, and it is about as gritty a fantasy as you will find.

 

[Graham Irwin]

I do feel sometimes that the "Fantasy Age" was probably a lot more like the peasants eating dirt in Monty Python's Holy Grail than it was like the shire...

But fantasy is like sci-fi, in that it's really about our modern age. It's about our problems, human problems that we relate over now-a-days, so plagues and buboes are not entirely necessary

 

[Kit]

"Nasty, brutish, and short. . . ."
-----------

Geez, here I thought y'all were talking about *ME*.

 

[Telcontar]

Heh, that was a pretty fun read.

I don't try to portray the bitter reality in my fantasy writing - that wouldn't be much fun. I do try to stay away from idyllic countryside living and give the reader a bit more of a realistic picture. Namely in that the lives of the vast majority of people in a pre-industrial society is just about scraping by, hard labor day in and day out to produce enough food to live off (especially once the local strong-man, be he royalty or just "the guy with the guns," takes a lot of it in 'tax').

 

[Caged Maiden]

Hmm.... I would say I have been pretty nasty to my characters, but in a different way. While most of my story is about people interacting, I have written about a field-worker with a defeated spirit, a young woman ashamed that her son is her half-brother, a courtesan from a rough background of abandonment, and more. I have tortured characters, stripped them of their dignity, abandoned, raped and disfigured them, and broken their spirits. I have spread disease through the countryside, killing loved ones (though only as background). And imprisoned innocent men on death row. I have married women to abusive men and killed children both grown and young.
I am not sure in a fantasy novel people would want the actual hardships to happen to MC's... which might appear sort of lazy. If I killed people with the pox it might just look like I couldn't find a better way to do it, you know?

Life is hard when there is overpopulation and food shortages (people's lives are worth less and poverty is the norm).
Before the plague, Europe was overpopulated and living conditions were hard because people were paid little and barely scraped by. After the plague (a truly horrific time when 50% of the population died between 1347-1350) the attitudes of the survivors was different. People were paid higher wages, rents went down, and people of lower classes were needed to work. They gained wealth and had less children (which they took better care of), and could afford apprenticeships for their sons and dowries for their daughters. Life got better!

It sounds like that passage might be Industrial Revolution time period, and that is another time period where for many, quality of life had dropped very low (which is why so many came to America).

 

[Ravana]

I don't know if things were quite that dire all the time. The life expectancy quote is one of those tidbits that particularly rankles me, because the life expectancy at birth accounts for all the children who die of childhood diseases; but for those who lived past childhood, the life expectancy was much higher.

Bingo. "Life expectancy" is extremely deceptive. It does not mean people didn't "live as long" then as they do now–that is, the maximum lifespan was no shorter then than now: people who died of "old age" still made it to their sixties, seventies, even eighties or longer. Of course, few of these were peasants, as peasants had so many other things to kill them before their bodies expired naturally. What lowered the average was that very few people made it to "old age" in the first place, due to poor medicine, poor sanitation, poor diet, poor housing, poor clothing, accident, disease, violence, overwork… et cetera. Plus the vastly higher infant (and child) mortality: let's face it, if you have one person live to 80, and another die before his first birthday, your average is 40. And there were a lot more of the latter than the former… drags the numbers down right quick. Not to mention those who made it past their first birthday, but not their second, or fifth.

What you would not see is people dying of "age" in their 30s. They may die in their 30s for any number of other reasons, but not because that was their natural life expectancy.

The table Benjamin links is quite indicative–if you know how to read it. To "translate":
- At age 0 (birth), "life expectancy" is 25 years.
- At age 5, remaining life expectancy is 43 years… total lifespan of 48 years.
–Big difference. In other words, if someone survived his first five years, he had an even-money chance of living almost to 50… and that's with all the things that might kill him in the intervening time.
- At age 10, remaining life expectancy is 41 years; total 51 years.
–Not much of a gain. Numbers crawl up slowly until:
- At age 25, remaining life expectancy is 32 years; total 57 years.
–So if you make it solidly into adulthood in the first place, you have an even chance of pushing 60.
- At age 35, remaining is 26, total 61.
–And now you're over it. But here's the real kicker:
- At age 60, remaining life expectancy is 10 years; total 70 years. And at age 70, remaining life expectancy is another 6 years, total 76. (Which is where the table ends; no numbers for the 50+% of septuagenarians who reach 75.)
–So if you live to 35 (an age range often quoted as "most people in time/place X died before Y"), you have an even chance of living to 60… at which point you have an even chance of making 70… at which point you have an even chance of making at least another half decade. Perhaps more. And since half the people who lived past age 5 made it not just to 35, but to 48–even after everything that might kill them in the meantime is taken into account–this basically means that anyone making it out of childhood could reasonably expect to see his 60th birthday, if not more… again, barring anything that kills him in the interim.

Equally interesting–and more directly useful–is the percentages of people falling into each five-year age group:
- 50-54: 5.0%
- 55-59: 4.4%
- 60-64: 3.5%
- 65-69: 2.5%
- 70+: 2.2%
That's right: more than two percent of the entire population made it past 70! A total of 17.6% of the entire population made it to at least 50–better than one person in six. Something to keep in mind when you want to include the occasional matriarch/patriarch in your work.

By the way, the infant mortality rate cited on the table is 31.9%. As mentioned, you're never going to see a high "average" life expectancy when nearly 1 in 3 people died in the cradle… or before they make it to one. Conversely, 29.3% made it past 40; if you subtract the infant deaths, you find that more than 43% of the population made it that far. So, if you're setting a story in a realistic Rome, four out of ten living people should be over 40. One in four should be over 50, one in eight over 60.

Not exactly the normal picture we get of those times, eh?

That's for the Roman Empire. It is probably worth noting that Rome had massively better infrastructure, housing and above all sanitation than its successor cultures, as well as having vast amounts of territory which enjoyed internal peace throughout much of its existence (the "Pax Romana"). In feudal Europe, with no infrastructure or sanitation, poorer housing and fairly constant internal conflict between small states and sub-states, the averages will get dragged down as a consequence. However, the potential lifespan–"old age"–will remain unchanged. It's just that fewer people will need to worry about making it that far.

-

That having been said… I love Fnord's quote. It's more in line of a "summary" of conditions–it's not terribly likely any given family will be experiencing all this at once–but it's certainly a good indication of what life in general could be like. And that's in 1800… for earlier periods, remove the reference to "school." And, as likely as not, put everybody in one bed.

 

[SeverinR]

"Nasty, brutish, and short. . . ."
-----------

Geez, here I thought y'all were talking about *ME*.

Its all about you...

Life expectantcy depends on what one encounters,
Life expectantcy in war is alot less then someone living in a peaceful farming community, or a overpopulated city(disease being a problem)

In some cases, life expectantcy in war can be mere minutes.

"Life expectancy of a medic with that bright red cross on the white helmet is about 10 minutes after the shooting started."Paraphrased and not sure of the author.
Not every medic died, but enough did that made the author voice this complaint.

Reminds me of the quote:
The good old days weren't always good, the dark ages weren't always dark, and the days of chivalry wasn't always chivalrous.

 

[grahamguitarman]

I do sometimes think that the whole life is grim approach to history is just as misleading as the rose tinted approach. Sure there were times when life could be pretty horrendous in places. And the most dire living conditions tended to come from so called civilisation, from the overcrowding and other abysmal conditions that city life imposed on those desperate enough to live there.

And that still applies even to this day! look a some of the most desperate living conditions endured by mankind and the chances are they are in a slum clustered around the rich dwellings of a big city. Living conditions in the slums of places like Hong Kong and Rio de Janiro, are if anything, worse than anything described by dickens.

But there was also some very good living to be had in the old days too, usually if you stayed in a more rural environment - and weren't being slapped down by a harsh nobility. life in a good rural community could actually be very happy and fulfilling (as happy as real life can allow that is) and was often far healthier than life in an urban setting.

When people talk about the 'bad' old days I remember my childhood in a small mining village near Doncaster. My parents were live in stewards of a working men's club in the seventies, but the club secretary absconded to spain with all the funds, causing it to go bankrupt. the upshot of this is that we were stranded in a building that had no gas or electricity for over 6 months.

The living quarters of the club was an old fashioned building with a Victorian style coal/wood fired range in the kitchen, so all our cooking was done on that. There was a wood fired oven in the side of the range that we could bake bread & pies in. And an iron grille over the open fire that pans and kettles could be placed on for heating water / boiling food. If we wanted a bath then we had to drag a tin bath in front of the range and heat pans of water over the fire. The evenings were always lived by candlelight, and keeping warm later on often meant going to bed with extra blankets.

And yet the fondest and warmest memories I have of my entire childhood, was of those days! As a 12 year old child I loved sitting by the kitchen range eating old fashioned food, by candlelight and in front of a real fire. Having a bath in the kitchen in front of the open fire was if anything more comfortable than bathing in a bathroom - it was a lot warmer for a start! And having to make your own entertainment really develops a young mind.

Of course its also a lot more work - you can't just run a tap and get an instant hot bath, everything had to be swept by brush as there was no hoover. Rugs had to be taken out and beaten every now and then to get rid of the more ingrained dust. And even a real fire means a lot of work, cleaning it out in the morning and preparing it for re-lighting for the day (and keeping it lit).

My father often came home with rabbits and chickens from the local gamekeeper (or possibly poacher - we never really knew), and because these were not from a shop we had to spend a lot of time skinning and gutting rabbits, and plucking chickens before they even got near the cooking pot.

But even with the extra work involved, it was still a good life, and a very enjoyable one. So it is by this yardstick that I tend to judge the old lifestyles of our ancestors.

Judge the old world by the standards of our gadget filled, internet laden convenience store lifestyles, and yes it can appear to be a very harsh and grim way to live.

But actually live that life, and it can be unusually rewarding, as many people are finding out by rejecting the modern world for a simpler life.

Don't misjudge me, I wouldn't want to live in the pre 20th century world, for one simple reason - medicine. I would not want to go back to a world without modern medical science, I want to think there is someone on standby to save me if I get seriously ill!

P.S. about the wood fire in the OP's quotation, everyone had wood fires back then - even the rich. There might have been some health issues from them but not as much as the quote seems to suggest. It was very easy to control the smoke from wood & coal fires to keep it in the chimney not the room!

 

[Drakhov]

Graham's childhood recollections reminds me of this

 

[Caged Maiden]

I love the childhood recollection. Thank you for sharing with us, I felt i was there when you were describing it. I hope I don't spoil it with one of my own.....

The summer I was 20 or 21 I did an apprenticeship, so I packed up my car and drove to southern Indiana to work for a jeweler and his wife all summer. I spent my days out in his shop doing lost-wax casting (a very old technique, and let me tell you, there was nothing modern about it). We spent afternoons hanging out the washing, strolling in the pasture, working in the gardens, or driving into town for necessary things.
For several weeks, I adjusted to the rural setting, the silence, the space, the simpler way of life.....
Then we packed up their stock and the jeweler and I headed for a show in Tennessee for another several weeks.

I lived in a campground where every meal we ate was cooked with fire (propane, if you were lucky), and my bed was a pile of blankets on a wood frame in a van. There were two showers and two toilets to serve the whole campground, and only one washing machine. I was surrounded by other ren-faire workers who traveled around with the shows, and all I can say is it was one of the best times of my life. Since we only worked weekends, we went swimming in rivers, hiking in national forests, and spelunking in caves during the 5 days in-between working. We were barefoot, shirtless (not me) and dirty, but I can't tell you the sense of community there was. Nights saw a big campfire and many people with instruments coming out to sing or just listen, and though we ate meagerly, we shared with anyone who wanted to come for supper.

I'd like to think that that feeling of family and community were important to our ancestors, and I'm glad that in a world that is changing so rapidly I got to experience it for a summer.

 

[grahamguitarman]

Exactly my point, and what a great recollection to have, that is what you need to draw on when writing your fantasy stories!. I've done lost wax casting too - its great isn't it

 

[Telcontar]

Excellent points, Graham. It's the pendulum effect in action... we realize we've got something wrong, and reflexively go to the opposite extreme when we should have been looking for something between the two extremes.

It may also be telling that even in the fairly horrible war-torn areas of the modern world the people find ways to be happy.

 

[Devor]

I think the pschological aspect of suffering can often be worse than the physical aspect of suffering. A large portion of that is relative, and an even larger portion is alleviated by strong social-support systems, like families and friendships. I think that's even the reason that fantasy writing works at all - we may not relate to the harsher problems they experience, but we relate to the way they experience those problems. It's all a part of life. Even the wealthy have conflicts; even the starving children of poverty will smile and play with their friends.

That's life. We don't rise and fall because the world is great or because the world is awful; we do so by our own choices, relationships, strengths and foils which help us to overcome or to buckle-beneath the challenges that are thrown at us. And that's what we should be writing about.

**None of this is meant to in any way put down or belittle the harshest of human suffering.

 

[Ravana]

When people talk about the 'bad' old days I remember my childhood in a small mining village near Doncaster.…

Okay: anyone who might be wondering what the "personal experience" criterion in the Research forum might include… READ GRAHAM'S POST! This is IT.

Exactly what is envisioned—as well as being a good exemplar for any category: extensive, well-described, well-connected, real-world details. Doesn't matter a bit that it took place in the 20th Century (few members' "personal experiences" are going to be from earlier than that, I suspect… ): the details could easily apply to any situation at least as far back as the invention of the stove, would require minimal extrapolation for any situation back to the invention of the hearth, and how it feels to live by open fire will be applicable to any time since mankind started using it.

The only thing I would consider "improving" about this post involves the rating system… it'll only let me "thank" it once. My cats have promised to give it more thumbs up just as soon as they evolve thumbs.

I do have one suggestion, though, graham: write this up in full-length form as a non-fiction piece and publish it. In a reputable, paying print magazine. At a minimum: if you can get a novel's worth out of those experiences—which, if your memories are detailed enough (and perhaps if they can be refreshed by others who shared that time), you may well be able to—go that route; even more people will see it that way. Your experience straddles borders people desperately need to think about: you've had "primitive" (read: "underdeveloped nation") experiences in a context Westerners can easily connect to—their own context, that of a modern Western nation. All the time, you were surrounded by this context—you never left it: your experiences aren't from going to some African village for six months on outreach work. Better still, this isn't a "rags-to-riches" story. You weren't born into a back-country, impoverished family that cut sod for a living (and their own roof)… you had already developed all the normal expectations of a modern, middle-class (more or less) Western existence, lost them—without ever "leaving" them: they went right along all around you—and were eventually returned to them, giving you the ability to view them from perspectives both before and after.

That… is the sort of thing people could connect to. And just maybe it will increase people's awareness and understanding of the realities the majority of the world's population still face. Bridging that gap… I can't even express how important that could be. Please do this.

•

P.S. Just showed your post and my response to my spouse. Make that two votes for "Please do this."

 

[grahamguitarman]

Okay: anyone who might be wondering what the "personal experience" criterion in the Research forum might include… READ GRAHAM'S POST! This is IT.

Exactly what is envisioned—as well as being a good exemplar for any category: extensive, well-described, well-connected, real-world details. Doesn't matter a bit that it took place in the 20th Century (few members' "personal experiences" are going to be from earlier than that, I suspect… ): the details could easily apply to any situation at least as far back as the invention of the stove, would require minimal extrapolation for any situation back to the invention of the hearth, and how it feels to live by open fire will be applicable to any time since mankind started using it.

The only thing I would consider "improving" about this post involves the rating system… it'll only let me "thank" it once. My cats have promised to give it more thumbs up just as soon as they evolve thumbs.

I do have one suggestion, though, graham: write this up in full-length form as a non-fiction piece and publish it. In a reputable, paying print magazine. At a minimum: if you can get a novel's worth out of those experiences—which, if your memories are detailed enough (and perhaps if they can be refreshed by others who shared that time), you may well be able to—go that route; even more people will see it that way. Your experience straddles borders people desperately need to think about: you've had "primitive" (read: "underdeveloped nation") experiences in a context Westerners can easily connect to—their own context, that of a modern Western nation. All the time, you were surrounded by this context—you never left it: your experiences aren't from going to some African village for six months on outreach work. Better still, this isn't a "rags-to-riches" story. You weren't born into a back-country, impoverished family that cut sod for a living (and their own roof)… you had already developed all the normal expectations of a modern, middle-class (more or less) Western existence, lost them—without ever "leaving" them: they went right along all around you—and were eventually returned to them, giving you the ability to view them from perspectives both before and after.

That… is the sort of thing people could connect to. And just maybe it will increase people's awareness and understanding of the realities the majority of the world's population still face. Bridging that gap… I can't even express how important that could be. Please do this.

•

P.S. Just showed your post and my response to my spouse. Make that two votes for "Please do this."

Err wow! to me its just a part of my early life, but I do draw on it for inspiration when I'm writing fantasy stuff.

But to actually write about it never really occurred to me to be honest - I'll have to give that some thought.

 

[grahamguitarman]

One of the things that might hold me back though is that I had a rather brutal father, and I really mean brutal. It would be hard to write about those days without him in it, and I really don't want to drag those memories up again TBH.

Even now my hatred for him is so great that I would not shed a tear if he died tomorrow. So hmm, I don't know.

sounds a bit contradictory really that those were my happiest days but they were happy in the context of my childhood as a whole even though I was also afraid and unhappy for most of that childhood.

 

[grahamguitarman]

Still doesn't sound right lol. Anyone who has been abused as a child will understand that even abusers can sometimes be nice, there were times I even enjoyed him being around. And it is still possible to have a good childhood - especially when the abuser is not around. my father was always off working or drinking, so when he was out I had a great childhood with my mother and siblings. When he came home we kids all hid in fear and hoped he wasn't so drunk he would lay into us for no apparent reason.

My memories of the days without gas and electricity are great because he was mostly away long distance lorry driving, so wasn't there to spoil it for me so often.

If I was to write about it it would be more as a realistic novel inspired by those days, rather than an accurate account I think. That way I wouldn't have to delve too deep into unpleasant memories that are better left buried.