by Olivia Atwater
Fantasy can be a wonderful tool to reflect on our own world. In today’s FaRoFeb blog, Olivia Atwater tells us all about the use of satire in her fantasy romance writing.
“I am no ‘Goodman Elf’. Indeed, you should address me as ‘Your Lordship’ or ‘Lord Hollowvale’, for I am the marquess of that realm. You can tell that I am important, for I am wearing many expensive jackets.”
— Half a Soul
Once upon a time, I wrote a faerie tale romance with the explicit intention of satirising the aristocracy. Half a Soul was set within the Regency era, with a healthy dose of faeries and magic. For half a second, I thought I’d need to seriously research in order to find things to lampoon. Not so, dear reader. As has been the case with every era, the wealthy and the privileged essentially lampoon themselves.
In the very first chapter, I introduced a faerie named ‘Lord Hollowvale’, who believed himself to be important because of his several layers of expensive jackets. A reader who is unfamiliar with the era will still understand that Lord Hollowvale has bought into the delusion that buying many expensive things makes you an important person. But reader, I swear I did not make this up: there was a brief fashion during the Regency era where men wore two jackets at once, in order to show off their wealth.
The second novel of the series, Ten Thousand Stitches, follows a put-upon house maid named Euphemia Reeves. Early on in the novel, Euphemia’s employer Lady Culver decides that she requires French maids for her household, since employing French maids was considered a mark of class. Unfortunately, Lady Culver was too cheap to pay for French maids—and so, she ordered her existing English maids to fake a French accent. Darling reader, I did not make this up either. There are records of a real Regency lady who required her English maids to pretend a French accent.
The more that I research, in fact, the more difficult it becomes to write anything more fantastical than reality. Really, the only unrealistic thing about my books at this point is the faeries.
There is a long and storied history of satire in both fantasy and romance; in fact, several of the most famous luminaries in both have been satirically inclined. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has several political criticisms buried within it; for goodness’ sake, there’s an entire chapter called ‘A Caucus Race and a Long Tale’. And of course, one cannot possibly mention satirical fantasy without bringing up the reigning champion of the genre, Sir Terry Pratchett (Small Gods and The Night Watch both remain, to-date, two of my favourite novels ever written).
Romance, too, has its share of satire. One of the primary inspirations for Half a Soul was Jane Austen’s famous novel Pride and Prejudice. While the satire may not be apparent to modern readers, several of the characters in the novel are meant to be stand-ins for well-known stereotypes of people from the period. Imagine Jane Austen spending the morning with a woman obsessed with marrying her daughters off to wealthy men; Jane returns home, exasperated and with a slight headache, and immediately begins writing about Mrs Bennet, whose first description of every man she meets involves his money. It’s so delightfully on the nose!
Not every fantasy romance needs to have satire, for obvious reasons. But many of my favourite novels in both genres have had at least a dash of it—and I am proud to continue the tradition myself, however aptly or ineptly I might execute the concept.
About Olivia Atwater
Olivia Atwater writes whimsical historical fantasy with a hint of satire. She lives in Montreal, Quebec with her prose-inspiring husband and her two cats. When she told her second-grade history teacher that she wanted to work with history someday, she is fairly certain this isn’t what either party had in mind. She has been, at various times, a historical re-enactor, a professional witch at a meta-physical supply store, a web developer, and a vending machine repairperson. Visit her at www.oliviaatwater.com.