In my author letter for My Fair Lord I shared some thoughts on Florence’s autism.
Florence Wakechild speaks forthrightly to the point where she is considered rude. She answers questions literally and takes things at face value. She info dumps about champagne grapes at parties and becomes engrossed with the rules of society to the extent that she decides to systematically apply them to a complete stranger to turn him into a perfect example. She’s awkward in social situations, misses social cues, finds large gatherings exhausting and as a child preferred to go off and line up flowers in size order than join in games. She talks about masking (though literally in her case) and she stims.
Today she’d probably use the term ‘sensory overload’ to articulate how she feels when she’s in a crowded, noisy room, but at the time the book is set no one would use that terminology, or diagnose Florence as being on the Autistic Spectrum. The first case was described and recorded in 1799 but the term itself wasn’t used until 1911 and the diagnostic criteria weren’t standardised until the 1980s.
For many years I didn’t understand why some of my feelings, thoughts and behaviours made me stand out as different and why I was never quite able to ‘pass’ in company other than I was the ‘weirdo’ or odd one out all through school and beyond. I never even considered that I might be Autistic because the representations in media didn’t speak to me. I definitely am not a maths genius like Sheldon Cooper, and I was articulate rather than semi-non-verbal like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man. It was only when my own children began their journey towards diagnosis that I (like my husband) began to consider how the criteria related to me. Knowing more about it has helped in so many ways, the most important of which is that I’m kinder to myself when I don’t manage to fit in. I’m still the weird one but now I can spot others and gravitate to them where we can be weird together and info dump about our latest obsessions. In fact, writing historical fiction might be the perfect outlet for me as long as I keep a lid on my research holes.
I find it fascinating to read books written before the condition was widely understood and spot characters whose behaviour indicates the author was describing Autism (Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and Mr Dick in David Copperfield being a couple that spring to mind and maybe you have your own thoughts in which case I’d love to hear them).
Writers of TV shows or books sometimes say that the interpretation is up to the reader/viewer and they haven’t deliberately written an Autistic character but when I wrote Florence I purposefully set out to write her as Autistic, drawing a number of her traits from my own as well as other friends and family (don’t ask who or what, my lips are sealed). I was delighted when the notes came back from the copyeditor asking if she was intended to be on the spectrum. I’ve written characters previously who show traits, some more than others, and if you’ve read Daughter of the Sea you’ll recognise Effie’s son as being on the spectrum in a very different way to Florence. As well as first-hand, I’ve taught many children over my twenty-plus years as a teacher who have been diagnosed or are waiting on the (shamefully long) list to get their diagnosis and there are so many different ways in which the condition manifests.
If you spot yourself in some of the things Florence does or says and it sparks some curiosity towards your own neuro-behaviour then I wish you all the best in discovering if and where you sit on the line. If you spot a friend or relative then be kind to them and listen when they info dump (it’s a love language) but maybe don’t try fraudulently creating a peer.
My Fair Lord is available as ebook and paperback. http://mybook.to/MyFairLord
Elisabeth Hobbes Writes History 