‘I want the ecstasy rooted in real bodies in real times’: what makes sex in historical fiction so alluring?

Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Dance Tree, explores sex in historical fiction that goes beyond heaving corsets and takes us into a world of deeper eroticism.

For Kiran Millwood Hargrave, the best historical fiction about sex and sexuality is rooted deeply in the politics of the body and the particular rituals and restrictions of the time. Her own mesmerising novels – The Dance Tree and The Mercies – transport us to the very particular worlds of sixteenth-century Strasbourg and seventeenth-century Norway. And, from the wild romps of Circe through elicit love in the American Civil War via a ghostly love affair with George Sand and London counterculture in wartime, Millwood Hargrave describes eight historical reads that bring desire to vivid life.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave author photo — Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The meteoric rise of Bridgerton has attested to the fact that sex in period costume taps into something in our collective psyche. The mix of lush fabrics and restrictive corsets, the lingering glances and the mannered dancing – the push and pull of passion and permissiveness – is seemingly irresistible to contemporary audiences.

But Bridgerton is a fantasy. All fiction is, to a certain extent, but when we abandon some of the historical setting, the resultant ‘rules’ of society that people lived and loved under at the time, we also lose a lot of the deep and true eroticism. We are left with froth – all well and good – but not something that personally has ever interested me. I don’t want the fairytale, I want the blood and guts, the politics of the body, the scents and sounds, the ecstasy rooted in real bodies in real times. That’s where the deepest connections are found.

Of course, sex in historical fiction is not only about the act. It is interwoven with societal norms, attitudes, restrictions and beliefs. Of especial interest to me are the realities of LGBTQ+ lives in eras when they were either not recognised or were celebrated (or at least accepted). It is well-acknowledged that the Greeks had various forms of love, including homosexual love. Intersex and trans people have long held status in Indian society. History is full of women who lived with long-time ‘female companions’, or who married men while loving women. The queer community has always existed, and the ways in which we tell their stories should be as varied as their lives were.

‘I don’t want the fairytale, I want the blood and guts, the politics of the body, the scents and sounds, the ecstasy rooted in real bodies in real times.’

In The Dance Tree we encounter relationships forbidden by law and condemned by God. But they exist nonetheless, in all their complex, glorious, dangerous joy. We find a mother who is not recognised as such, for none of her babies lived long enough to be baptised. We find childhood friends who found their play evolving into passion. We find illicit meets in the Black Forest, home of rebels and lovers alike.

I wanted to give these characters a safe place. They lived at an extraordinary time, of climatic change, religious fervour, the fall of an empire and an influx of immigrants. The stress and strain manifested as a dancing plague that swept Strasbourg for one maddeningly hot summer – but still a place of calm could be found. That’s where the eponymous dance tree comes in, a linden that once formed a pagan church and courtroom, a town hall open under God and built into the branches of a tree. A strange, real place, where the dictums of the day fall away, and these characters can truly look their desires in the face.

Writing historical fiction is fraught with pitfalls, but an easy way to connect to character is to write ‘from the body’. Here are eight of the many excellent books I turned to for their frank and raw depictions of desire in historical settings.