Charles Dickens was a great chronicler of Victorian life, but in the 1840s he became part of the story – founding a house for “fallen women”, and designing every detail of it down to the women’s clothing. Lancashire-born author Stacey Halls picks up the threads of truth to weave The Household, her latest tale of historical fiction. She tells Josie Hindle where she abandoned the facts and let the fiction take charge.
In a quiet house in the countryside outside London, the finishing touches are being made to welcome a group of young women. The house and its location are top secret, its residents unknown to one another, but the girls have one thing in common: they are fallen. Offering refuge for prostitutes, petty thieves and the destitute, Urania Cottage is a second chance at life – but how badly do they want it?
Meanwhile, a few miles away in a Piccadilly mansion, millionairess Angela Burdett-Coutts, one of the benefactors of Urania Cottage, makes a discovery that leaves her cold: her stalker of 10 years has been released from prison. As the women’s worlds collide in ways they could never have expected, they will discover that freedom always comes at a price.
Lancashire-born Halls, who studied journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, is the author of historical fiction including The Foundling and The Familiars. Her latest book, The Household, draws on the real life house for fallen women founded by Charles Dickens in the 1840.
Tell us about the real life events that inspired this story.
The Household is inspired by the refuge for “fallen” women that Charles Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts set up in the 1840s. It was a charitable endeavour to better the lives of women who’d fallen on hard times and who’d had to resort to prostitution or petty crimes to survive. At Urania Cottage they were trained as domestic servants and given an education and then their passage to a new country would be paid for, so they could truly begin a new life somewhere else.
Dickens was a great chronicler of Victorian life. Why do you think he became so involved with fallen women, as opposed to being a passive observer, and how should we view his involvement?
His friend Angela Burdett-Coutts was astonishingly wealthy and asked him for advice on where was best to donate to. They were both very passionate about social inequity and cooked up the idea of this house. Dickens was the driving force behind it – he found the house and the girls, hired the staff, decided how it would be decorated, what clothes the girls would wear, what prayers they would read… everything. He had an obsessive and fastidious personality and would never have been able to give 40% to something, it had to be 100%. Once the house was set up he wrote David Copperfield, which features a fallen women storyline, so it’s safe to assume he was creatively inspired by the “experiment”, as he called it, as well.
When writing historical fiction inspired by real life events, how do you decide where to abandon the facts and let the fiction take charge?
I sift through the facts to find the story, or manipulate them to fit a narrative I’ve designed. I never set out to write a true and faithful account and I don’t pretend to. That’s for the historians. My job is to keep readers reading, and so some playfulness with the truth is necessary.
How do you approach character research and development, especially for those inspired by real people?
I allow them to take shape on the page. I don’t overly plan their personalities or storylines. I like for them to reveal themselves to me, rather than me control them. Of course there is an element of control but if I want my characters to feel fully fleshed out then I have to let them frustrate and surprise me, too.
In what ways do the challenges faced by the women in the book parallel women’s lives today?
I wish that women’s refuges and safe spaces for those fleeing sex work and violence didn’t have to exist, but of course they do. And I wish I could say that attitudes towards women in sex work or being sexually active – very different things – have moved on, but I don’t think they have either. You might not be ostracised from society anymore for having a child outside of marriage but words to describe women who have sex are still used as insults.
If you could transport yourself to the setting and time period of any of your novels, which would you choose and why?
I’d go for a nose around Victorian London with Josephine. I’ve always felt the presence of it; it is a very real place to me, sometimes more real than reality, and I wish I could see it.
How does your background in journalism inform your writing as a novelist?
I’m quite good at sifting through silt for the story. And there isn’t a lot of fat to trim in my novels; they are quite lean in terms of prose and story. I don’t overwrite and often have the opposite problem.
Who are your literary influences?
Sarah Waters, Daphne Du Maurier, the Bronte sisters, Maggie O’Farrell and Kate Atkinson are all favourites.
The Household is published by Manilla Press and out now.
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