Plus ça Change – May 13, 2026
My critique group (see Clustered Together) is still working on Dancer. We’re getting toward the end, and of late their feedback results in tweaks. Good tweaks, but the story is solid. Writing is never done. Although this goes back into Dancer, it’s the writing process, so let’s talk about it here.
The phrase from the novel uses an idiom.
“But that planter’s wife, what a piece of work,” Marie says.
One of my colleagues questioned the idiom, wondering if it was a modernism. I work hard to keep them out, I don’t want to disrupt the reader’s suspension of time. “Tubular Dude,” does not work. I didn’t recall looking this one up. I probably did, but let’s look.
The idiom has both a positive and negative connotation. The positive dates back to William Shakespeare (why am I not surprised). Hamlet, Act II, Scene II.
“What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty.”
The negative goes back to the 18th century. But unmodified, it is potentially ambiguous. In the etymological history I saw a suggestion. Add the word ‘nasty’ to get a nasty piece of work, which has been a popular description for an unpleasant person since the 18th century.
“But that planter’s wife, what a nasty piece of work,” Marie says.
So there you have it. It is Bill’s fault. I did the nasty. One word. But it is an appropriate phrase for the time. Such are the perambulations of a good writer of historical fiction.
EDIT: in the end I decided to leave it as is, without modification. One, it is period appropriate. Two, the absence of “nasty” means the phrase is used in the ironical sense, and I want that edge to Marie, that’s what she’s like. She’s sharp, quick-witted, fast-thinking, and insightful.
