time when England was a very confident place". In particular, "it's the sort of Englishness which is stuffy but fundamentally benevolent, and fundamentally very responsible about the rest of the world", which connects Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes to Clarke's Jonathan Strange. Historical otherness Using techniques of the genre of alternative history, Clarke creates events and characters that would have been out of place in the early nineteenth century. She also explores the "silencing" of under-represented groups: women, people of colour, and poor whites. Both Strange and Norrell suppress the voices of these groups in their rise to power. Mr Norrell, for example, attempts to buy up all the books of magic in England to keep anyone else from acquiring their knowledge. He also barters away half of Emma Wintertowne's (Lady Pole's) life for political influence, a deal about which, due to an enchantment, she cannot speak coherently. Clarke explores the limits of "English" magic through the characters of Stephen Black and Vinculus. As Clarke explains, "If you put a fairy next to a person who is also outside English society ... suddenly the fact that there is this alien race seems more believable, because you've got another alien and the two of them can talk about the English in this very natural way." The gentleman with the thistle-down hair idealizes Stephen as a noble savage and enslaves him by taking him to the Lost-Hope—like Lady Pole, Stephen is silenced. Both "suffer under a silencing spell that mimics gaps in the historical record". Furthermore, the gentleman's desire to acquire Stephen for his dancing hall is reminiscent of the objectification of black slaves in European society. Stephen vows to eternally hate all white men after he hears the circumstances of the death of his enslaved mother, but when the thistle-down haired gentleman kills the white Vinculus in front of Stephen, he weeps. Both Strange and Norrell see the essence of Englishness in the Raven King, a character who was raised by fairies and could not speak English. As Elizabeth Hoiem explains, "The most English of all Englishmen, then, is both king and slave, in many ways indistinguishable from Stephen Black. This paradox is what ultimately resolves the plot. When Strange and Norrell summon 'the nameless slave', the Raven King's powerful alliances with nature are transferred to Stephen Black, allowing Stephen to kill the Gentleman and free himself from slavery." In the end,