Anne Boleyn

If you follow me on Goodreads you might have noticed that I have been reading a lot about Tudor history, especially everything related to Anne Boleyn. She has become a new obsession to me, for many different reasons. The first and the most obvious is that she is some sort of enigma belonging to one of the most interesting periods of English history. She was the first queen to ever be sentenced to death, she was a reformer, and the mother of the most glorious queen England has ever had: Elizabeth I. 

What also caught my interest is the way she has been described, shown and portrayed throughout the years. She has either been a saint or a whore, depending on the point of view, and the latter has always been the most popular. This polarization bothers me but does not surprise me. Until some time ago (and sometimes even today) women belonged to either one of two categories: the angel or the devil, the saint or the whore, the poor victim or the tyrant, there was nothing in between. Well, human nature is not like that, no one is just one thing or completely one thing. No one is purely evil (maybe except Voldemort) or absolutely good. Humans are a complex combination of personality traits, feelings, contradictions, thoughts, impulses, etc. We have too many layers so labels are just rubbish. Anne Boleyn is not the first woman to have been labeled thus, and she’s certainly not the last. For example, if we look at the other Tudor women, we will see the same thing: poor and saintly Katherine of Aragon, poor Mary, who was horribly treated and bastardized by her father (although she later became Bloody Mary, with no in-between whatsoever), good and obedient Jane Seymour, horrible adulteress Katherine Howard. You see what I mean.

Among all of these women, Anne has been perhaps the most slandered and the most polarized by the public, historians, writers and filmmakers.  Let us briefly look at the facts to plainly see why there is more than what we see on the surface of the story of this unforgettable Queen:

She was accused of having slept with several different men, including her own brother and of having slandered the King by making offensive comments about his virility and such. Most historians now agree that the accusations have no evidence, are based simply on hearsay from people who didn’t like her. The dates and places do not correspond. If you look at the three years she was married to King Henry, she was either pregnant, had just given birth to Elizabeth or was recovering from miscarriages. When had she so much time (and strength) to have all these love affairs?

If Anne is guilty of something is that she was very proud. One of the things she wanted most was to be truly recognized as a Queen, to be respected as one. Do you think a woman like that would have lowered herself by having an affair with Mark Smeaton (the only one to confess to having an affair with Anne), a servant? His confession was obtained after spending some time with Thomas Cromwell and he was probably tortured.

But I will leave the history facts to the experts.

I have come to admire her because she was an outstanding woman in her context. In a time where women were supposed to be docile and obedient, she was outspoken and demanding; in a time where the ideal of beauty were blonde women with blue eyes, she was a dark beauty with expressive dark eyes. She had a mind of her own, was very independent, considering her context of course, and very much ahead of her time. She was not a puppet the King could rule so easily. This was perhaps the reason why he became obsessed with her and also, the reason he got tired of her.  I don’t think she was the saintly, helpless victim the Protestant historians described, nor the monstrous whore, the "scandal of Christendom", the Catholics (and then the public opinion and tradition) described: she definitely knew how to play the game, how to get what she wanted, how to move ahead, and she did it quite successfully for a long time, but that was ultimately her own demise because the time was not ready for a woman like her. She had many flaws but she was not the great whore, the seductive temptress, the reason for Henry’s tyranny. This is the Adam and Eve story all over again. This is how the world wants Anne to be, not how she necessarily was.

There’s so much we don’t know about her, so many voids, so many grey areas. That is part of what feeds my obsession, of wanting to discover more about her, even a little piece that allows me to see her more clearly. 

I want to think (and this is my romantic and idealistic part) that Elizabeth’s success and golden age had a lot to do with the personality traits she inherited from her mother and what she knew about her. She was a strong-minded, stubborn woman who led her country to glory. Elizabeth never married; she famously said “I will have but one mistress and no master”. I think (I want to think) that she learned that from her mother’s tragedy.

These are the non-fiction / history books I have read about the Tudors:
- Tudors (History of England Vol. 2) - Peter Ackroyd
- The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the parts they played in History - Martin Andrew Sharp Hume
- The History of England Volume I - David Hume
- Life in a Tudor Palace - Christopher Gidlow
- The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen - Susan Bordo
- The Reign of Mary Tudor - J.A. Froude (currently reading)
- The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn - Eric Ives (currently reading)
- The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn with Notes

Fiction books I have read based on the Tudors:
- Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
- Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

This book has opened a door to a new obsession for me: English history. Though this is a novel, it made me look at history with new eyes and be interested in the lives of all those who were its main characters. 

Before I read Wolf Hall I thought Cromwell was basically a villain, an unscrupulous, selfish man that advised the King to get what was in Cromwell’s best interest, not necessarily England’s or even the King’s.  He was the one to blame for the execution of Thomas More and all the bloody deeds Henry VIII carried out in order to get what he wanted. But after reading this book, I was once again reminded that nothing is black and white and that Cromwell was a human being, not a villain from a Disney movie. Mantel portrays him as someone who is indeed manipulative, very smart and opportunistic, but with a sensitive side, the human side, which can also show mercy, generosity and even courage. The same happens with Thomas More, according to Mantel’s point of view he is not the impeccable saint and martyr everyone thinks him to be, he is, just like Cromwell, a flawed man, with virtues and a dark side. It was a refreshing experience to read about them in a complex and complete way.

Thomas Cromwell

I’m not going into specifics about the plot of the book because we all know about Henry’s reign and the successes and failures in Cromwell’s life. The important thing here is the perspective under which we are able to see the protagonists of this complicated period of time, which is an entirely new experience because thanks to Hilary Mantel’s detailed work, they are now colorful human beings, not just dry lines in a history book.

Henry VIII

As I read the novel, all those familiar names and stories came alive before my eyes and made me really think and reflect about the time, and how everything that took place back then has had an impact on us. Events that took place back then changed life for us now and it is an exciting thing to be able to sink into that world with the help of Mantel’s imagination (based on her extensive research and work, this is not one of those books that mixes up the dates and events and changes the outcome of things, it is the imaginative storytelling of what actually happened, she is filling in the voids of the intimate lives and characteristics of everyone involved in these events).

Since I finished reading Wolf Hall I have read two history books about the Tudors: Tudors (The History of England Vol. 2) by Peter Ackroyd and The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts they played in History by Martin Andrew Sharp Hume. I am really interested in reading more about this famous dynasty and I want to focus now a little bit more on Elizabeth I, because it is the perfect context reading for my Shakespeare project. 

Anne Boleyn

I have already ordered Wolf Hall's sequel called Bring Up the Bodies and I can’t wait to read it. Wolf Hall has been a very important book in my reading experience this year because it has set the tone for what I want to read the rest of the year. I want to focus on the parts of history I love and on the context of Shakespeare’s life and works. This second-half of 2013 is going to be very Elizabethan. 

I strongly recommend to the history buffs out there to read Wolf Hall, I’m pretty sure you are going to love it.