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Welcome Nell ... Hope your books are doing well. Do you have any works in process you'd like to share with us?
Hi Nell, nice to meet you and while I have not read your books (yet), I've had a peek at what they are about and they seem fascinating. I'm certainly going to look them out and look forward to reading them. Two questions, what attracted you to write about such a famous historic person as Anne Boleyn? And was that not a rather daunting task, given how much there is already known about her?Thanks
Marianne
Nell, after all the research you must have done, can you tell us, would you have liked Anne Boleyn if you'd met her?
Hello, everyone! Thank you for having me - I'm so glad to be here! I wanted to mention that I invited a special guest, Susan Bordo, who is writing THE CREATION OF ANNE BOLEYN. Marianne, we'll be addressing what a daunting task it is, to write anything, fictional or non-fictional, about Anne Boleyn! Her entire history was manufactured over the centuries, and really none of the experts agree with one another about virtually anything that may have happened. Most of what we know was written by her enemies, and for that reason, most of what we think is true about her is highly suspect.
In addition, there has always been a love affair between the public and Anne Boleyn. People take her story very personally, and get upset when anyone who "changes" what they know, or presents another viewpoint. So "daunting" is a very good word!
Lexi wrote: "Nell, after all the research you must have done, can you tell us, would you have liked Anne Boleyn if you'd met her?"Lexi, I am sure I would like Anne Boleyn. I'm also sure she could be very difficult to like at times.
If anyone is familiar with the story in HANG ON, I wrote about a girl who is dealing with personality issues as a result of childhood trauma. Much of what I wrote reflects the kind of issues I dealt with myself. When I was writing and researching Threads, I could almost see the same or similar issues present in the way Anne Boleyn was described. Consequently, I took a more sympathetic stance than a lot of novelists and biographers. I felt as if I "got" her, if only because I could see my own struggles in her story. Again, everyone's interpretation of her story is different. I'm as likely to be right or wrong about her as anyone.
I saw someone who essentially meant well, regardless of what kind of ambitions she may have had. She spent her entire reign caring for the poor. She defended the expression of religious thought, and during her reign no heretics were burned at the stake. There is no telling how many lives she saved.
But she was nervous and volatile, and had a sharp, skewed wit that most people wouldn't understand, or would take offense to. She made me laugh out loud, sometimes, when I read the things she said or did. All of these "very funny" things were cited as evidence that she was evil or a shrew, when I suspected she may have been just cracking wise. I could be wrong - no one knows what she was like, really. However, before she was queen people seemed to like her.
Perhaps it was Henry who turned her personality sour, eh?
Hello Nell!I recently read Hang On and wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it - a real page turner!! I really wanted to be there with Holly on the road with the band (an unfulfilled dream of mine!). I'm looking forward to your next book!!
Michael wrote: "Welcome Nell ... Hope your books are doing well. Do you have any works in process you'd like to share with us?"=Thank you, Michael! I'm still in the brainstorming phase for my next book. I'm a slow writer, though, so it will be a while.
Hi Nell - and a hello to Susan Bordo! Thanks for answer, Nell! Very interesting, looking forward to hearing more. Susan, is The Creation of Anne Boleyn about 'the manufactured history' that Nell refers to?
Hi, sorry it took me awhile; for some reasons, Goodreads didn't recognize me as a member. In answer to your question, yes, my book is very much about the "manufactured history." It goes quite far in that direction, too,because although many people agree that novelists and movie-makers have invented aspects of Anne's life, I argue that the "creating" actually goes way, way back. One of the main sources is Chapuys, imperial ambassador, who many historians--even today--use as a trusted resource, despite his obvious biases. But, for another group of writers, she became a great martyr. So many factions, so many generations, have imagined her differently; it's a real cultural rorschach! Susan (and hi to Nell!)
I also would like to second something that Nell said, about Anne's wit. I think that this is an aspect of her personality that has been badly misinterpreted, not just by historical commentators, but by some excellent actresses, who play her famous lines in the tower as though they are all demonstrations of her unhinged state of mind. I read many of them as sardonic, not "hysterical." And to my mind, the only actress who has done this side of Anne justice is Genevieve Bujold. I love Natalie Dormer's performance, but Bujold has got her fiery, proud wit down cold.
Have always been fascinated by Anne Boleyn, as have a lot of people. There were also many legends created about her. Do you get into that in The Creation of Anne Boleyn? Looking forward to reading it.
Erma wrote: "Have always been fascinated by Anne Boleyn, as have a lot of people. There were also many legends created about her. Do you get into that in The Creation of Anne Boleyn? Looking forward to reading..."Hi Erma! Yes, I do explore the legends that have grown up around Anne, and try to shatter some of the myths. And I also have some new theories about things that have remained mysterious, like: How could Henry do it (You know what "it" is, of course!)? And just exactly what was so special about her? I have some answers to these that are different from the usual. I also look at all the novels, movies, plays, etc. that have depicted Anne in so many different ways. And I have terrific interview material with Natalie Dormer, Genevieve Bujold, Michael Hirst and others, which I use to tell the story of how profoundly Bujold and Dormer shaped the image of Anne in "1000 Days" and "The Tudors." And I also have a whole chapter on Anne's current fans, especially on the internet. It's been an incredibly fun project--and quite an exhausting one!
Mod
Hello, A.F., what a great question...Anne is a unique case, in that she is acknowledged to have had a huge impact historically, but only as a "medium" of others: as Elizabeth's mother, and as the object of Henry's desire and thus part of his motivation for breaking with Rome. But because he destroyed her letters and anything else he could lay his hands on that testified to her existence, and because so much of what was written about her is filtered through the agendas, biases, etc. of courtiers, ambassadors, Catholic propagandists, Protestant martryologists, and highly inventive novelists, playwrights (and historians), we have very little reliable access to knowledge of what she herself did, said, or thought. We know the bare bones, of course, and the famous quotes and incidents. But I believe she was not just the object of Henry's desire, but influenced his ideas much more than has been generally acknowledged. She probably touched many other lives that we know very little about. And of course, we know very little about what Elizabeth felt or thought about her, and how that impacted on her life. Because we know so little, and because what we know has been tainted so much by mythology, she will always be an "unfinished" person, a "work in progress," endlessly fascinating, with always more to be discovered by the interested researcher, or re-imagined by the creative artist (like Nell's "Threads"!) So I would say that her greatest impact (that we can assess with any assurance) has been over our imaginations. How many historical figures have been so "immortal" in their hold over our minds and hearts?
Maggie wrote: "Hello Nell!I recently read Hang On and wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it - a real page turner!! I really wanted to be there with Holly on the road with the band (an unfulfilled dream ..."
Maggie, thank you so much! I should say that there are several scenes in the book that were taken from real life. For instance, the depiction of lunch in the Tennessee whorehouse is pretty spot on with what really happened. We had a pretty wild Texan as a bus driver, and a pretty naive 20-year-old backup bus driver, and a breakdown in the Smoky Mountains just up the road from a stretch of highway lined on either side with whorehouses. It was was lunchtime, and therefore a perfect recipe for mayhem!
I would like to mention that the cover art for Threads up above is from a version that has been out of print for years. Here you go, with the latest edition!http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59...
Also, I'm not sure what page is displaying for HANG ON, but this is the one with ratings and reviews:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...
Susan, thank you for joining me! I'm anxious to read your book, which I hope you finish shortly - what's your ETA on that? I imagine other people are interested as well. I know we've discussed this, but the way I approached her in my research was to weed out anything that was speculation, and look at the "person." Biographers wrote thousands of pages about what Anne "must have thought," or "probably thought," and so forth. Novelists expand on this, and readers build a picture in their heads about the "real Anne Boleyn." However, nobody knows.
Yet everyone is very emotional - and so am I! I recall going for months, updating Wikipedia every day, to change Anne's birth year. Someone who felt equally passionate about a different year changed my changes EVERY DAY. We went back and forth like this, as I said, for months, until we both gave up and moved on. Clearly it's silly to get embroiled in the factoids about historical celebrity, dead these 500 years. Still, people do - I DID!
They know they're right. I know I'm right. Yet...no one knows when she was born, not really. I explored this on my website at http:\\www.nellgavin.net/boleyn_links/boleyn..., where I dumped all of my research. With regard to Anne's birth year, I very firmly believe she was born around 1500, rather than 1507. Why? Because everyone who favors a later date relies on speculation. I posted my analysis at http://www.nellgavin.net/boleyn_links... and also explain how I arrived at that conclusion. It's a long analysis - perhaps too long for the casual visitor to scroll through - but I respond to all the arguments I've seen in favor of 1507.
That's the way I approached most of it, by studying the information source. Still, I allowed for historical inaccuracies (and later addressing them) whenever I required them for plot. For instance, we don't know that Anne really had six fingers, which is historical "fact" that even made it into the movie, "Steel Magnolias." It appears as though she had some slight deformity on one of her fingers, or one of her fingernails, but history has made it an extra digit, and no one can prove or disprove any of it.
So Susan is right. Our knowledge of Anne is "unfinished" and she is that much more intriguing because of it!
Nell wrote: "Susan, thank you for joining me! I'm anxious to read your book, which I hope you finish shortly - what's your ETA on that? I imagine other people are interested as well. I know we've discussed th..."
I think the wonderful thing about "Threads" is not in the realm of facts but in the realm of deeper truths about personality, motivation, etc. Nell really gets "inside" Anne psychologically in a very convincing way. And of course, it's just a fabulous read!!
I agree about the birth date, and actually I think it's pretty clear from all kinds of evidence that she wasn't born in 1507. I suspect you go into this in your discussion on your website, so I won't go into it here. But with regard to the sixth finger, although we don't have decisive "proof" I think all the evidence and reason points to the fact that it wasn't an actual extra finger (that part comes from Nicholas Sander, who also claimed that Anne, at 15, slept with her father's butler, then his chaplain, said she was the child of Henry VIII and her own mother, and other absurd charges) but an extra bit of nail (as George Wyatt, grandson of the poet who actually knew Anne, has written.) The most compelling reasons for this: (1) None of Anne's contemporaries, not even Chapuys, mentions an extra finger. (2) Wyatt admits to various of her imperfections, such a several small moles, so sounds quite credible when he describes the extra bit of nail. If he had washed Anne clean of all defect, he would have been less convincing (3) More decisive: The king would never have courted someone with an extra finger; it would have been regarded as a sign of satanic influence over Anne's mother, and made her a totally unacceptable Queen, let alone court lady.
Oh, yes, forgot your question about the book. It's virtually finished, but production takes quite a while, so it won't be available between covers until early 2013. Sounds like a long time, doesn't it? But then, I've been working on it for over five years, so in they grand scheme of things....I should mention, though, that various bits and pieces of it (including an excerpt called "At the Scaffold" and another called "How Could He Do It") are posted on the book website, where I'll be blogging and posting from here on. So those who are interested, please do come have a look! http://www.thecreationofanneboleyn.com
Oh...and also, there's a juicy interview with Nell on the website, too!
I hadn't read all of the statements Nicholas Sander made about Anne - just references to them, and mostly they're ridiculous. One of the things that stuck with me, though, was his statement that she had been raped at age 7 at Hever Castle (her childhood home) by one of her father's officers.It seemed very odd to me, because it contained JUST those specific details - not too much, not too little, JUST RIGHT. Back in those times, women were chattel, and a rape would have devalued Anne. I think it's possible that it actually happened, and was covered up to keep her marketable. Nicholas Sanders somehow found out about it, and triumphantly trumpeted it to shame her.
Here's where I found that useful - I go back to Anne's year of birth. If she was being raped at Hever Castle when she was 7, she couldn't be in The Netherlands in 1514, writing a letter in French with adult handwriting. Therefore, she was not born in 1507.
I posted an example of Anne's handwriting in 1514 at http://www.nellgavin.net/boleyn_links.... The fact that it's mature was one thing. The fact that she might have been raped at age 7 when she was still at home was another.
Nell wrote: "I hadn't read all of the statements Nicholas Sander made about Anne - just references to them, and mostly they're ridiculous. One of the things that stuck with me, though, was his statement that sh..."Yes, if she had been born in 1507, she would have been way too young to be a handmaid in the Netherlands in 1514. They didn't send them abroad at 7--and yes, the handwriting of the letter is way too mature to be from a 7 year old. But I don't see any mention in Sander of a rape when she was 7. I'm interested where you read this, because it may be that the reference got it wrong. Or maybe I missed it somehow. But in any case, if you read Sander himself, you'll see that he is a throughly non-credible "witness." I wouldn't trust anything he says, even a detail that seems to make sense, unless it is corroborated by someone else. Also, if Sander found out about it, others would have before him (he was writing long after Anne's death) and it would have been mentioned elsewhere. What he did in his "Schism" was to take bits and pieces of gossip about Anne, Mary, and their mother, jumble them all together, exaggerate some, make up others, and produce a picture of the "dissolute Boleyns." It's all propaganda.
The reference was in Allison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII - she only mentioned it once on page 151, and qualified it by stating that Sanders "was responsible for some of the wilder inaccuracies that later gained currency about Anne Boleyn."
Wow. I'm learning lots more about the legends and facts of Anne Boleyn by reading these comments. I always liked her as a kid--my favorite of the wives when I had to do history in school. But I'm not sure what it was--we certainly didn't hear the juicier stuff. She just seemed nice, and real, less like a text-book cut-out.
Hello, Ms. Nell, can you tell us what or who are your inspirations when ou work with a story. And why? :D
Nell wrote: "The reference was in Allison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII - she only mentioned it once on page 151, and qualified it by stating that Sanders "was responsible for some of the wilder inaccuraci..."Weir doesn't give a page number, so I couldn't check it in Sander. But I did re-read the section on Anne and don't see it anywhere. Weir also refers to him as Sanders, not Sander, which suggests that perhaps she hadn't read him herself (perhaps). I'm not accusing Weir, as the rape may simply be buried somewhere else in the book, but I did find when researching Anne that the original sources did not always square with what I read in the bios (even some very respected ones). An awful lot of Anne "history" is like this: there's a kind of looseness with the original sources that has resulted in the recycling of a lot of misinformation. I am off to bed now! See you tomorrow....
Hello, Nell and Susan, thanks for answering my questions and just want to say how much I am enjoying this session, it's fascinating to hear all this information on Anne!Cheers and much success with the books!
Marianne
With Henry having six wives, Nell, what was the particular attraction of Anne Boleyn for you? Why Anne, and not any of the others? Bob Davidson
Paul wrote: "Do you have any plans to write about Henry's other wives or are you happy to stick with this one"Hi Paul, I don't know if this was meant for Nell, or me, or both of us, but I have no plans to write about any of the other wives.
Rizza wrote: "Hello, Ms. Nell, can you tell us what or who are your inspirations when ou work with a story. And why? :D"Writing is a very odd kind of a task. Inspiration can come from anywhere, and it can shift and change during the course of your writing.
In my conversations with other authors, I've learned we're all different. Some authors chart out and outline the entire story, then write it from beginning to end without deviating from the plan.
Others of us are "seat of your pants" authors who sit down without any idea of what is coming, and just write a pile of words, and then edit them into a story later on. In my case, I wrote all of the chapters out of order without any idea of how they would fit together. One day, I sat down for an hour and pieced them together like a puzzle. I was relieved to see that they all fit!
I was a little better with HANG ON, my second book. Whenever I cut anything, I throw it into a dump.doc file in case I need to retrieve it (I never go back, interestingly enough). HANG ON is a 93,000 word book, and the dump file contains 50,000 words. THREADS, on the other hand, has virtually no words at all that made it from the first draft to the final.
My inspiration for Threads was probably years in the making, maybe even decades. I think I may have begun to wonder about reincarnation when I was eight years old or so. I began reading up on it when I was 13, and pondered it throughout my entire life.
We also lived only 13 miles from a Renaissance festival. I brought my kids there every year. That particular festival featured Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn; Anne's revenge is that she has been queen for nearly 20 years, and has blasted through about six Henrys.
At the same time, I was working in a company with an extremely stressful, extremely toxic political environment.
A seat-of-your-pants author will sit down to write, and pour all of this into the stew without knowing up front what will come of it. I frankly didn't care, when I began writing. It was a way for me to unload after eight hours of torture and a two-hour commute.
Threads became what Threads is because of those three things. I had "strong opinions" about some of the things I saw people at work doing to other people; to me it was career rape, and I was appalled. As Threads began to form, I used it as a commentary on those people, and people who do those things - but I approached it metaphorically. Whenever I wrote about rape in Threads, I was thinking of them. Since it took me years to write the book, they gave me ample fodder for a novel.
When I first wrote the book, and saw what it was becoming, I was frightened - no one had ever done this before. I didn't approach reincarnation as a literary device for a thriller, or whatever, but as a commentary on human behavior using real historical characters. I treated reincarnation as if it were true, which I believe it is, and described the rules as I understand them, without nudging them for plot. I made the plot form around the rules.
I was terrified that my kids would get beaten up at school.
I probably should be even more terrified with HANG ON, but oddly, I'm not. In this book I deal with mental illness; the protagonist has a condition that I actually had myself when I was younger, so the descriptions of what she experiences are real. The condition, called Borderline Personality Disorder, results from childhood trauma or abuse. It's like a fracture, more than an illness, so it does not respond to medication, and improves as you get older. If you diligently retrain your thought patterns - that's really the only way you can address this condition - you can eventually be "cured" as I was.
So I wrote a book about it, referring back to a time when I was a roadie's girlfriend, and traveling with the band. It's fictional, but I did pull in some stories about things that actually happened, like the Tennessee whorehouse story I mentioned earlier.
With this book I was kind of hoping someone would see herself in the character, and...hang on.
Bob wrote: "With Henry having six wives, Nell, what was the particular attraction of Anne Boleyn for you? Why Anne, and not any of the others? Bob Davidson"
I wanted a story about forgiving the unforgivable. I also wanted a "soul mate" story. Anne and Henry were the perfect foils for that kind of a story, so that's why I used them!
Susan wrote: "Nell wrote: "I hadn't read all of the statements Nicholas Sander made about Anne - just references to them, and mostly they're ridiculous. One of the things that stuck with me, though, was his stat..."Susan, I'll defer to your greater wisdom, as I relied solely on biographers, and researched no source documents. My strategy was to cherry pick the "facts" as I needed them, knowing no one really agreed on anything, and that the book was fiction - fantasy, actually. Everything is as true as I knew how to make it, given the challenges.
I essentially built Anne around my knowledge of human nature, and ignored what people insisted she thought, felt, or wanted. Especially Chapuys. I wanted her to be a person, rather than the two-dimensional stick figure that occurs so frequently in literature.
I did want to point out though, that readers of historical fiction need to be cautious when they see reviews that claim a book is "historically inaccurate." The more you know about Anne Boleyn, the less apt you are to make that claim, so don't place too much weight on those reviews. I noted in the Foreword of Threads that you'll find everything documented somewhere, in some biography. If you find a piece of information that is "wrong" it probably just isn't in the books you've read. Read another book, and it may be in there!
Just to clarify, I wasn't criticizing "Threads"--it's a novel, not a history, and why shouldn't you have trusted Alison Weir? I also would add that we are awfully selective when we make those charges of "historical inaccuracy." I wrote about this in the chapter I just finished, on The Tudors t.v. series, and I'll share a bit of that here:
"It was when the show premiered on the BBC that the steam really hit the fan, as the British reacted to the marathon sexuality and what in virtually every review was described as the gross, pandering “Americanization” of English history: “Perfectly preposterous. There are so many pouting babes and dashing blades in Henry’s court, The Tudors looks like a CSI:Miami pool party with ruffles”; “A Wikipedia entry with boobs”: “Sexed up and dumbed down for American audiences”; “A porno-style historical semi-drama quite obviously not aimed as the series television watcher”; “Entourage goes historical”; “If Jackie Collins wrote a dramatic version of Simon Schama’s History of Britain, it might come across like this.”
When the historians got in on the action, criticisms of the historical inaccuracies were added to the complaints about the sex. Retha Warnicke, a historian who has advanced her own somewhat eccentric view of Anne’s fall, later incorporated in both The Tudors and The Other Boleyn Girl (a deformed fetus, taken as a sign of witchcraft) “shuddered” at the conflation of Princess Mary and Margaret into one person: “Truly dreadful,” she said of the merging of the two, which was done, according to Hirst, so that staff at the shooting would not be confused when “Mary” was called to the set. Leanda de Lisle, who has written several well-regarded Tudor biographies: “With inaccuracies in almost every sentence, the BBC is dumbing down the Tudor period.” Alison Weir, popular Anne Boleyn biographer and, more recently, novelist, compared the series to a “Hollywood fairytale”: “For a program to be made with integrity, it has to take account of the facts…the story The Tudors tells isn’t what actually went down in 16th century England. It’s history stripped own and sexed up in stiletto heels and glitter.” David Starkey, one of the Grand Deans of Tudor history (although also a self-confessed “all purpose media tart” who has created controversy in virtually every interview he does) called the series “gratuitously awful” and “a mid-West view of the Tudors…made with the original intention of dumbing it down so that even an audience in Omaha, Nebraska could understand it. Shame on the BBC for producing it.”
There were some exceptions. There were historians who pointed out, that simply by igniting interest in the period, the series had done a service to Tudor history. Tracy Borman, who writes about Anne in Elizabeth’s Women, while acknowledging that the show was often historically inaccurate, admitted to having become “strangely addicted” and praised it for “re-creating the drama and atmosphere of Henry VIII’s court, with its intrigues, scandals, and betrayals.” John Guy, who has written over a dozen scholarly books about Tudor England, agreed; “The Tudors conveys brilliantly the claustrophic atmosphere of Henry’s court. It’s a place where back-watching is second-nature, plotting endemic…If you value true and accurate history, this isn’t for you. But then, it isn’t meant to me. It’s a rumbustious romp through the life and times of ‘Horrible Henry and the Terrible Tudors,’ a fiction loosely based on fact, and when the facts get in the way, they’re ditched. If you can accept that, then watch and enjoy, for that’s what the real-life charactes would have done. Thomas More, who always loved a comic turn, will be spinning in his grave if he’s watching this new series. But at least he’ll be smiling.”
Hirst himself had never claimed the series was 100% historically accurate, and to be fair to The Tudors, there’s not a film or television series—or play or novel, for that matter (and few biographies)—that can lay claim to that. “What?”, a reader wrote in response to a critical Guardian story, “It’s NOT historically accurate?? Thanks goodness I know that Robin Hood is an American with a number 1 soundtrack, King Arthur is an old Scotsman, and the Americans single handedly won the second World War!” He makes a strong point. “Anne of the Thousand Days", in addition to numerous other alterations of history, has that invented—yet somehow perfect--scene in the tower between Anne and Henry. “The Private Life of Henry VIII” turns Anne of Cleves into a wise-cracking card-shark who is physically disgusted by Henry rather than (as history tells it) the other way around. “A Man For All Seasons” neglects to mention that Thomas More, besides being a witty intellectual, also burned quite a few heretics and was apparently not quite the devoted husband he appears to be. The BBC production of “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” barely notes that there was a conflict of authority between Henry and the church, beyond the issue of the divorce; it’s actually much more the wife-centered, “feminized” history that Starkey berates than The Tudors, which spends a lot of time on the more “masculine” (and for Starkey, historically central) end of things: diplomatic skirmishes, wars, court politics, and so on. Hirst, in his interview with me, pointed out with some justice that while The Tudors got slammed for its gaps and inventions, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall gets nothing but praise for its liberties with history Wolf Hall, he says, is “complete fiction. But nobody says that. They all say: ‘What a wonderful book, what insights it brings to the Tudors.’ Isn’t that bizarre?”
Of course, Wolf Hall “announces” itself as fiction—unlike Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (which I’ll discuss in the next chapter)which Gregory has claimed, astoundingly, is based on historical “probability.” Still, it’s worth wondering why some fictions get taken to task while others aren’t. Wolf Hall, while a brilliant interpretation of the character of Thomas Cromwell, has as ill-founded a view of Anne Boleyn as Gregory’s, even if we accept that it’s “as seen by Thomas Cromwell”—for Anne and Cromwell were reformist allies until they became enemies, and he is unlikely to have viewed her as the feral, calculating schemer that Mantel creates. Yet while websites are devoted to outrage over Gregory (I saw a thread recently in which the discussants fantasized over sending snipers to Gregory’s next public talk), Mantel has yet to be called out over her view of Anne. And although historians complain about the distortions of history in The Tudors, it’s actually sticks much more closely and in greater detail to the historical record than any other production. Ironically, that has made it more vulnerable to criticism. With the leisure of four seasons, the series is able to deal with much more of what actually happened; therefore, it has much more “data” to not get quite right or alter deliberately for dramatic purposes. And despite the condescending remarks of the British press, which accuse the series of “dumbing down” history for Americans, the show is actually intellectually far more demanding than “The Six Wives of Henry VIII”.
Some inventions, it appears, give offense because they are viewed as “pop” rather than “literary” and vice versa; I adored Wolf Hall (despite its nasty portrait of Anne) but I know a great deal about the period and have to wonder how many of those who praised it actually were able to follow it. It’s an extremely demanding work of art, particularly for those who aren’t familiar with all the cultural references; even keeping all the Thomas’s straight is a challenge. Among historians, what is seen as “dreadful” and what slides by is often a matter of who and what you care about. As an Anne scholar and a feminist, I bristle most when she is dragged through the sexist muck, but devotees of David Starkey are oblivious to his stereotyping (and his work claims the status of “history.”) Some depictions get away with nonsense because they were created long enough ago enough so that they are viewed as dusty, cultural artifacts, and as such not held to standards of factual accuracy. Television and movies, because they carry with them the illusion of verisimilitude—real bodies, real action, and often in highly realistic settings and costuming—are more likely to be criticized for historical inaccuracy no matter how often their creators, like Hirst, insist that they are not meant to be entirely factual. If they comport themselves with enough dignity, however—like the BBC productions, or “A Man For All Seasons”—they are off the hook. And then there is the post-Oliver Stone, “post-modern” problem: We no longer have much assurance that viewers or readers will be able to distinguish between fact and fiction, so special anxiety about the transgressions of The Tudors or The Other Boleyn Girl is “justified” by virtue of a cultural milieu in which the created image (whether computer-generated visuals or concocted narratives) is consumed, without scrutiny, as “reality.”
The Tudor ’s chief offense, I believe, was not that it was “dumb” or especially riddled with inaccuracies, but because it exploited audience’s tastes for eye candy, cinematic sex, and soap opera drama. If the series had aimed at more refined tastes, I believe, fewer historians would have found the Mary/Margaret conflation so outrageous. They would have been respectfully curious as to the reason for it, but not so readily cried “shame!”—as though the Virgin Mary herself had been slandered."
I go on, of course, but I won't tire you all with any more here. I've probably indulged myself too much already. I just thought it was so relevant to this discussion that I couldn't resist.
Mod
I also would add that we are awfully selective when we make those cha..."
I agree with your observations, and frankly I find the whole "cinematic sex" complaint by historians a bit silly. Personally I think it makes portrayals more accurate, not less. There was historic bed-hopping, and while movies and TV make it more sexy and glamorous, it's better than ignoring the fact it happened.
Nell, Susan,My love of historical fiction was ignited many, many years ago by Margaret Campbell Barnes' Brief Gaudy Hour. Much of what I've read since is a lot less sympathetic toward Anne, but after weighing the strong political motives for historians of the time to denigrate Anne, I'm left with much the opinion I formed when reading that first book--that Anne was an exceptionally intelligent woman, charming and witty and irresistible to a man like Henry who was himself a scholar.
Anne was accused of the most heinous crimes, including adultery, treason, witchcraft and incest. I have never believed the bulk of these stories for one reason alone: I think Anne was far, far too clever to make herself vulnerable by indulging her passions to that degree. She was smart enough to snag Henry. Why would she risk everything she had attained by such behaviour?
You have done much more research on the topic than I. Do you agree, or did she have vulnerabilities that might have caused her to behave so rashly?
Hi Wendy! Susan's research appears to me to be exceptional. I'd be interested in her input on your question. As for myself, I looked at "human nature" to explain much of what she did. I think one of her biggest vulnerabilities was that she really loved Henry. Look at the behavior of his other wives. They were very measured in their actions, and very calculating. Then look at Anne: When she began to lose him, she was an insecure and jealous mess.
Someone as clever and smart as she perhaps had the capacity to be measured in her actions and very calculating...except that she was a mess, from all reports. That told me that she was a woman who was losing her husband, rather than a queen who was losing her influence.
Nell wrote: "Hi Wendy! Susan's research appears to me to be exceptional. I'd be interested in her input on your question. As for myself, I looked at "human nature" to explain much of what she did. I think one..."
I agree, Nell. All the more reason to doubt most of the allegations. Those are not the behaviours of an intelligent woman attempting to hold her husband, don't you think?
Wendy wrote: "Nell, Susan,My love of historical fiction was ignited many, many years ago by Margaret Campbell Barnes' Brief Gaudy Hour. Much of what I've read since is a lot less sympathetic toward Anne, but af..."
Hi Wendy (and Nell)! The consensus among scholars (with one exception: J.W. Bernard) is that Anne was not guilty of any of the crimes of which she was accused. Even Cromwell himself admitted to Chapuys later on that he had plotted the whole thing. It was a kind of "coup d'etat" made possible by what I call (in my book) "a perfect storm" of events that Cromwell was able to exploit. For a number of reasons (impossible dates, among others) it seems clear that Anne was almost certainly innocent of adultery and incest (she was never accused of witchcraft at her trial; it was, though, part of the "atmospherics" of suspicion). But I agree with Nell that although Anne was highly intelligent, she was "vulnerable" in a number of ways, due to her spontaneous, emotional, and independent nature: (1) As Nell says, she wasn't able to suppress her jealousy of the king's affairs (as she herself acknowledged at her trial), (2) she was an open reformist at a time when popular opinion was turning against Henry's treatment of the monasteries, (3) she dared to confront Cromwell with accusations that he was misusing the monies taken from the monasteries, and thus incurred a powerful enemy in him; (4) she was, in general, open about her pro-French views at a time when Henry and Cromwell were attempting reconciliation with Spain; (5) the people still resented her for the ousting of Katherine and Mary; (6) Raised as a court lady, she did not always obey the "rules" of queenly behavior; all the things that attracted Henry to her--her vivacity, flirtatiousness, boldness--could now be used against her. All of these (and then add the finishing touch, the one which would have trumped all the others: she didn't bear Henry a son) put her in a very vulnerable position to Cromwell turning the tide against her.
Susan, Nell,Thanks so much. It was clearly a very bad time to be clever and proud and headstrong and a woman!
I'm glad you ladies are honouring her by adding to the facets of her memory available for the world to consider. She was certainly complex enough to warrant it.
I look forward to reading both your books through soon.
This was fun!!! Let's do something together again, Nell...And thanks to the people who sent in comments and questions; they were great!
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