Degree Thesis
Bachelor´s program in Linguistics, 180 credits
Harlot or Heroine?
The portrayal of Anne Boleyn in three contemporary
historical novels written by women
Halmstad University Department of Humanities English Section
Harlot or Heroine? The portrayal of Anne Boleyn in three
contemporary historical novels written by women
A comparative study of The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, The Lady
in the Tower by Jean Plaidy, and Queen of Subtleties by Suzannah Dunn.
Anna Sylwan English (61-90) Supervisor: Kristina Hildebrand EN5001 Spring Term 2020 Examiner: Danielle Cudmore
Table of Contents
Content
1. Introduction ... 3
2. Aim and approach ... 5
2.1 Women´s historical fiction ... 6
2.2.4 Literature review ... 9
2.2 Theoretical background ... 11
2.2.1 The Male Gaze ... 13
2.2.2 Slut-shaming ... 14
2.2.3 Material and previous research ... 15
3. Comparative Analysis ... 15
4. Conclusion ... 24
1. Introduction
Writing by and for women has come to dominate the historical fiction genre in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Since its birth in the early nineteenth century, historical fiction has been in a constant state of change. It has been shaped by culture and has responded to the way in which history has been commonly conceptualized. The general impression of historical fiction is that it is “a nostalgic, reactionary genre” (Wallace 4) and attracts readers with the idea that they will learn about the past recreated in the novel.
However, historical novels reveal as much, if not more, of the social and political structures at work at the time in which they were created. Hilary Mantel, author of the award-winning historical novel Wolf Hall, claims that “all historical fiction is really contemporary fiction; you write out of your own time” (qtd. in Bordo 230).
During the last decades, a remarkable intensity of interest in the Tudor period has been noted. Innumerable books concerning the Tudor kings and queens, both fiction and non-fiction, have been published during this time. Most common are the publications on Henry VIII and his daughter, Elizabeth I, but a considerable number of books have also been
devoted to his wives, and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, in particular. This increased interest becomes evident when a search on Amazon.com reveals that there are hundreds of historical novels written about her, especially since the 2001 publication of the tremendously popular novel The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. The popularity of these Tudor novels has also led to a re-publication of earlier, out-of-print novels by women writers. Their fascination with the period resulted in works of fiction long before there was a The Other Boleyn Girl-hype. One of these works was Jean Plaidy´s The Lady in the Tower, which was first published in 1986 and republished in in the late 1990s.
Different historical periods and agendas have formed Anne Boleyn´s image in various ways. In The Creation of Anne Boleyn: In Search of the Tudor´s Most Notorious Queen, Susan Bordo explains the many depictions of her throughout the years, from harlot to heroine:
For supporters of Katherine of Aragon, she was . . . a coldhearted murderess. For Catholic propagandists . . . she was a six-fingered, jaundiced-looking erotomaniac who slept with butlers, chaplains, and half of the French court. For Elizabethan admirers, she was the unsung heroine of the Protestant Reformation. For the Romantics . . . she was the hapless victim of a king´s tyranny . . . In postwar movies and on television, Anne has been animated by the rebellious spirit of the sixties . . . the “mean girl” and “power feminist” celebration of female aggression and competitiveness of the nineties . . . and the third-wave feminism of a new generation of Anne worshippers [who in Anne see] a woman too smart, sexy, and strong for her own time, unfairly vilified for her defiance of sixteenth-century norms of wifely obedience and silence. (xiii)
The wily, deformed image of Anne is mainly found in works of contemporary Catholics who supported Katherine of Aragon, by which most of the damaging statements lie in letters written by Eustace Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador. His official reports to the emperor about events at the English court are some of the few remaining first-hand documentations which still exist. However, his letters are immensely biased, as he could not be expected to communicate an objective opinion on the situation concerning Henry´s divorce from Katherine, and Anne´s involvement in the matter (Bordo 6-7). Bordo even claims that Chapuys “was the founding father of anti-Anne propaganda” (12) and that she finds it “difficult to imagine someone who would be less disposed of a dissolution of Henry´s marriage to Katherine and more opposed to the marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn” (6). The focus of this essay is to research how Anne Boleyn has been portrayed in three novels by Philippa Gregory, Jean Plaidy, and Suzannah Dunn, and explore the ways in which feminist discourses have made an impact on these three works. It will further examine how Anne
Boleyn is represented in the view of feminist concepts such as the male gaze and slut shaming. Is the character of Anne Boleyn portrayed in these novels, shaped by the feminist culture of their day, or have they remained in the ingrained historic perception of Anne as a harlot and a witch? The novels engage and criticize patriarchal power to various degrees by engaging with this original negative viewpoint of Anne. This has helped shape our view of Anne, and all authors writing about her engage with this in some way. The authors in this text depart from this image to varying degrees, reimagining Anne in ways that both challenge and conform to these particular views.
2. Aim and approach
This essay will analyse three contemporary historical novels about Anne Boleyn, written by three female authors who have proven to be commercially successful or prolific producers of women’s historical fiction: The Lady in the Tower by Jean Plaidy (1986), The Other Boleyn
Girl by Philippa Gregory (2001), and Queen of Subtleties by Suzannah Dunn (2005). These
three have novels have female focalisers; therefore, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel is not included, although it is a well-known and successful historical novel about Anne Boleyn.
The Other Boleyn Girl, which is arguably the most popular of these novels and which
has been made into a feature film, is placed in dialogue to the two other novels, which were published before and after Gregory´s novel and explore differences and similarities in the authors´ portrayals of Anne Boleyn, with a particular focus on feminist concepts such as slut
shaming and the male gaze. Thus, the aim is to achieve an understanding of how certain
powers of patriarchy have, despite the authors´ feminist consciousness, made an impact on their works when portraying Anne Boleyn.
2.1 Women´s historical fiction
Women´s historical fiction is one of the most influential genres of women’s literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Through the years, reviewers have observed that increased interest in historical novels generally coincides with major national and world events, such as the end of World War II, but also that such novels provide a welcome escape from, for example, “problems of world peace, racial injustice, and civil disobedience” (Wallace 127).
What constitutes a historical novel and what forms it includes have long been discussed. Traditionally, critical studies of the historical novel start with Sir Walter Scott´s
Waverley; or ´tis sixty years since (1814). The general perception of history and the ideal of
the classical historical novel developed “from Scott´s works have both worked to exclude women´s texts from the accepted canon” (Wallace 12). In The Woman´s Historical Novel:
British Women Writers, 1900-2000, Diana Wallace discusses studies that have been done on
the subject. One of the studies, written by Avrom Fleishman in 1971, worked with three primary conditions when defining the historical novel. The novel should be set in the past “beyond an arbitrary number of years, say 40-60 (two generations)” (qtd. in Wallace 12); the plot should include historical events, especially those in public fields such as war, economic change, or politics, mixed with how the characters´ fates are affected by these historical events; and it should include “at least one “real” personage” (qtd. in Wallace 12). These conditions do not appear to be gendered, but Wallace argues that they, in fact, work to
exclude novels written by women. The first of the conditions rules out the family saga, a form of historical fiction that follows the lives of a family through generations, and a form of fiction which has been of great importance to women writers. The second condition is, due to women´s often more marginal position in historical events, a problem. The comparatively lower status of women in the sixteenth century resulted in fewer records of them and their
lives than of men. Even for women of significance, such as Anne and Mary Boleyn, there may be nothing in the archives, or the records that do exist are filled with later additions that are discrediting and vilifying (Brayfield and Sprott 53). Finally, this dearth of historical records proves another object for women writers. It limits them to writing about men, or to seeing and writing about women in relation to men, as the wives, daughters, mothers, or lovers of men, “real” (13) personages.
A broader definition and possibly more useful to a study of women´s historical novels is the one designed by Umberto Eco. He claimed that there are three ways of portraying the past; the romance, in which the past merely serves as scenery; the swashbuckling adventure novel set in a “real and recognisable past” (qtd. in Wallace 14), peopled with both invented characters as well as “characters already found in the encyclopaedia”; and the historical novel which consists of fictional characters and events, “yet tells us things about a period which history books do not” (14). This definition opens up to a more gendered interpretation than the previously mentioned study since the romance novel is generally associated with women writers and readers, while the adventure novel is traditionally associated with male writers and readers.
According to Wallace, there are no surveys “of twentieth-century women´s historical novels” (14), which would examine progressions in development and any “connections between the different types of novel, including the skeptical historical novel, the popular romance and the novel of the classical world” (14). Wallace also emphasizes that irrespective of:
the choices women writers make – in terms of narrative and plot structure . . . the
historical period in which they set their novel, the side they take in the conflicts they
explore . . . the decision as to whether use period or twentieth-century language and so on
to women´s engagement with history and not dismissed as “unhistorical,” “factually
inaccurate” or merely “irrelevant” according to a male-defined model. (15)
In the 1960s, Wallace reports that “the reliance on genre categorisation, together with the increased use of authors as brand names, was important in shaping the development of the woman´s historical novel and its increasing association with popular fiction during these years” (127). An example of this genre categorisation is Eleanor Hibbert, who used different pseudonyms, among them “Jean Plaidy,” to market her different types of novels. The 1980s, the decade in which Jean Plaidy wrote The Lady in the Tower, experienced the beginning of a revival in the woman´s historical novel. Diana Wallace suggests that this revival was a part of a general recovery of interest in the historical novel, aided by the increasing popularity of male authors such as Umberto Eco, John Fowles, and Peter Ackroyd, “who were reworking the genre in ways which were formally, if not politically, radical” (177).
However, these historical novels written by men frequently suppressed women, by either erasing them altogether or presenting them as the obscure “Other.” Consequently, historical novels written by women “were politically driven, refashioning history through fiction as part of the urgent need to tell `her story´” (Wallace 176). In a broader context, this interest can, in the 1980s, be seen as a response to a widespread return to history, a return which emerged in Great Britain with the 1979 Conservative victory. According to Wallace, the Conservative party strived to restore the country to “the glories of its imperial past and to reassert the virtues of Victorian values” (176). Women writers, however, disapproved and aimed to “produce a renewed interest in the historical novel” (Wallace 176).
The confessional realist novel had dominated early fiction of the 1960s and 1970s second-wave feminist era, but increasingly, women writers turned to history and genre fiction. By the late 1980s, historical novels written by women had become a major manifestation against Conservative goals, and women writers of historical fiction re-imagined the past “on
behalf of the marginalised and excluded” (Wallace 177). Although, at the same time, “feminist activism was under threat from a conservative anti-feminist activism back-lash” (Wallace 177), a boom in feminist publishing was still noticed.
Wallace additionally believes that the reason women writers turned to the historical novel in the 1980s was to be able to criticize “the economic individualism and the increasing gulf between the “haves” and the “have-nots”” (Wallace 178). In the mid- to late 1980s, women writers introduced a type of “playful and sophisticated “postmodern” historical novel” (Wallace 180), which was informed by the self-reflexive perception of historiography and challenged historical events and individuals. These were the premises under which Eleanor Hibbert, under the pseudonym Jean Plaidy, wrote The Lady in the Tower in 1986. For novels written in the late 1990s, Wallace states that it is “interesting that it still seems to be the alignment of the genre with the popular which enables writers like Philippa Gregory in the late 20th century to produce politically radical texts under the guise of entertainment” (228). Although both The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, and The Queen of Subtleties by Suzannah Dunn were written in the early years of the 21st century, the above statement by
Wallace indeed applies to these two novels.
2.2.4 Literature review
Jean Plaidy, or Eleanor Hibbert, which was her real name, was a British author who wrote under eight different pseudonyms, of which Jean Plaidy was one of the most known. She continued to write until her death in 1993, which resulted in over 200 novels of which 90 are the historical fiction novels by Jean Plaidy. The first Plaidy novel was published in the mid-1940s, and they have been, according to Britannica.com, dismissed by some as “escapist trash” while others have recognized her “deft storytelling, well-researched historical detail, and strong female characters.” In an interview with Nytimes.com in 1977, the first she had
given in at least ten years, she describes her books as “an antidote to life today” and then describes them in the following manner: “There´s a message to my books, that if you behave well care about other people and are honest and kind, you're going to be much happier than if you don't. Nowadays people think all that counts is scoring. Everything is sex and violence and obscenity, but I think the greatest thing in life is happiness.” The feminist theorist, Susan Bordo, the author of The Creation of Anne Boleyn: In Search of the Tudor´s Most Notorious
Queen, describes The Lady in the Tower as a beautifully written novel, and considers Anne´s
reflections to be “those of a mature, regretful, clear-sighted woman, capable of recognizing her own faults, but very much aware of how her own missteps had been cruelly exploited by others” (219).
Philippa Gregory was an established writer and historian with a Ph.D. in eighteenth-century literature from the University of Edinburgh when she became interested in the Tudor period and eventually published The Other Boleyn Girl in 2001. When the novel was first published, it was a major success with the general public in the U.K. as well as in the U.S. and has since then been published in twenty-six countries (Bordo 221). In her book on Anne Boleyn, Susan Bordo is rather cynical in her analysis of Philippa Gregory and The Other
Boleyn Girl. Bordo thoroughly analyses the reasons for the novel´s success among the general
public, and why “both other novelists and historians, both professional and amateur, range from the politely critical to the seething” (221). Gregory regards “herself a feminist historian, and a radical historian” (220), and considers her novels to promote women´s power. In a BBC
Radio 4 podcast, she emphasizes the importance of historical accuracy and claims that she
does not deviate from the facts of the existing historical record, and when no record can be found, she delivers the most likely explanation for what happened (00:18:09-00:18:15).
Suzannah Dunn is a British author who, before she wrote her first historical novel
interview with Tudortimes.co.uk, Dunn explains that her fascination with sixteenth-century history comes from her mother, who used to read Jean Plaidy novels and tell her about them. She claims that she began thinking of writing a novel about Anne Boleyn back in 2000, before the publication of Gregory´s The Other Boleyn Girl. Dunn also says she was drawn to Anne “not because she was a historical character but precisely the opposite: she was the quintessential modern woman, in her time” (Tudortimes.com).
In addition to having written about the Tudors, what Plaidy, Gregory and Dunn have in common is their interest in the gaps and the silences of women in history. They explore what could lie under the surface, and what has been left out, of historical records. Although, their approach to the portrayal of Henry VIII´s second wife, Anne Boleyn, differs somewhat. Plaidy´s view of Anne is more of a romantic victim, a strong woman who is crushed by her husband, while Gregory´s and, to some extent, Dunn´s view is of an unscrupulous and cold-hearted villain who is motivated for the sake of her family´s and her own personal
advancement.
2.2 Theoretical background
Feminism has become completely ingrained in popular culture discourse, and feminist
discourses are today widespread and present in mainstream media. The problem of the literary canon of Western culture is based on the notion that men symbolise the universal and the fact that woman is associated with “otherness” and considered a metaphor, whether it is negative or positive ones. The critical concept of woman as “other” was articulated in the twentieth century with the publication of Simone de Beauvoir´s The Second Sex (1949), in which she describes how women essentially are defined negatively in relation to men. Bordo describes the meaning of the term in her book: “What men do is “essential,” representative of the interests of “human beings” and what women do is seen as particular to their sex” (153). In
Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader and the chapter Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodernist Culture, Rita Felski also writes about “othering” of women:
Patriarchal power pervades verbal and visual systems of meaning. Within such systems,
the woman is always connected to and inseparable from the man. Men’s ability to
symbolise the universal, the absolute and the transcendental depends on the continuing
association of femaleness with difference, otherness, and inferiority. (38)
Felski continues by expressing her thoughts on the role of the male gaze in creating cultural images of women:
The goal of feminist criticism is not to affirm universal woman as counterpart to universal
man. This is not only because of the many empirical differences of race, class, sexuality,
and age that render notions of shared female experience untenable. It is also because all
such visions of woman are contaminated by male-defined notions of the truth of
femininity. This is true not only of the negative culture images of women (prostitute,
demon, medusa, bluestocking, vagina dentata) but also of positive ones (woman as nature,
woman as nurturing mother, or innocent virgin, or heroic amazon…). Woman is always a
metaphor, dense with sedimented meanings. (38)
During the Tudor era, bias on the grounds of sex and gender was common and omnipresent. In the article “Inventing the Wicked Women of Tudor England: Alice More, Anne Boleyn, and Anne Stanhope”, Retha Warnicke writes that women were instructed to limit “their activities to domestic and family matters” (11). During the sixteenth century, women were defined by men “as the inferior sex” (11). Their worth was, by both men and women, judged by “their chastity, silence, piety, obedience, and household efficiency and accused . . . of being garrulous, materialistic, and driven by lustful intentions” (11).
2.2.1 The Male Gaze
The male gaze is a term which feminists frequently use when referring to the sexual
objectification of a woman by a man. The term was first presented and explained by the art critic John Berger in Ways of Seeing (1972), an essay about how we look at paintings. His thoughts on male spectatorship and objectification of women are relevant to studies of literature as well as art. He believes that “she has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another" (46). Women have, as a consequence of history´s marginalization of them, learned to be conscious of that gaze. In her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, the feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey relates the meaning of the male gaze to narrative cinema, where men are in control and women are, what she calls, spectacles. In our sexually imbalanced world, the pleasure in looking has been divided into one active, male side and one passive, female side. Mulvey argues that “the determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role, women are
simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness [sic]. (837)
By sexual objectification, theorists define the term as looking at someone as an object for use and sexual pleasure alone. Sexual objectification is an important part of the patriarchal order in which women and men are not equal. Thus, sexual objectification is enabled by the male gaze, and consequently, women are defined by their bodies, not their personalities. With that being said, it is also essential to acknowledge that, according to the theory, women are aware of this and act with a consciousness of this gaze. As Laura Mulvey states in her article: “there is pleasure in being looked at” (835). In the three analysed novels, written by women, and
where the protagonists are women, one might expect them to dominate the perspective, but still, the male gaze is ever present, and an objectification of women is apparent. An example of this objectification is seen in The Other Boleyn Girl, in what Anne says about Mary´s appearance, as Mary prepares to go to Henry´s chamber for the first time: “Go as you are … with your hair around your shoulders. You look like a virgin on your wedding day. I´m right, aren´t I, George? That´s what he wants” (79). Their brother George suggests that Mary should “loosen her bodice a bit” (79 because “a man likes a glimpse of what he´s buying” (79).
2.2.2 Slut-shaming
Slut-shaming is a term which refers to the public exposure and shaming of individuals for their sexual history, availability or behavior, assumed or certain (Webb 1). It is used to punish women for violating gender norms. In his Ph.D. thesis, Shame Transfigured: Slut-shaming
from Rome to cyberspace, Lewis Webb explains that “slut-shaming promotes sexual virtue,
namely conformance to normative sexual behaviors, and supports the cultural suppression of female sexuality, which has precedents throughout history” (1). It is a social process which mainly affects women, and is not a new concept, but a “form of cultural suppression of female sexuality that has been practiced since antiquity” (Webb 1). He also claims that “the focus of this slut-shaming, namely sexual virtue, has remained the same over time” (Webb 1).
In a BBC Radio 4 podcast, Gregory comments on the question of the rivalry between Anne and Mary and if she believes it to be something more serious than traditional sibling rivalry. She suggests that “if you put women under such pressure and give them no power whatsoever, they are going to be sexual conspirators with the consequence of women being blocked from any sort of power” (00:05:53-00:06:12). She believes they are both symbolic of
the situation that women were in at the time, when a woman´s survival depended on her “being the prettiest or the most sexually attractive,” and when women were compared to each other “at the most superficial level,” which is when “some of the most spiteful forms of rivalry” emerges. Gregory continues by suggesting that “if you have a society in which women are judged for what they can do and in which they have opportunities, you don´t find, I believe, so much malice between women” (00:07:05-00:07:30).
2.2.3 Material and previous research
The primary sources for this essay are the three historical novels The Lady in the Tower (1986) by Jean Plaidy, The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) by Philippa Gregory, and Queen of
Subtleties (2004) by Suzannah Dunn. Hilary.
The secondary sources that are of greatest importance to this essay are The Woman´s
Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900 – 2000 by Diana Wallace and Susan Bordo´s The Creation of Anne Boleyn: In search of the Tudor´s Most Notorious Queen (2014).
3. Comparative Analysis
I have found that both Philippa Gregory and Jean Plaidy portray Tudor society as seeing women as men's property, as commodities to be purchased and traded. For example, Anne´s family prostitute both her and Mary for profit in The Other Boleyn Girl, and their father at one point looks at Mary “like a horse trader assessing the value of a filly” (21). Both sisters, are thought of as pawns “that must be played to advantage” (23). In Plaidy´s The Lady in the
Tower, when Anne is sent home from France, and she suspects that her return to England
pawn to be set on a checkerboard at the spot where [she] could be most useful to those who commanded [her]” (82). Both Plaidy and Dunn present the reader with a background, a plausible cause to how Anne grew up to become the woman she is portrayed as in their novels, while Gregory provides no such background, which might be one reason why some have been so critical of her novel (Bordo 219-221).
An apparent difference between The Lady in the Tower, The Other Boleyn Girl, and
Queen of Subtleties is the mention of Anne´s childhood and her being brought up at the
French court. Plaidy devotes the first three chapters of The Lady in the Tower on Anne´s experiences in France, which introduces two characters who both prove to be important influences in forming her character, and on her identity as a woman in particular: Mary Tudor and Marguerite d´Alencon, sister of the new King of France. Mary Tudor is a proud,
rebellious and passionate woman who dreams of the day her aging husband, the King of France, will die so she may marry the man of her own choosing (21). Mary’s provocations and her rants against the injustices inflicted on women (22-23) affect Anne deeply, who at this stage is “not quite six years old” (8). However, it is Marguerite d´Alencon, sister of Francois, the new King of France, who will prove to have the greatest impact on Anne. Marguerite is described as very beautiful, but that it was “for her cleverness that she was noted” (58). She is considered by Anne to be her “teacher and mentor” (82), and the one who provides Anne with an awareness of her own worth as a person and as a woman by telling her that she is “a person in [her] own right” and that she has a “dignity and respect for [her]self” (78). Marguerite´s impact on young Anne is revealed when Anne expresses irritation with Queen Claude, King Francois´s wife, for her gentle obedience: “she was very wise, although there had been times when I had been inclined to despise her for her meek acceptance of her lot. After all, she was a king’s daughter. Had I been in her place, I should have insisted on being treated with more respect” (54). Contrastingly, Gregory does not include Anne´s childhood into her novel, and
Dunn describes this period of her life in one paragraph: “I lived in France from when I was twelve until I was twenty. I grew up to be a Frenchwoman, I came back to England as a Frenchwoman. There are women in France who are strong, Elizabeth, because they´re educated. Unlike here, where the only way to be a strong woman is to be a harridan.” (3)
In The Lady in the Tower, Anne appears to be aware of the way history is constructed, and of the position that she will occupy within the main historical narrative. At the very end of the novel, where Anne reflects on how she will be perceived by future generations and speculates on the possibility that she might “not be forgotten, but remembered as the Queen who was murdered because she stood in the way of one who had the power, cruelly and most unjustly, to murder those who were an encumbrance to him” (372). In Plaidy´s novel she is clearly is aware of women´s oppression and comments on it on several occasions, but only in hindsight. While in Gregory´s and Dunn´s novels, Anne has another sense of confidence as a woman and as an individual. For example, in Dunn´s novel, Anne boldly states: “I was a commoner, but I became queen … I got old England by the throat, and shook it until it died” (3-4). Gregory´s Anne tells her sister, who does as she is told and has married the man that was decided for her: “I make my own plans. I don´t risk being taken up and dropped again” (108).
Dunn´s, as well as Plaidy´s, intentions are similar to Gregory’s, in how their main focus appears to be to portray Anne Boleyn as a much more complex character than the traditional characterisation as either a harlot or a heroine. By doing so, they establish their aim of recovering her from a life of obscurity and from a crass stereotyping which has been
inflicted upon women for centuries and diminished their significance in history, and at the same time they might also put rather modern discourses in her mouth.
3.1 Narrative style
The way a novel is narrated may reveal a great deal about the author´s focus and intentions. Jean Plaidy´s The Lady in the Tower begins with a chapter entitled “The Prisoner”, in which Anne reflects on her life and questions where she went “wrong” (3) and what she could have done to avert the oncoming danger. She acknowledges that “somewhere along the years” (4) the fault is hers. In an attempt to avoid thinking about what awaits her, she keeps her mind occupied in the past with the purpose of understanding the circumstances leading up to her downfall, and what her role in these circumstances was. These lines in the first chapter show that The Lady in the Tower is a confessional historical novel, which is recognised by the revealing and intimate first-person narration, where the reader learns about Anne´s inner thoughts and motivations. Furthermore, it is a technique which enables women to become “the speaking subjects, not the objects, of historical narrative” (Wallace 184). The first-person narration makes it possible for Plaidy to re-assert Anne Boleyn as a subject, and suggests that the narrative in The Lady in the Tower is “highly subjective, as the reader is trapped inside the narrator’s point of view” (Wallace 136). Plaidy thus acts as a spokesperson by narrating Anne´s story in her own words, and by doing so, she provides the reader with a perspective which the male-centred grand narrative of history has previously ignored.
Likewise, in Queen of Subtleties, Suzannah Dunn also acts as the spokesperson for Anne, as is Philippa Gregory for Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl. Like The Lady in the Tower,
Queen of Subtleties is also written as a confessional novel, in which Anne, the night before
her execution, tells her story through a letter to her daughter, Elizabeth. It is worth mentioning that The Queen of Subtleties is divided into two parts, where one part is narrated by Anne, which I have focused on here, and the other by a character named Lucy Cornwallis, who in the novel works in the kitchen as the King´s confectioner. The Other Boleyn Girl, on the other
Boleyn, not Anne herself, which differentiates it from the other two novels, and creates a distance between Anne´s character and the reader.
Dunn implicitly exhibits a postmodern awareness of historiography in her novel. She incorprates two points of view, those of Anne Boleyn and the King´s confectioner, Lucy Cornwallis. The use of multiple points of view is a narrative device which is commonly used, and which emphasizes on the biased nature of the historical narrative. At the start of the novel, Dunn addresses her readers in an “Author´s Note”, where she explains which parts of the narrative are based on historical “facts”: “All events in the ̒Anne Boleyn̕ sections of the novel aim to be historically accurate”, and which parts are fabricated: “All that is known of her, apart from her surname and job, is that the King eventually gave her a fine house in Aldgate in recognition of her services. All other aspects of Lucy Cornwallis character and her story in this novel are fictional.” (n.p.). She makes the distinction as to what can be
considered fiction and what can be considered as “fact” in her novel, which implies that the reader can expect that Anne´s sections of the narrative is historically accurate. Diana Wallace observes that “multiple or unreliable narrative viewpoints [are] often used by women writers to disrupt any view of history itself as unitary and closed” (18). Meanwhile, Sherry Booth suggests that these “intertwined narratives … propose that many categories, including gender and identity, are much more fluid and varied than the normative narratives about them
suggest” (45). Arguably, the constructs of femininity and gender are just as unstable and historically unforeseen as the conception of historical “truth,” as they are dependent on their ideological context and subjective interpretation.
Dunn’s choice to use nicknames for some characters, such as “Billy” (20) for William Brereton, and “Franky” (16) for Francis Weston, is, according to the author, in order “to avoid confusion … [and] to avoid a dated version” (Notes n.p). Her choice is logical, but it could be argued that an author of historical fiction ought to be careful with giving characters
diminutives of names. Gregory´s and especially Dunn´s choice of using a more contemporary modern language than Plaidy, including slang and nicknames, inevitably causes the character of Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl and Queen of Subtleties seem less believable to the reader. However, this might be a conscious choice by Gregory and Dunn, in an attempt to make Anne more relatable to the readers today. Plaidy does not use the language of sixteenth-century England, but instead uses a contemporary, though rather proper, form of English, without any slang. That particular feature indicates that there is a dividing line in the authors´ use of language depending on the time in which it was published. The dividing line here seems to be the turn of the century. Jean Plaidy wrote The Lady in the Tower in 1986, several years before the millennium, while Gregory and Dunn wrote their novels shortly after the turn of the century. This suggests that, to readers of today, Plaidy´s novel might be experienced as alien and less recognisable, but at the same time more historically accurate, while Gregory and Dunn´s novels could be experienced as much more recognizable, even though the sense of historical accuracy is lost because of it.
3.2 Male gaze
In the three analysed novels, written by women, and in which the protagonists are women, one might expect them to dominate the perspective, but the male gaze is ever present, and an objectification of women is to be seen, often appropriated by the characters themselves. The narrators in these three novels all characterize women in terms of their femininity and passivity, although it does not correspond fully to Anne. She is portrayed as a woman who wishes to resist male domination, more so in The Other Boleyn Girl and Queen of Subtleties than in The Lady in the Tower. In both The Lady in the Tower and The Other Boleyn Girl, Anne clearly articulates an awareness of her limitations as a woman, and of the injustices of
patriarchal ideologies such as the male gaze. She is confident and communicates her aversion towards such ideologies. However, by being this confident and challenging, she might be seen as disturbing by men since, as Mulvey says, “the meaning of woman is sexual difference” (840), and that woman stands “in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other” (834). Mulvey also states that “man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like” (838), which then suggests that through her strength and confidence, she is considered not woman enough. So, the very thing that made Anne unique as a woman was also the very thing that eventually became her downfall. At the same time, she holds the gaze by dressing and behaving in such a way that draw men´s attention to her. In The Lady in the Tower, Anne is describing her first night with Henry, which demonstrates how calculating and confident she is: “ I had given way because I fancied I could see the goal in sight, and this was the way to it” (268). She the continues by illustrating her choice of clothes for the occasion, and it is evident that she has put a great deal of thought behind it: “I wore the black nightdress and the cloak that went with it. I had chosen wisely, although I had hesitated to wear black because of my darkness – red being the colour wich set it off to perfection. But the low-cut bodice, exposing so much white flesh, was alluring” (268). In The other Boleyn Girl, Anne is just as calculating, especially during the time before her marriage to Henry: “I spend all my time bringing him close and holding him off … I can do it for a few weeks more, and then I shall have it all” (296-297). However, when they have been married for some time, and she has not managed to give Henry a son, her fear of losing him makes her jealous and demanding, which is not the way for a queen to behave, and it only pushes Henry further away. When she catches him spending time with Jane Seymour, she is furious: “I won´t tolerate it. She´s to leave the court!” (647). She runs away from him but “he could not run after her. That was her fatal mistake. If he had been able to run after her then he could have caught her and they could have tumbled into bed together as they had done so many times before. But his leg hurt him and she was young and
taunting and instead of being aroused he was baited. He resented her youth and her beauty, he no longer reveled in it” (648).
Most female characters in the novels are without power and seem to accept the rules of the patriarchal system, and therefore establish and hold the view that women are objects, and the inferior sex. A conversation between the Boleyn sisters in The Other Boleyn Girl is an example of how the male gaze manifests itself in women. Mary asks Anne “why [she always has] to be different”, and Anne´s response to this is: “Because everyone has to do something … Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eye, which makes her the center of attention” (8).
This dialogue demonstrates how Anne is determined to stand out, while she is still dependent on the male gaze and needs the affirmation from men. When their father and uncle decide that Mary should be the king´s next mistress in order for them to gain benefits at court, Mary asks if she can refuse, and her uncle answers that she cannot because “the world´s not changed that much yet. Men still rule” (205), so she accepts being used as a tool. Anne, on the other hand, attempts to challenge the system: “I would not live my life as you live yours. You would always do as you were bid, marry where you were told, bed where you were ordered. I am not like you. I make my own way” (108).
In The Lady in the Tower, Anne´s sister Mary becomes the mistress to the French King at the age of thirteen. Anne is appalled and “sick with shame” (61), and says that Mary has “disgraced the name of Boleyn” (62), while Mary herself “seemed to think that she had gained the greatest possible price because she had been seduced by the most profligate man in France” (61). “He likes me a great deal. He calls me his little English mare” (61). Here, Mary sees it as an honour giving her body to this powerful man in addition to being the subject of his gaze. Anne, on the other hand, is worried about what it might do to her and their family´s honour, and how it will affect their social status. In the end of Queen of Subtleties, Anne
explains how Henry could finally get at her: “To stop thinking of me as queen. He couldn´t get at me as queen; I´d done nothing wrong as queen. The trick was to think of me as a woman … Think ̒woman surrounded by men̕, and there you have it” (288). This shows that Anne certainly is aware of her subjugated position, but also that she is aware of how she should behave, act and dress to gain advantage. As queen Anne has some power, but she has learned that Henry can at any time deprive her of that power, and she will then be “only” a woman and an easy target.
To some extent, the novels all have Anne equating her sexual chastity with her value as a woman and her sense of self-respect. “Wolsey, the Archbishop of York himself, says I am a virgin. You can´t be more of a virgin than me” (164). This comment by Anne in The Other
Boleyn Girl shows how men have created and controlled the concept of a woman´s virginity.
Anne implicitly uses this concept as a strategic weapon in Queen of Subtleties, but it is only in
The Lady in the Tower that she explicitly expresses it: “My virginity had been my strength.
What would happen if I lost it?” (266). What it amounts to, in the end, is that her power is reduced to a value placed on her by and based on her relationship to men.
In Plaidy´s novel, Anne describes her neck as “long and slender” (4), and that it “added elegance” (4) to her figure, and that she “accentuated it as [she] did all her assets” (4). This shows that she is concerned with her appearance and aware of what impact she has on men. Anne is bright and knows how to work her looks and behavior to her advantage: “I was not pretty, as many of the other girls were, but I knew that I made them appear commonplace. My dark hair and eyes, my choice of clothes, designed by myself, set me apart” (116).
The manner in which she represents herself to the court, both men and women, is subjected to the male gaze. This gaze reduces her to a sexual object. She is clearly aware of this but accepts it in order to get Henry´s attention. This manner is not as noticeable in Gregory´s and Dunn´s novels. In The Other Boleyn Girl, Anne says that she “shall be dark and French and
fashionable and difficult” (8). She adapts the manners of a French woman and uses the experiences from her time at the French court to her advantage. In Queen of Subtleties, there is little mention of her using her appearance to her advantage. There are, however, a few instances, such as when she describes her arrival at court, and how she was “too eye-catchingly dressed.” That changed, however, and she says that “no one rivalled my dress sense. I dressed the part” (23). This confirms that the gaze is still present and that she is aware of it and using it.
By having Anne retell her version of her life in The Lady in the Tower and Queen of
Subtleties, the authors provide her with an opportunity to react to a version of history limited
by a focus on male interests. The same applies for The Other Boleyn Girl, although the reader is provided with Mary´s version of Anne´s life. For instance, Anne approaches traditionally accepted views on her character when she, in The Lady in the Tower, complains about how certain ladies at court “looked upon [her] as some sort of siren possessed of evil powers which had bewitched [Henry]” (204), not knowing that she “had been robbed of the man [she] loved and had had no wish to be in this situation” (204). In all three novels, the character of Anne acknowledges the gaze, and negotiates it. However, Plaidy´s Anne incorporates it with less awareness, while Gregory and Dunn´s Anne is more conscious of its power and its potential for manipulation.
4. Conclusion
The aim of this essay was to explore if and how contemporary women writers of historical fiction are, at the time of the work´s creation, influenced by a feminist consciousness of patriarchal powers such as sexual objectification, in their portrayals of Anne Boleyn. As I have tried to demonstrate through this essay, the woman´s historical novel of the late
twentieth and early twenty-first century is a literary form with a mixture of features from other genres, such as romance fiction and the postmodern novel. The conclusion is that the most noteworthy influence on the writers of these three historical novels has been the feminist movement. The development of feminism´s first, second, and third waves have, over time, moved women into a position where they can see themselves as participating subjects of history rather than passive objects, as is demonstrated by Jean Plaidy, Philippa Gregory, and Suzannah Dunn in their novels. When feminist discourse emerged in the world of popular culture, it allowed women writers of historical novels to explore previously inaccessible fields of agency and power and to locate their heroines within their specific historical contexts in ways that nevertheless speak to modern readers. This is certainly true for these three analysed novels, in which the authors have positioned Anne Boleyn as a subject and an active
participant in history, rather than an object or a passive spectator. The three novels emphasize as well as problematize the male gaze and slut shaming through their focus on Anne´s
perspective. She is aware of them, and although it is rare that she confronts them directly, she is prepared to work them to her advantage even as she meets severe limitations to her
power. Thus, instead of being ignored by the traditional, male-centred grand historical narrative, the genre of historical fiction has become a place where women´s perspective of history may be analysed. This is certainly true for these three analysed novels, in which the authors have positioned Anne Boleyn as a subject and an active participant in history, rather than an object or a passive spectator. At last, the act of presenting historical periods from a woman´s perspective demonstrates the feminist movement´s powerful and modern impact on the genre.
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Websites
“Anne Boleyn.” www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_11?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=anne+boleyn&sprefix=Anne + Boleyn %2Caps%2C227&crid=20PAIEMZJYM3V
Philippa Gregory. www.philippagregory.com/books Suzannah Dunn. www.suzannahdunn.net/
PO Box 823, SE-301 18 Halmstad Phone: +35 46 16 71 00
