The Creation of Anne Boleyn (43 page)

The headlines of the movie reviews of
The Other Boleyn Girl
almost all exploited this cultural moment:
RIVAL SISTERS DUKE IT OUT FOR THE PASSION OF A KING
(the
New York Times
),
¹⁰⁰
CATFIGHT IN THE HOUSE OF TUDOR
(the
Chicago Sun-Times
)
¹⁰¹
,
SISTERS FACE OFF IN “OTHER BOLEYN GIRL”
(the
San Francisco Chronicle
).
¹⁰²
The
Boston Globe
describes the movie as having “the DNA of a ‘Gossip Girl’ episode.”
¹⁰³
Putting the novel in the context of a “power-feminist” celebration of female competitiveness and aggression may also explain why it seems, to Gregory and many of her most devoted readers, that her Anne is not a villainess, but rather—in contrast to earlier novels such as Plaidy’s and Maxwell’s—a bold, assertive, “nonvictim” (or, to put it in currently fashionable academic terms, an “agent”) who, in the final analysis, made her own bed. Explaining part of the success of her books, Gregory says that it’s appealing to readers “to see women empowering themselves with no help at all; they find it immensely inspirational.”
¹⁰⁴
The fact that this perspective doesn’t square at all with Gregory’s other comments about the triumph of Mary’s goodness over Anne’s ambition doesn’t seem to bother her, as she is equally capable of turning right around and celebrating Anne’s bid for power.

Despite the gains made by feminism—and I am a feminist and great supporter of equal rights—you look at Anne Boleyn who gets from nowhere to be queen of England, and has the King of England dancing for six years—during which time he turns the history of England upside down in order that he might get into bed with her, and she won’t allow it! You know, that’s a woman who, well, I mean these aren’t wiles, this is campaign-level strategy.
¹⁰⁵

“Just say no” as campaign-level strategy! You have to hand it to Philippa Gregory.

13

Anne Gets the Last Word (for Now)

Viral Anne

D
ESPITE THE FACT
that the splashiest Annes of recent years have tended to reproduce some of the oldest, most negative iconography—the bitch, the schemer, the sexual temptress—they haven’t had the last word. The following is a smattering of comments from some of the members of
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page, a site I created with historian Natalie Sweet in the spring of 2011, chiefly in order to survey young women’s impressions of Anne Boleyn for this book. Through e-mail interviews with girls and women ranging from twelve to twenty-six and on-site postings of questions to which women (and some men) of all ages, nationalities, and “political” persuasions responded, I discovered that Anne is an inspiration for many of this generation.

Anne was beautiful, a spark of life, a feminist in a time when it was not accepted, a powerful woman. Why am I “obsessed” with her? Because that’s what I want to be. She makes me feel like I could be that, like I have power too.

She had dreams and visions for her future and she went after what she wanted. And even in the end, knowing she’d pay the ultimate price, she was strong and brave and died boldly. I think that’s admirable in a woman, especially a woman living in such dark, chauvinistic times when men usually determined women’s fates. It’s great to have such a strong woman to look up to.

She was a nobleman’s daughter, trained to “catch” a husband & to be the chattel of her father & husband. Yet she rose above that training and became a strong, independent woman with opinions of her own . . . Anne is fascinating for her intelligence and determination, and then finally the immense courage and grace with which she met her death.
¹

To me Anne is unique because she had such a strong personality and voice at a time when women were essentially bargaining tools. She didn’t fit the societal norm and I think that’s what attracted Henry in the first place but also what made him stray in the end. People see her as either a victim or a vixen, but she was so much more complex than that. She wrote her own story and was uniquely in control of her life which makes her end all the more tragic. I see Anne as an inspiration . . . Her confidence and ambition have really driven me because if she, as a woman, in 1530 could be as much of a force and presence as she was, I can be one in 2011.
²

I am still amazed that she kept Henry VIII waiting for
SEVEN YEARS
, and refused to be a mistress to him. It’s quite an accomplishment for a woman to do that to a man in the fifteenth century, let alone for a woman to do that to a
KING
. I also admire her courage and bravery when facing her tragic end. The dignity she displayed in the face of her detractors is quite inspiring to me. She was essentially a powerful, strong, and independent woman in a world where all of those qualities were seen as deplorable for a female to possess. She did not change who she was, even for the king of England! I think Anne was a 21st century spirit born in a 15th century body!
³

I was a relative latecomer to the online community of Tudorphiles, which emerged out of the tentative seedings of longtime Tudor fans and, after
The Tudors
caught hold, sprouted limbs and shoots all across the Internet. Lara Eakins, whose
Tudorhistory.org
was among the first, began in 1994 with “a little GIF of Elizabeth I” and a “very simple page about the Tudors.”
⁴
Lara’s initial impulse, as she describes it, was just to share: “Here’s something that interests me.”
⁵
She was surprised when numerous e-mails began arriving, some asking for help with school assignments, but many from people for whom the Tudors had been a secret passion. “I thought I was the only one interested in Tudor history!” wrote some; “My friends and family are tired of me talking about it.”
⁶
Now they would have a place to indulge freely without driving others away. Lara began to suspect that her site had tapped into a community of Tudor fans, each one thinking he or she was the “only one.” Then, the publication of
The Other Boleyn Girl
turned Anne Boleyn into “one of the biggest topics of interest” among the followers of her Q-and-A page, and “once
The Tudors
started, the questions started flooding in.”
⁷
Many were interested in sorting out fact from fiction in Gregory’s novel and the television show, and that delighted Lara. “It was nice to know that there is at least some fraction who will dig deeper and try to learn more about the actual history.”
⁸

As part of the prepublicity for
The Tudors,
Showtime created a number of websites in 2007, one of which was a wiki—like Wikipedia, a compendium of knowledge built by viewers themselves. In addition to informational postings about the show and Tudor history, the moderators posted questions soliciting readers’ opinions. Discussions ranged from the historical controversies that had engaged longtime Tudor scholars—was Anne born in 1501 or 1507? Did she sleep with her first love, Henry Percy? Was her last stillbirth deformed?—to playful questionnaires such as “If Henry’s wives were alive today, what jobs would they have?” and “What magazines would they read?” Participants, at one point, were asked to submit the question they would most want to ask Anne if she was contacted in a séance. Their questions reveal their personal engagement, even sympathetic identification, with Anne. “Was Henry good in bed?” “Did you really have extra toes and fingers?” “If you had to do your life again would you marry the king if you knew all we know today?” “Do you think you had an impact in your daughter’s life?” “How did you find the strength to endure the trial and imprisonment without any support from your family?” “Did the beheading hurt?”
⁹

Not everyone was a fan of Anne’s, however. Claire Ridgway, who started
The Anne Boleyn Files
in 2009, encountered a good deal of hatred of Anne and, by extension, her site. “Being someone who runs an Anne Boleyn site has left me open to abuse, offensive e-mails, and even death threats because I dare to defend a woman who for some really is the ‘scandal of Christendom.’”
¹⁰
Either encouraged or angered by
The Tudors’
tendency to sanctify Katherine and Jane Seymour, “Team Boleyn” members and “Team Aragon/Team Seymour” members became mean, squabbling girls themselves. Sue Booth, one of the first moderators of the
Tudors Wiki
, was struck by the “fierce loyalties” that arose among the members of the Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn “camps.”
¹¹
“It never ceased to amaze me,” she recalls, “how strongly these women felt about something that happened more than four hundred years ago.”
¹²
Natalie Sweet, who joined the wiki in 2008 while she was studying for a master’s degree in history, remembers these battles as proving the truth of the comment made by sportswriter Clay Travis that “the dark corners of the Internet message board made talk radio seem like a midday stroll in a well-kept garden.” Viewers, encouraged by the anonymity of Internet conversations, didn’t hold back on slinging mud at one another, and for moderators of the site, it became a “challenge maintaining the line between constructive criticism and negative character bashing.”
¹³
Barb Alexander, who runs
The Tudor Tutor
, is puzzled by all this. “I can never figure out why there is such a ‘fangirl’ or ‘bully’ attitude toward any of these people—they have been dead for about five hundred years! I like to see an educated passion for a historical figure, and if that figure is not your cup of tea, a respectful disagreement is fine. But they lived centuries ago, in a different climate than ours, and so I don’t feel it’s fair to judge them or their actions by modern standards.”
¹⁴
That may be true, but it’s never stopped writers from the seventeenth through twenty-first centuries from taking sides; why should it be any different now?

Despite the wife fights, the
Tudors Wiki
was Natalie Sweet’s “sanity” during graduate school, and it taught her that she should “never discredit the research and knowledge of another just because she did not hold a history degree . . . and who made me a better historian for the perspectives they provided to me.”
¹⁵
Undoubtedly the most convincing proof of that statement is
The Anne Boleyn Files
. Although it began as “just a blog” that Claire Ridgway was writing for herself—a “journal of my journey into finding out more about Anne Boleyn . . . people started finding me and commenting on the site. I was blown away! There were other people out there who were just as fascinated by Anne! My research became all consuming, a passion that had taken hold, and by the summer of 2009 I had given up my freelance writing career and was researching Tudor history on a full-time basis. I’ve never looked back!”
¹⁶
Today, 23,000 people visit the site each month, and in response to reader demand, it has become much more than “just a blog.”
The Anne Boleyn Files
provides links to other sites where one can purchase books and Tudor-themed products, buy such items as replicas of Anne’s famous “B” necklace and pajamas and hoodies with her image on them, and sign up for yearly events such as the Anne Boleyn Experience Tour. It is also a clearinghouse for every kind of Tudor resource. Claire’s own “journey,” too, has evolved. Just in the few years I’ve been following the site, I’ve seen her blossom from a respectful reporter of the theories of published authors to an investigative historical journalist whose blog—recently made available in book form—is more rigorous than that of many professional historians.