Historical Fiction or Populist Toss?

I am not sure if I have ever shared with you a little about my day job. I am a Primary School Teacher and so this time of the year is consumed by the terrible ‘R’ word – reports! I have been very busy writing reports and so haven’t had much time to research and write my usual number of posts but I am so lucky to have had some wonderful guest posts submitted that I was able to share with you. I am very happy to say that I have almost finished all my reports and will be once again free to research and write about Tudor history to my heart’s content!

Today’s post is another very interesting read, first published in Solander, the magazine of the historical society and very kindly submitted by author Wendy J. Dunn. Wendy examines history versus fiction in The Other Boleyn Girl.

Enjoy!

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Historical fiction or populist toss?

WENDY J. DUNN examines history versus fiction in The Other Boleyn Girl

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,

Who in this land is fairest of all?

To this the mirror answered: You, my queen, are fairest of all.

Then she was satisfied, for she knew that the mirror spoke the truth.¹

Are we in danger of losing the ability to ask of ourselves what it was like in another time? Have we found it too easy to stamp ourselves on history rather than attempt the portrayal of real history?  Is today’s popular historical fiction mirroring too much our narcissistic, lack-of-substance world rather than faithfully and accurately depicting believable history?

History hooked me line and sinker from early childhood. At ten, my most treasured book was a child’s book of British history, and I read historical fiction in preference to any other type of fiction. I grew up with Rosemary Sutcliffe, Mary Renault, Robert Graves, Margaret Irwin, Winston Graham, and so many other writers who took me on a journey “back then,” made me cry and laugh, strummed my heart and soul like a musical instrument, and returned me from the experience of reading on a wave of emotion, richer and more aware of my humanness and my connection to others. I read and knew I wasn’t alone.

I now not only read historical fiction, but also write it. Most of the time, I wholeheartedly tap into Tudor history – a lusty, vibrant time – for my creative expression. Whether investigating clothes, food, gender roles, religion, family, or even simply how they spoke, I am very aware the Tudors lived in a period very different from my own. While I happily create an imagined historical world framed by thorough research, I don’t believe in going against known history or representing the once-living in a light that cannot be justified.

History shows us who we are – our journey so far, where we have come from, the sum of us. Rather than mirroring the past, I believe too much of today’s historical fiction is coloured by our individualist society with its liking for soap operas and salacious gossip. Entertainment seems to be the god of all, with the heart of good writing, and its moral compass, in danger of being sacrificed on its altar. Instead of providing the meat and substance to help us find meaning in our lives, too many books are written simply to entertain and excite readers, reflecting the shallowness of our society.

Today’s publishing world seems to want writers to depict historically dressed characters who are actually modern and familiar, offering us very little from which we can learn. Increasingly, historical fiction is made more palpable for today’s “Celebrity news hungry” reader. Many publishers seem to believe readers are not really interested in accuracy, as documented and supported by history, but rather a distorted history that no longer respects the people of the past, but which simply, and deliberately, shocks and titillates.

George Santayana once said, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”² I’m one of many who agree with this. Historical fiction is the canvas I paint to communicate with people here and now about people of the past. By exploring the lessons of history, we discover how the inner essence of humanity flows down the centuries unchanging. We love, hate, suffer, and experience joy in the same way no matter what period forms the backdrop for our life’s stage.

History belongs to us – we are its children, making our own history. Telling its stories feeds and enriches the human psyche. Metaphorically speaking, historical fiction has us sitting around a roaring camp fire, recounting tales of the past, glorying in our humanity, our sense of belonging, allowing us to embrace the future because history lights our way forward. For me, the lure of historical fiction has always been to discover a candle in the dark.

Yes – historical fiction authors write fiction, but historical fiction should be rooted in the earth and truth of history, otherwise they are simply disguised, alternative histories – and far too often soulless alternative histories.

I write with a responsibility to the people of the past. In my first published novel, Dear Heart, How Like You This?, I carefully considered my representations of historical characters as if they were still alive, able to defend themselves. Many readers believe historical fiction, even if we deny our stories in our author notes. I think we let down ourselves and our readers if we do not write what we can also believe. As Carolyn Heilbrun powerfully says:

We live our lives through texts. They may be read, or chanted, or experienced electronically, or come to us, like the murmurings of our mothers, telling us what conventions demand. Whatever their form or medium, these stories have formed us all; they are what we must use to make new fictions, new narratives.³

I am an admirer of Philippa Gregory’s early work. Historical fiction writers owe a debt to her for helping refire the love of historical fiction. I admit to not wanting to read her award-winning The Other Boleyn Girl (TOBG). Fellow Anne Boleyn devotees told me how black TOBG painted Anne and, as my own research birthed an imagined Anne in Dear Heart, How Like You This?, I just couldn’t bring myself to read it. But curiosity won out. Both book and film have their good points. The film has beautiful costumes and sets. If you disregard (and forgive) Eric Bana’s one-dimensional Henry VIII, most of the roles are strongly played out, and it offers a sense of the choices allowed to women of the period. The history, on the other hand, is a distorted, piecemeal mess. Watching the film, I often winced with discomfort.

Both novel and film show a woman falling foul of her own ambition that drove her from her earliest days. Desperate to get pregnant, Gregory’s Anne, willing to do anything, attempts incest with her brother. The historical evidence points at her death being the result of a political coup; Thomas Cromwell’s machinations removed the queen and, for a time, left him safe to increase his powerbase. Whilst five men were executed prior to Anne Boleyn’s own date with a French headsman, the film shows only the execution of George Boleyn, Anne’s brother. He is portrayed as a wimp – probably, it seemed implied in the film, because he was a homosexual and not a “real man.” Yet another wince. Historically, George tossed caution to the wind at his trial by reading a document which spoke of Henry VIII’s lack of vigour in the bedchamber and bravely went to his death saying, “Trust in God, and not in the vanities of the world; for if I had so done I think I had been alive as ye be now.” ⁴

In fact, film and book revisit the Tudor gossip rife at the time that can be traced back to the enemies of the Boleyns, Cardinal Wolsey and Spanish Ambassador Chapuys in particular.

The real Anne once said she would have been happy to be the wife of Henry Percy rather than the wife of the king. Henry VIII – or Cardinal Wolsey – closed the door on that for her. I suspect Henry’s seduction probably planted in her the idea of power and what she could do with it. Anne Boleyn was dealt a particular hand and learnt to play with it.

In the press release for the B.B.C produced The Other Boleyn Girl, Gregory is quoted as saying that “the claim George slept with Anne is “speculative history.” It’s not a modern suggestion, but whether they did or not, none of us will ever know.” This same press release also states that “Gregory herself believes that it is unlikely Anne committed adultery with anybody.” ⁵

She justifies inferring a potentially guilty Anne in The Other Boleyn Girl because it is written through Mary Boleyn’s point of view, and through Mary’s suspicions. I do not believe Mary would have believed her sister guilty of committing or attempting incest with their brother, a belief supported by the actions of her royal niece, Elizabeth I.

It is well known Elizabeth Tudor remained mostly silent on the subject of Anne Boleyn. Some writers infer her silence as her way to distance herself from her mother, and that she believed the political spin put in place after Anne Boleyn’s death. Yet actions speak louder than words.

All through Elizabeth’s long reign, Anne’s gifted, intellectual daughter surrounded herself with her mother’s kin as part of her inner circle. Some of those closest to her were men and women who had also been close to her mother.

Then there was the discovery after her death. Elizabeth wore a ring containing her own portrait as an aged queen and that of a much younger woman – a portrait of her mother. To possess this portrait, Elizabeth must have held dear the memory of her mother, who physically disappeared from her life three months before her third birthday. It must have been her mother’s kin, including Mary’s children, Catherine and Henry, who told her the stories about her mother. I am certain none of them involved incest and adultery, attempted or otherwise.

Saying we tend to lose sight of “her absolute criminal nature,”⁶ Gregory also gives credence to Chapuys’ belief that Anne Boleyn was responsible for attempting to murder Cardinal Fisher. 7 Chapuys, one of the reporters of this period, is not an unbiased or reliable witness. His diplomatic news-sheets to Spain paint Anne as a woman with no redeeming features, reflecting his stance as a loyal friend and champion of Katherine of Aragon. Gregory, on the other hand, writes as a fiction writer who seems to believe her own fiction.

Professor Ives, the author of the much respected and lauded The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, wrote this in reply when I asked him the question about Anne Boleyn’s so-called murderous attempt on Fisher’s life:

It is total moonshine to say, as Gregory does, that Anne had ‘an absolutely criminal nature.’ She was certainly determined but she was also intelligent and if she had set out to kill Fisher she would not have set out to kill the whole of his staff. I know of no historical evidence for relating Anne to the poisoning story. Robert Roose allegedly confessed that he put ‘a certain venom or poison’ in a pail of yeast used for making gruel. He believed it would cause sickness and according to imperial espionage he intended it as a joke.

Professor Ives also said, “Historical fiction seems to me to be escaping from the unwritten rules – that it should be faithful to the zeitgeist of the period and should not falsify. If you just want a costume drama, why not invent works like Lorna Doone?”⁷

Like us all, Anne Boleyn was not a perfect individual by any means, but she also deserved – and deserves – respect and admiration for many reasons. She was no witch, white or black. Protestant bishops held her in great esteem; the men dying with her were not her lovers, but men staying loyal to her even when it was obvious the tide had turned against her. Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder – the man I endeavored to give voice in Dear Heart, How Like You This? – said in real life, “I could gladly yield to be tied forever with the knot of her love.” Anne was a woman who loved her daughter, a woman who called children the greatest consolation in the world.

Anne suffered enough during the nineteen days leading to her execution without fiction writers and movie directors further blackening her name. Only four months before her arrest she had lost her last hope of bearing the king a son. Arrested on trumped up charges, she was tried, convicted, and went to her death knowing five men had lost their lives because of her, and without having a hope of ever seeing her child again. Anne died not knowing the victory of her daughter’s life, but frightened for Elizabeth, who would be motherless and without her protection. Anne Boleyn faced the day of her execution with immense courage. Even her husband said she had a stout heart.

Historical fiction writers need to be very careful when writing about the once-living. They’re not fair game simply because they are dead. Our fiction gives weight to their lives and should avoid pandering to our image-conscious society. What do we learn if we do that?

True art imitates life; it illuminates life in all its beauty and ugliness; it helps us know and understand ourselves. If the art of literature panders to hedonism and sensationalism, this will happen less and less. By its shallow effort to depict a semblance of truth, the power of writing is diluted and risks the vacuum of nothingness. Historical fiction cannot afford to, in the words of A.S. Byatt, speaking of her concerns about Harry Potter, give credence to books “written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip.”⁸

I believe those readers, especially, deserve better from us. They deserve the reading journey that will take them deep within their imagination and out the other side, without the counterfeit of pandering.

It is writers who maintain and reinforce the myths of Anne Boleyn as the home wrecker, whore, wicked step-mother, scheming bitch, and witch. These myths we shape also partially reflect ourselves, what we want to see, what we want to believe. Good novels are those that seek to understand the cause and effect of myths, the writer peeling off the onionskin of imposed meaning until arriving closer to the inner heart of truth. By digging deep we arrive at the substance of true narrative – the true reason for story, the true reason we tell stories. To help us become whole.

To me, a good book is like the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. By opening the door, I open the possibility to adventure, discovery, and personal growth. Aslan roared to the children in The Last Battle, “Further up and further in.” As they did, their world opened to new dimensions and new beauties beyond their imaginings. Reading gives us the first keys to those deeper wells within us; diving into those wells takes us even “further in” to understanding ourselves and the world in which we live.

When we write, we dive in even deeper to bring back the pearls, the nourishment that makes us all the richer and more human. Good historical fiction does this for us. With our times becoming increasingly dark, it is now more important than ever for writers to bear the light and mirror the truth.

Notes

1. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Snow-White. [Accessed online at www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm053.html]

2. George Santanya, The Life of Reason (vol. 1), 1905.

3. Carolyn Heibrun, Writing a Woman’s Life (Ballantine, 1998), 37.

4. Joanna Denny, Anne Boleyn (Portrait, 2004).

5. The Other Boleyn Girl [From BBC Two, The Other Boleyn Girl. Accessed online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/02_february/13/two_drama_otherboleyn.pdf]

6. Author interview with Philippa Gregory. [Accessed online at www.harpercollins.au/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=50000293&displayType=interview]

7. Maria Dowling, Fisher of Men, A Life of John Fisher, 1469-1535 (Macmillan Press 1999), page 142.

8. I wish to express my sincere thanks to Professor Eric Ives for his generosity in answering my questions. Professor Ives’ The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn is the best biography of Anne Boleyn now in print.

8. A. S. Byatt, “Harry Potter and the Childish Adult,” New York Times (July 7, 2003). [Accessed online at query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E4D8113AF934A35754C0A9659C8B63]

Wendy J. Dunn is an Australian writer and teacher obsessed with Tudor History. Thanks to her research on Katherine of Aragon, the subject of her new, yet to be published novel, she now has a new passion: medieval Castile. The author of the award-winning novel Dear Heart, How Like You This?, Wendy is currently working on several Tudor projects while studying for her Masters in Creative Writing.