Q & A with Dr Susan Bordo

Welcome to On the Tudor Trail Dr Bordo! Could you share with us a little about yourself and your background?

I was born in Newark, New Jersey, during the first wave of the post-War “baby boom.” From a very early age—six or so–I wanted only to write, but I didn’t get much encouragement at college, where my first humanities teacher returned a paper I did on “King Lear” with a “D” grade and an angry comment that I had put too much of my personal life into what should have been an “objective” piece.  I think I’ve been fighting that attitude ever since!  But it took a long while to reach a place in life where I could do so effectively.  I had a chaotic time during my twenties: dropped in and out of college twice, worked in bookstores while I went through a disastrous first marriage and divorce, did the occasional film review for radio, and had a nervous breakdown which left me unable to leave my house for nearly a year. (This was the sixties. Enough said?) When I recovered, I realized I needed an income I could depend upon.  So I put my dreams of writing aside, went back to college and eventually got a PhD in philosophy and a teaching job.  Almost immediately I began to rebel against the rules of academia—the power-jargon, the name-dropping, the scholarly showing-off.  If you look at my books, you can see a gradual but very clear shedding of academic posture, and a re-awakening of the kind of writer I had wanted to be when I was young. “Unbearable Weight” was the first step—still very dense and “scholarly” but about issues—weight, body image, eating disorders—that no philosopher had touched before and that many young women connected intimately with. The next step was “The Male Body”—in which I discuss the cultural roots of men’s insecurities, and even dared to talk about my own relationships with men! Since then, I’ve been writing pretty much the way I want to:  a mixture of cultural studies, memoir, history, biography, sociology, “creative” non-fiction—any tools that are available that will allow me to connect with readers in the most effective way I can.  If you can’t connect, what’s the point?

When I was 52, my husband Edward and I adopted an infant, Cassie, who is now 12. Yes, I’m 64 with a daughter in middle school! It wouldn’t work for everyone, but it does for me.  She’s amazing, and being a mom is challenging, heart wrenching, joyful, and scary all at the same time. I’ve written several pieces about the adoption (which is an open adoption) and someday may write a memoir about it.  But for now, Anne has me (the writer “me” anyway) all to herself.

Anne Boleyn has been represented in film and literature in a variety of ways, including: the romantic heroine, marriage breaker, religious reformer, adulteress, witch, enchantress and victim.  Describe your Anne Boleyn?

I don’t really have “one” Anne, but I do have bits and pieces that made me fall in love with her:  Her speech at her trial, in which she describes her one “crime” as not having shown Henry enough humility—I think that’s an extraordinary, “feminist” insight for a woman of her time.  Her dark, ironic sense of humour, which never left her, even at the end.  The fact that she never tried to aspire to the beauty-standards of her day, but wore her own style with supreme confidence, probably altering ideas about beauty in the process.  Her passion about making the bible available in English to all subjects.  The fact that she expressed her jealousy rather than suppressing it as a “good” wife should.  The way Elizabeth is so clearly her daughter, with that distinctive blend of brains, femininity, assertiveness, and flirtatiousness that they both apparently had.

I also see “my” Anne in every young woman who comes to my office, struggling with the contradictory demands of being female in complex times:  Can I be myself—fully myself, sexual and smart, serious and playful, sometimes demanding, sometimes jealous, sometimes too loud, sometimes wanting only to be left alone—and still be loved?  Can I be loved—fully loved, body, soul, and mind—and still remain myself?  If forced to choose, what will I sacrifice and what will I hold fast to?  Anne’s struggle speaks powerfully to these young women, and I think that’s a big reason why she has become an icon for them.

What inspired you to write The Creation of Anne Boleyn?

I first became interested because I was shocked at how many tired old stereotypes still existed about Anne—and even in works of some respected historians, whose work is very valuable, but who slip into “temptress” and “vixen” language when they talk about Anne.  David Starkey is one example of this.  His work has a great deal to offer, but he talks about Anne as though she were a vampire on the hunt for the blood of her enemies.  I was also surprised at how much reliance there is on the reports of Eustace Chapuys, whose bias against Anne was virulent.  Historians warn against that bias, but many go on to accept his reports (even when they are unsubstantiated) all the same.  And perhaps most of all, I was disturbed at the way in which fictional accounts, such as those of Philippa Gregory, have become “fact” in the minds of many readers. So I was inspired to become something of a cultural “detective” in search of the “real” Anne.  It was then that I began to see how little we actually know about the “real” Anne, and how differently she has been interpreted and represented according to the fantasies, anxieties, political and religious agendas, etc. etc. of various generations, factions, writers.  The cultural historian in me wanted to find out how the various views were generated, by whom, and why.

There are so many “Annes,” as you say. For supporters of Catherine of Aragon like Chapuys, she was a temptress and manipulator of Henry’s passion, who was thought to be quite capable of plotting for the death of Catherine and Mary.  For Elizabethan Lutherans, she was the unsung heroine of the Protestant Reformation. For the romantics, particularly in painting, she was the hapless victim of a king’s tyranny—a view that gets taken up in the earliest film versions of Anne, Lubitch’s silent Anna Boleyn and Alexander Korda’s Private Life of Henry VIII. In post-war movies and on television, Anne has been animated by the rebellious spirit of the sixties, (Anne of the Thousand Days), the “mean girl” and “desperate housewife” imagery of the nineties (The Other Boleyn Girl), and the “third wave” feminism of a new generation of Anne-worshippers, inspired by Natalie Dormer’s brainy seductress of The Tudors, to see in Anne 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. Henry may have tried to write his second wife out of history, but “Anne Boleyn” is a formidable cultural creation—or rather, a succession of cultural creations, imagined and re-imagined over the centuries.

One big goal of my book is to follow the cultural career of these mutating Annes, from the poisonous putain created by Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys—a highly biased portrayal that became “history” for many later writers—to the radically revisioned Anne of the internet generation.  But along the way, I also advance some theories of my own, about her years at the French court, her relationship with Henry, and the psychology of Henry himself.

The debate about what Anne Boleyn actually looked like has raged for many years. Which portrait do you think best reflects the ‘real’ Anne?

I don’t know—and really, no one does. For not only are there many competing  and contested versions, with those that are most probably authentic also being the most fragmentary, but Tudor art, for the most part, didn’t even try to be realistic, but depended instead on “symbolic iconizing”—emphasizing features, posture, etc.to convey qualities of character and status instead of life-like reproduction.  The best example of this, of course, is Holbein’s famous sketch of Henry, posed to look every inch the picture of majesty, strength, and masculinity.  I do, however, have a favorite picture of Anne, which we are using as the logo of the Facebook page.  I love it because it depicts a far younger Anne than the National Gallery portrait or any of the other later interpretations. We can guess, from the childishness of her plump cheeks and soft dreamy eyes, and the fact that she is still wearing an English hood—starched, hair-concealing, with a gabled point similar to that of a nun’s headdress—that she hadn’t yet been sent abroad.  I would guess her to be about twelve. It was a privilege, of course, to be “finished” abroad, and far less wrenching in the sixteenth century, when infant mortality was high and the affective bonds between parent and child were nothing like the norm today, when a middle-class child’s leaving for college is a great drama for all concerned.  Still, at twelve Anne had known nothing but the secluded Hever countryside, and an everyday life centered on learning and play with her mother, brother, and sister. It had to have been wrenching, if exciting, to leave this bucolic life behind.

This dreamy portrait reminds us that there was an Anne before Henry, before the divorce from Catherine, before the miscarriages, before the charges of adultery, before the Tower.   An Anne who sat at a 17-foot table, laughing with her family, dining on olive pie, spiced custard, and the numerous fricassees and ‘quelquechoses’ which were the pride of every well-heeled Tudor housewife. An Anne whose first illuminated prayer-book, created at Bruges in 1450 and inscribed and signed by her, can be seen behind glass in a special room at Hever, devoted to two such “Books of Hours.” An Anne who practiced her French with the diligence of a scholar.  The Hever portrait reminds us that the archetypal temptress was once a real, live child. That haunts me…and moves me.

What role do you think Anne Boleyn played in her own downfall?

Anne had the unfortunate habit of saying what she thought—to Cromwell and others with whom she perhaps ought to have been more circumspect and cautious.  Unable to be the meek, silent wife, she entered into politics, and thus was vulnerable to the winds of political change.  Also, it’s my opinion that she got “caught” in a change of attitude about courtly love, and in the change of her role from mistress to wife.  Anne was trained on traditions of courtly love within which flirtatiousness, far from being suspect, was a requirement of the court lady.  Of course, it must never go too far; the trick was to just go to the edge, and then back off (without, of course, hurting the gentleman’s feelings.).  Purity was required, but provocative banter was not just accepted, it was expected.  As the middle ages segued into the renaissance and then the reformation, however, conversations that would have been seen as entirely innocent began to be viewed differently.  The reasons for this are complex, and I’ll discuss them in my book; Let me just say here that by the time Cromwell mounted his conspiracy against Anne (and I do believe it was a conspiracy), people were disposed to believe things, based on various exchanges with the men she was charged with, that would have been dismissed as ridiculous forty years earlier.  Add to this the fact that the training of queenly behavior had always been very different from the training of the court lady; queens were expected to exercise their role modestly and mostly in silence. Anne, who had not been brought up to be a queen (as Catherine had) continued to behave in many ways like a lady of the court even after she was queen.  All of this made Anne vulnerable to her enemies.

Even Anne Boleyn’s enemies commented on her strength of character, courage and composure during her trial and in her final moments on the scaffold. From where do you think she drew her strength?

I think that Anne’s strength came from having been “schooled” at the courts of the strongest, most confident women in Europe, her religious convictions, and that mysterious combination of genes, early experience, and who-knows-what that makes up personality and character.  Her daughter had the same qualities.

Apart from Anne Boleyn, are there any other Tudor personalities that capture your imagination?

I’m fascinated by Henry, and have spent hours trying to figure him out.  I know the comparison is ahistorical, but in many ways he reminds me of O.J. Simpson—capable of being charming one moment, and dangerously self-serving the next.  Also like O.J., constant adoration led him to believe that he was above the ordinary rules that govern mere mortals.  But you have to give Henry props for being drawn to Anne in the first place.  I think he both admired strong women (his mother and grandmother were powerful women) but also needed to dominate them.  A very complex man, with many contradictions. I really like what Suzanne Lipscomb does with Henry in her book 1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII. More than any other author, she stresses the importance of masculine image to Henry, and how threatened he felt when it began to break down, over the lack of an heir, the decline of his physical abilities, and his inability to manage his domestic life.

Are there any other periods in history that you are interested in?

I’m drawn to those periods in which major transformations in human experience and culture took place.  We are going through one right now—but that’s for another book!

If you could ask any historical personality a question, what would it be and whom would you ask?

I’d ask Henry:  “How could you do it?”

Thank you for your time!

Visit The Creation of Anne Boleyn Facebook page for more information about Susan and her project.