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@six-wood
im going to bed for a week
“?????? you fuckign talk to me?????????????????? duh???”
What kills me is that they likely talk at lunch often enough for him to mention it in the text; but yet he doesn’t know the simple surface fact about her that she has a boyfriend. Did he even ask her questions about her life?
im gonna cry she looks so FIT
god seeing vicki in the pink howard costume with her pink hair... i was suddenly hit with just how PROUD i am of her like she’s doing it!!! she’s gonna go out and smash this lead role!!! she’s gonna be so incredible and i can’t WAIT for everyone to see how amazing she is every single night
does aimie know that she has the best girlfriend ever
musical/play: remotely caters to a primarily female audience and/or inspires young girls or women in any way
cis male theatre critics:
the cast of six (including the alternates)
reblog if you agree
how on earth did I miss this video the first time I watched the takeover
i LOVE this
I PRESENT KATHERINE HOWARD WITH SWORDS
fanart/inspired by @jane-fucking-seymour !! check them out their writing is GOD TIER
there’s a lot i can say about this oh boy. took me like 6-7 ish hours in total?? i listened to beetle juice like 4 times all the way thru. oh and i used prismacolor pencils for it all
twas fun~
Philippa Gregory and the Virgin-Whore Dichotomy
I like historical fiction. As a historian, I enjoy reading period pieces because they bring to life characters that I spend lots of time with. As a result, I’m usually willing to forgive the genre it’s many shortcomings, yet I have had a particularly difficult time digesting a certain author. With any Philippa Gregory novel, I have found lots and lots of issues to unpack, dissect, and despise. From subpar prose to unfocused plots and especially to the gigantic fallacies in her portrayal of history, specifically because she claims to aim for total historically accuracy. Still, it’s not her ineptness to interpret historical data with any degree of conformity to historiographical consensus that irks me the most. Philippa Gregory writes stories about women for women, they’re (for better or for worse, “chick lit”). And yet the portrayal of the main characters in her two most popular novels, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance make forgiving her for historical inaccuracy for the sake of guilty pleasure nearly impossible.
It’s not just that Gregory ignores facts in favor of her own interpretation, and thus is forced to portray women like Anne Boleyn in ways that conform to said interpretation, but that her characterization of her leads – completely turning away from historical fact – follow several problematic tropes that detract from their actual characters. This in and of itself follows a trope in adaptation wherein women with balanced, fleshed out characters have everything taken away from them so that they can fit into the neat little virgin-whore dichotomy that sadly is seen even in today’s most popular media. So, instead of giving Anne and Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl and Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard in The Boleyn Inheritance their dues as fascinating historical figures, she neatly consigns each of them to one of her little boxes: Mary Boleyn and Anne of Cleves as virgins, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard as whores.
Mary Boleyn, who was sent from the French court after serving for a time as the King of France’s mistress for her “unseemly behavior,” and came to England and became Henry’s mistress despite her family’s embarrassment and consternation, is inexplicably portrayed in The Other Boleyn Girl as a naïve, sexually innocent girl who is forced into her affair with Henry by her ambitious family. She is consistently portrayed as the victim of her father’s and uncle’s, and later her sister’s schemes, ousted from the Henry’s affection by the ambitious Anne who wants power and glory (I’ll address Anne’s storyline in more detail below). And despite this being her story, from her point of view, she has no real autonomy, despite historically being one of very few women who clearly were in control and enjoyed their sexuality and didn’t care about seeming virginal. The only thing she does is get married against her family wishes, which is the action that ultimately saved her from being implicated in the coup against the Boleyns in 1536. Additionally, Gregory does this weird thing where she makes Mary the youngest of the Boleyn, born in 1508, even though overwhelming scholarly evidence proves that Mary was the eldest child, born in 1499/1500, which does nothing but further Mary’s infantilization. There is no reason to do any of this but to vilify Anne and make Mary, again, this story’s hero, fit with Anglo-Christian morality so the outcome of her story is justified – which I’ll explain in more detail later.
Anne of Cleves, who most likely died a virgin as she never married and was a devout Lutheran, did not have have a sexual autonomy to be taken away in order for her to be the virginal protagonist to counterbalance Catherine Howard. However, Gregory - for no perceivable reason- invents a history of abuse in the Cleves family (we’re treated to a drawn out scene of Anne being whipped by her mother while her brother watches in the shadows) and Anne’s father being mentally ill. This despite the fact that Anne’s father did not suffer a mental illness, and Anne was known to be the favorite of both her mother and her brother and having a happy family life. Anne of Cleves and Mary Boleyn both have invented abuse and bullying from their family, because according to Philippa Gregory, you can’t like a character unless she’s suffered incredible childhood trauma and has no sexual autonomy, as shown by her portrayal of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.
Anne Boleyn, a highly pious woman who initially rebuffed King Henry’s offer of being his mistress because of said piety, is portrayed in The Other Boleyn Girl as being so power hungry and ruthless that she sells out her sister to pursue her man and has sex with her own brother in order to make and keep herself as Henry’s queen. This isn’t to say that Anne wasn’t ambitious, she most certainly was. But Gregory goes about her ambition in the wrong way. Anne doesn’t pursue power in a vacuum (she also does it after Mary’s affair with Henry had ended) but in part because of her convictions and in part because she knows that she must yield to Henry and tries to make the best out of her situation. Anne took care of Mary and her children, securing a pension for Mary after her husband died and left her in debt, and making sure her son got a good education. Most importantly, unlike the portrayal of the book and the films of the events of 1536, Anne wasn’t executed because Jane Boleyn made a silly report implicating George and Anne in an affair (historians actually believe Jane had very little if anything to do with her husband and sister-in-law’s downfall, which makes sense if you think about it). She was in part executed because she had lost two children and in part because councilors like Thomas Cromwell didn’t like her butting into their work and criticizing their immorality. The charges of incest served the purpose of weakening the Boleyns farther and scrubbing the court of their influence. She was completely innocent of the charges.
Catherine Howard was not. This is another case in Gregory’s novels where she didn’t have to invent a “crime” because Catherine was “guilty” of having sex with both Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper. Most historians, however, give Catherine a pass for her mistake, while being aware of what happened to her cousin, citing her youth and the fact that she was way in over her head at the time to know what she was doing. But Gregory couldn’t possibly let that play out without adding her particular flavor of awful. Catherine is a vapid, empty headed, superficial and annoying character, and even though despite these flaws I still found myself sympathizing with her, I don’t know if Gregory intended me to. She is shown in every bad light, from making fun of Anne of Cleves’ dresses to being utterly fake and more or less the pawn of Uncle Norfolk and his desire for power. Of course, she has her affair with Culpeper not just because she’s infatuated with him, but because her uncle tells her to in order for her to get pregnant, even though the intention of getting pregnant to dupe Henry has no historical grounds whatsoever.
Now, you might be wondering, why would Philippa Gregory go through such pains and take all this criticism when she could have easily just written what actually happened historically. Isn’t it much easier, especially when you already have an interesting plot write for you, to fill in the blanks? Possibly, but I think the answer to this question lies in the fate of the respective characters. Our “virgin” characters, Anne of Cleves and Mary Boleyn get happily ever afters. They outlive their tormentors in peace and fulfillment, and lead contented lives. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, on the other hand, are both executed. Gregory conforms the life to the outcome so that all seems justified in the end. At least, this is the implication of how she chose to tell these stories. By making Anne and Catherine “guilty” of ambition and sexual autonomy, we’re meant feel satisfied in their demise because this is what bad women get. Conversely, if you’re a good, “pure” woman, you get a long and happy life.
This is nothing new in the world of fiction, but it is a terrible trope that informed by gender roles in our society. Essentially, if you’re a woman and you have agency, your head’s going to get cut off. We as women are told this over and over again in many different ways across every genre, from the scream queen getting killed while having sex with her boyfriend to the countless times on TV that the Strong Female Character has been sexually assaulted as a plot point. And Philippa Gregory definitely helps perpetuate this. And that is why, among other reasons, I do not like her novels.
Hey, do you know that feeling of hitching up a long skirt so you don’t fall on your face when walking upstairs, and then you immediately become a wretched yet resolute Jane Austen character? It’s a universal thing, right?
It’s like resting a laundry basket against your hip and suddenly you’re a long-suffering peasant woman, wondering if you’ll survive the winter.
a shawl wrapped around the shoulders and you’re wandering the moors in a Brönte novel, feeling melancholic
Looking out the window at the rain and you’re a love-stricken newlywed wondering when your husband will return from the war.
Long skirt billowing behind you while to go down the stairs, you’re a proper Lady in a flowing ball gown being introduced at a fancy social function.
Hair blowing in the wind and suddenly you’re hovering on a cliff by the sea, staring out into the waves and praying your merchant husband will return from his voyage across the ocean
Hood up against the rain and wind and you’re a medieval abbess defying the weather and travelling on foot with your people to find a place to establish a new community.
Wiping your hands on your apron and you’re an 18th century kitchen girl rushing to let in the delivery boy you secretly love.
You know who deserved better? Anne Boleyn.
lets bring back romanticism im tired of trying to be rational. were all dumb and we all want love
you know what’s the hottest take on history EVER? six the musical.
i don’t care what historians say, anne boleyn wasn’t a scheming whore.
ATTENTION
If you see this you are OBLIGATED to reblog w/ the song currently stuck in your head :)
I don’t need your love. Again.
If you're reading this...
go write three sentences on your current writing project.
# my favourite part about this post # is that nowhere does it say to reblog this # but we’re all reblogging it # because if we have to suffer # so do other writers
Alright I’ll stop procrastinating and go back to my Persephone joins a gang story. No need to call me out like this.
note to self: you are an intelligent woman. forgive yourself for all the times you were stupid and naive. you are a woman of heart. forgive yourself for the times you were soft when you should have been hard.
