There are certain aspects of Anne Boleyn’s life, and death, that will always influence the way her story is told. One of the most important
“With Henry absent, as he was, allowing Cromwell to take control, most of the blame is placed with Henry’s then-favourite henchman. And historically, Cromwell didn’t stick his neck out for Anne, but then, why should he? Cromwell wasn’t the one responsible for making queens disposable, Henry had already done that with his first devoted wife. Still the bulk of the blame really falls to Cromwell in this offering. There is even a slight hint of blame towards Anne when blenches at her error in provoking Norris about wanting Henry to die so he could fill ‘dead men’s shoes’. The old and completely false stories of Anne being testified in court against by her ladies is then trotted out. The inadequate, milk-and-watery Lady Worcester stammers and trembles through her testimony, but most objectionable was Lady Rochford striding in to testify that her husband and his sister had committed incest. The worst aspect of this, and why I have called it lazy, is that Lady Rochford appears in the entire three episodes for a few minutes at most, mainly to smirk, to make a few barbed remarks, but then suddenly and without motivation commits this terrible act against her family. There is no feminism for anyone but Anne Boleyn here. When Anne enters her cell the Tower after her arrest she utters a sentence once purportedly used as her motto ‘ainsi sera, groigne qui groigne’, ‘grumble all you like, this is how it’s going to be’. It almost felt like an omen, that he we were again, mired in the muck of centuries-old misogyny, blaming the women around Anne for her fall.
Jane Boleyn did not testify at the trial, there were no witnesses called, and we have no evidence that she was even questioned about Anne and George. You can read a blow-by-blow response to Jane Boleyn’s imaginary crimes here. But in the meantime, here we are grinding our teeth again, let down by women writers writing about historical women and presenting the same old stereotypes. Feminism isn’t just for the popular girls. In fact the recent discovery by historian Kate McCaffrey, that Anne Boleyn’s prayer book was given to one of her ladies, Elizabeth Hill, proves that we underestimate female relationships in Henry’s court. In her announcement, McCaffrey writes that the book was “passed between a network of trusted connections, from daughter to mother, from sister to niece. If the book had fallen into other hands, questions almost certainly would have been raised over the remaining presence of Anne’s signature. Instead, the book was passed carefully between a group of primarily women who were both entrusted to guard Anne’s note and encouraged to add their own.” Usually stories like this are dismissed as romantic traditions. Only now we have an actual example of Tudor women, secretly and at great risk to themselves, preserving this tiny piece of Anne for her daughter, Elizabeth.
This discovery has given us more than a new insight into female bonds at the Tudor court. It has given us the right to expect more, and better. The #metoo movement hasn’t reached historical writing about figures like Anne Boleyn. It’s time to realise that we are well beyond the point of being proud of ourselves for realising that Anne Boleyn was not a witch with six fingers. It’s time to think about how all the women of Henry’s Tudor court survived against great odds and under enormous pressure. It’s time to think about the relationships between those women, like Anne’s sisters, both Mary and Jane, and realise they’re not merely props in Anne’s story to be wheeled out and exploited when necessary. It’s time to recognise the experiences we share with all of these women, and that those women are human, with their own stories that need to be told.”