Anyone watching 'The other Boleyn girl'??

[Italiangreyhound]

Seems like a pretty crap time to be a woman (or a girl)!

Anyone know how true it all is??

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Boleyn_Girl_%282008_film%29

Ohhhhhhh......that's cool

I've lost my kindle. I'm back to paperbacks till it turns up.

Oh no!
Hope it turns up...

LRDTheFeministDragon, rubbish yourself! given the way Anne Boleyn threw her weight about, I see no reason to suppose she disliked being queen. And Jane Seymour certainly seems to have enjoyed her role too, bossing her ladies in waiting about and spending lavishly on rich clothing, both of them had a thoroughly good time as far as i can make out. Anne Boleyn was no pawn, she was a strong minded woman who got what she wanted. jane Seymour may have done what her family wanted, but there is nothing to suggest that she didn't want it for herself as well. but you seem to be the type who is only happy seeing women as pathetic victims.

Oh please ... you're making up little stories and you're surprised I think they're making a nonsense of the history?

I don't actually in the least want to see women as 'pathetic victims', but I do think making up little stories about history is naff as all get-out. You're reiterating the same dull stories about how women are to blame when a marriage breaks up, and it is really, really difficult to defend that narrative even if you do it with masses of specific historical detail. It's pretty much impossible if you do it using anachronistic stereotyping and no evidence.

IMHO.

Louise.
Anne and Jane (and any woman of that era) were seen as chattel.
That is simple historical socio economic fact.
Yes they got to wear nice dresses, and lived in luxury but they still had no control over their own lives.
Even Anne's own father did not lift a finger to help her and was desperate to get back into Henry's good books. The murderer of 2 of his children.
Fathers, brothers and husbands could treat their wives appallingly with utter impunity.
If a girl was made a ward she could be forcibly married to them (as Katherine willoughby was to Charles Brandon at age 14)
Anne was unusual in that she was not meek and quiet as women of that time were supposed to be (like Catherine of Aragon)
But she had no real power.
And she knew it.

(Or what *badvoc& said rather more eloquently! ).

I do think it's hugely important not to assume all women in history were passive victims, because they weren't.

But I've got to admit, I do think it is quite off to apply anachronistic misogynistic narratives to the past, and pretend they count as historical interpretations. This picture of Jane as some kind of marriage-wrecker is massively anachronistic and untenable, for the reasons people have given on the thread about the web of power and control and expectation that was spun around her by that society.

Yes, she may well have done her utmost to tip the scales one way or another, and we could make moral judgements about how she did that or which way we feel she leapt at times when there was some choice in the matter. But to focus on her as a marriage wrecked in isolation is just crassly absurd.

Brilliant post, Badvoc.

and LRD!

Katherine of Aragon was deeply religious. No way would she have agreed to the annulment. Not on pain of death I think.

She made it clear she would rather die Porto.
And - unlike Anne and Catherine Howard - her nephew charles was the holy roman emperor and Henry could never have had her executed or he would have faced war (and no doubt Francis would have joined Charles too)
So instead he made sure she was moved to smaller and smaller houses in damper and damper conditions.
He household was stripped back to the bare minimum.
In fact she was treated at the end of her life very much like her fil treated her after Arthur's death.
She was tormented at the end of her life withnthe thoughts that if she had fine quietly Mary and she would have been much better off and Henry would not have broken with Rome.

I think far too many people place modern ideas/practices onto the actions of historical figures.
Which is, of course, silly.
We cannot imagine what it was like to have lived in that era.
Medicine was in its infancy, as was science and humanist thought.
He church governed EVERY aspect of people's lives, from the lowest serf to the king.
Masses were said every day, in lent and advent 3 times oer day.
During lent and advent people fasted and abstained from sexual relations.
People really believed in pilgrimages and that their soul could be saved from eons in purgatory if people said masses for them after their death.
(Katherine of Aragon left money in her will for 500 masses to be said for her soul should be said after her death for example)
Even Anne...the "concubine" as eustace chapuys always called her was a deeply religious woman.
Her fateful argument with Cromwell was how the money from the dissolution of the monasteries was being spent. She felt it should be spent on poor relief. Cromwell disagreed.

I agree.

My basic problem is, we tend to focus on the personal. We either think we can know and judge these people as if their society were like ours, or we think they're unknowable. When we do that we're relating on a personal level and expecting them to be just like us. I think that stops us from seeing the parallels and the differences, which could ultimately help us understand our own society.

DH does pretty much everything medieval Catholics did, and yet, there is so much more that shapes who he is, and it makes me so aware that however many superficial similarities we see, there are so many more differences.

I agree it's important to remember Anne as a religious woman. I think we don't because it is fashionable to see her in the anachronistic view as an immoral woman who stole someone else's husband.

The Tudors are deceptive because we have all those personal letters (far more than for earlier periods) and a fair few houses which look more or less the same as they did, and Holbein's paintings which are practically photos, so it's easy to feel like we know them.
People from 100 years earlier seem far more distant. And yet pre-Reformation I'm not sure the Tudors were that different from medieval people (though LRD may think differently.)

I agree.

And I agree that they weren't very different from medieval people (I'm just cautious about saying so as I don't really know enough about the Tudors and I know it's so easy to see similarities when specialists might know there were far more differences).

The Tudor era saw the start of the renaissance. In fact some think that Anne Boleyn may have even met Leonardo da Vinci at the French court of queen Claude at blois!!
Humanist thinking, and challenging of established ideas.
BUT it was still a time of huge inequality and (to us) senseless cruelty.
There has never been a golden age IMHO.
Every generation thinks the younger one is dissolute and lazy (the ancient romans livy and Cicero said as much!)
I am sure in time to come our time will be seen as misguided and backward :)
I sincerely hope that women get a better deal in future eras.

YY, I agree.

I think even within our lifetimes, there will be things we've lived through that will seem barbaric. I find it amazing that my dad grew up when sodomy was illegal and the death penalty was in force. It's scary, but it's also hopeful how fast attitudes change.

It does make me chuckle a little that the whole Church of England thing is based on Henry being so desperate. I know that the Protestant vs catholic argument is part of the bigger picture. But iirc, Henry remained catholic til his death. But the monarch as head of the church started there...

Yes. Exactly.
Safe abortion not available for instance.
My dads cousin was 17 when she went to a back street abortionist.
She died - in agony of peritonitis - on the kitchen floor alone :(
I am - perhaps not surprisingly - rampantly pro choice.

Oh how interesting re AB and Leonardo!
I guess to really understand her you'd need to understand the French court.

Badvoc!

Oh Badvoc, how awful about your dad's cousin!

Oh, the whole church thing is hilarious! :)
Henry was a catholic til his death.
As was Jane Seymour...and yet and their son Edward was a maniacal devout Protestant.
Funny how things turn out, isnt it?
I recommend reading about the borgias too. Fascinating family!

Oh, that's awful.

My mum fell pg with me aged 16 in 1967. My parents got married. I would not wish the same outcome for my dd. But thinking of that feels weird, like wishing me out of existence.....