Tudor history enthusiasts will be excited to discover that a
very interesting book has just been published, written by Susan Bordo: The Creation of Anne Boleyn. This is not
a historical biography, but instead, Bordo explores how Anne has been ‘created’
throughout history by different people, according to their prejudices, beliefs
and culture, through a variety of mediums including film, theatre and novels. As
someone who has been researching the life of her tragic, but much less famous,
cousin and fellow queen Katherine Howard, I thought it would be interesting to
explore how Katherine herself has been ‘created’ over the years according to
different beliefs and prejudices.
From the time of her execution in 1542 until the nineteenth
century, unlike Anne (who enjoyed long-lasting fame due to her status as the
mother of the Protestant queen Elizabeth I), Katherine was a non-entity,
ignored and forgotten by almost everyone; even her own family had rapidly
disowned her at the time of her death. However, with the rise of the study of
history in the Victorian period, writers began to pay much greater attention to
the reigns of Henry VIII’s queens, lamented by Jane Austen. The austere moral
values and the condemnation of ‘fallen women’ in contemporary Victorian
society, unsurprisingly, influenced understandings of Katherine’s story as a
lesson in morality, as something to be learned from. In relation to Katherine
herself, Victorian historians were either hostile, or viewed her with pity –
Agnes Strickland, perhaps the greatest female biographer of the age,
characterised her as ‘a sheep being led to the slaughter’, but shied away from
her shocking career, due to her stifling moral values.
In film, Katherine first appeared in the successful 1933
Oscar-winning The Private Life of Henry
VIII, with Binnie Barnes presenting her opposite Charles Laughton as Henry
VIII. The film centred around the relationship between the king and his fifth
wife, marginalising his affairs with his other queens. The result was that
Katherine was presented as a more influential and, in a sense, important wife
to the detriment of the others than she had ever been in reality. This
Katherine was worldly-wise, sophisticated, and incredibly beautiful, but her
charm and qualities seemed far more nuanced than the real Katherine’s probably
were.
The publication of the only academic biography of Katherine, written in
1961 by Lacey Baldwin Smith at a time of the beginning of rebellious feminist
politics and swiftly changing views of women, was heavily critical of
Katherine, condemning her as ‘a juvenile delinquent’ and a ‘common whore’ who
was childish, rash and given to fits of hysteria. Again, we see how the context
of the times shaped this interpretation – heavy moral values and the actual
imprisonment of juvenile delinquents at the time for crime influenced this
historian’s understanding of a queen executed for adultery.
Baldwin Smith’s interpretation was very influential in the
next portrayal of Katherine in film/TV, in the television series The Six Wives of Henry VIII (BBC, 1970),
where she was played by Angela Pleasance (top left). This series was very
unsympathetic to Katherine, where she is depicted as a violent, manipulative,
hedonistic teenager who threatens her cousin with poison and physical violence
and acts in a cruel manner to her ex-lovers.
Two years later, however, the most
accurate presentation of Katherine emerged in the film of the same name, where
the young queen was played by 18-year old Lynne Frederick (tragic in itself,
since Frederick died at a very young age). The film perhaps represented growing
sympathy to Katherine within England, in highlighting her youth, innocence and
naivety, and her hysteria when imprisoned. Indeed, this can be seen as the
beginnings of the ‘creation’ of Katherine’s status as victim, continuing into
our own day. In David Starkey’s television series (2001), all six wives are
presented with a label at the beginning of the program – Katherine’s is
‘victim’.
It’s not hard to see why this has happened. The rise of
women’s history, feminist politics, and a greater awareness of domestic
violence has shaped the creation of Katherine in modern times. Historians have
suggested that she was a victim of sexual violence from ruthless predators at
court. Her status as victim was exemplified in the British TV movie Henry VIII (2003), where Emily Blunt
gives a poignant depiction of a sobbing and screaming Katherine on the scaffold
– but again presents her as selfish and driven by her own pleasures.
Most
recently, in the successful Showtime series The
Tudors, Tamzin Merchant (top right) gives a very modern portrayal of
Katherine as a girl who just wants to have fun. We are encouraged to sympathise
with her, but the series presents what people see as a problem in contemporary
society – promiscuous girls who think of nothing but their own pleasures. This
has shaped people’s views of Katherine. One person I know, who adores The Tudors and Anne Boleyn, once told
other people that Katherine was the only ‘slutty’ wife, while defending Anne at
every cost. But is this an accurate depiction of the real woman, or merely a
view of how she has been presented in film and TV?
Excellent post! I've always had a great deal of sympathy for Katherine Howard due to her youth and always felt she had to have been a victim of a more jaded court. Granted she had some sort of sexual experience at her aunt's home but I don't think she was ever as wild as others have painted her. In today's terms we can say that she never felt loved or valued as a person since she didn't have much of a home life with parents or her aunt and therefore probably accepted the sexual advances of Dereham and Mannox as being "loved." It's the same situation that so many young girls fall into. For her it was compounded by the fact Henry fell in lust with her and had to have her himself. So if she was relatively naive in terms of court life and lust vs love..yikes...it was a tragedy in the making.
ReplyDeleteI am truly enjoying your blog and look forward to more!
Thanks very much for your kind comment, Edie! I am actually researching and writing a biography of Katherine, and over the last few months my sympathy and pity for her has really developed. I get so cross now when people dismiss her as being stupid, or thick, or a whore, or whatever... I really think naivety was her biggest 'fault', if you can even call it that. She was in an absolutely horrendous situation at court and it ultimately destroyed her. Thanks again! There are several other articles on Katherine if interested.
ReplyDeleteI've read everything on your site and will looking for your biography when it comes out! I've been a huge history geek for..well...decades quite frankly :)
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