In this essay, Frances E. Dolan compares Hillary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall, recent winner of the Man Booker Prize, to Philippa Gregory's popular The Other Boleyn Girl. Dolan is the author of Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy.
Wolf Hall: Another Spin on the Other Boleyn?
Hillary Mantel, whose novel Wolf Hall recently won a Man Booker Prize, might seem to be in a rather different league than Philippa Gregory, author of numerous best-selling novels about Tudor queens. Focusing on Henry VIII’s secretary, Thomas Cromwell, Mantel gives us a Tudor court of cool calculation rather than ripping bodices and throbbing passions. By leaving sex out of it, for the most part, and putting men rather than women at the heart of her story, Mantel raises the prestige of the historical novel set in Tudor England and has collected kudos as a consequence. Stopping short of the events many would consider climactic—Anne Boleyn’s fall and execution, Cromwell’s own execution--Mantel frees us to remember that these developments weren’t inevitable and offers us a new slant on a story that, she assumes, we already know. Her novel ends with Cromwell planning for Henry’s entourage to visit Wolf Hall, the Seymour family home. Unless the reader knows that Henry’s interest in Jane Seymour is supposed to have intensified during this visit, establishing Jane as the successor to Anne, neither this ending nor the book’s title makes much sense. While Henry’s wives and mistresses remain key pawns in this account, the players are men such as Cromwell.
The most vividly depicted female character in Wolf Hall is Anne’s sister, Mary. Since Mary is also the protagonist of Gregory’s blockbuster The Other Boleyn Girl, and the film of the same name, I thought it would be useful to consider whether Mantel offers us a new perspective on her.
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