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Feb. 4th, 2010 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsMonths ago ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schiarire told me that Hilary Mantel was writing a book set in Tudor England, to which my response was basically "wow, she is writing a book FOR ME."
(Look, I know I am not the only person here to confess to an enormous fascination with those wacky Tudors. I would say, 'in my defence, I liked them before it was cool!' On the other hand . . . I don't think there ever was a time when it wasn't cool. But I didn't know it was cool when I was eight!)
Anyway, Wolf Hall is a biopic novel about Thomas Cromwell, a man of Humble Origins who became extremely powerful and influential with Henry VIII during the years of wacky shufflings when he was trying to ditch Katherine and marry Anne Boleyn. Cromwell has been portrayed pretty negatively in Tudor media before, generally as contrasted against Saintly Thomas More (see: A Man for All Seasons) and Mantel is pretty clearly writing against that, showing him a as a logical and clear-thinking as well as ambitious person who is trying to create a different kind of country than the one he grew up in. People of rank frequently remark that Cromwell is a person, with mild surprise; the line that sticks with me is where he's thinking about the struggle to get people to accept Anne Boleyn, and muses that a country where Anne Boleyn could be queen might be a country where Cromwell could be Cromwell.
Mantel is also really, really good at writing complicated politics, and the way they do and don't intersect with the personal - how political enmity can be a kind of friendship, and alliances can turn to enmity like that. I think it's a very good book. I didn't love it the way I loved A Place of Greater Safety, but that's possibly because the emotional intensity did not run quite so high. It's a more logical, quiet book, to fit the protagonist.
Also - I can't quite put my finger on why, but for some reason I felt like this book was a lot better for women than the others of hers I've read. Which is weird, because it's not like there were all that many of them. But, I don't know. An Experiment in Love and The Giant, O'Brien are the kind of books that make you feel like there is no way to be female and happy, at all, ever. A Place of Greater Safety does not make you massively depressed to be a woman but it does not make you feel like as a woman you can have much of an impact on anything either. In a weird way Wolf Hall does not have so much of that distinction, which is bizarre, considering it is Tudor England and you would think it would have even more of one. (And I love Mantel's portraits of Mary Boleyn and Jane Seymour, especially.)
Maybe the thing is that this book opens a bit of a broader world for everyone - and speaking of, it was SO WEIRD to reach the end of a Mantel book and not feel like the world was entirely a hopeless and crushing place! I was utterly boggled until I realized that she is currently writing a sequel which will presumably take us to Cromwell's execution and remedy that oversight.
Anyway, while I am talking about Tudors, I am curious: how much of a widespread phenomenon is Tudorphilia? Are the Tudors crazy overrepresented? Does everyone know the names of Henry VIII's six wives growing up? I feel like it's a bit of trivia that people are way more likely to know than, uh, any other piece of English-history trivia, and not only because of John Rhys Meyers (though the overrepresentation has increased in recent years). But I could be wrong on this. I would like to know all of your thoughts!
schiarire told me that Hilary Mantel was writing a book set in Tudor England, to which my response was basically "wow, she is writing a book FOR ME."(Look, I know I am not the only person here to confess to an enormous fascination with those wacky Tudors. I would say, 'in my defence, I liked them before it was cool!' On the other hand . . . I don't think there ever was a time when it wasn't cool. But I didn't know it was cool when I was eight!)
Anyway, Wolf Hall is a biopic novel about Thomas Cromwell, a man of Humble Origins who became extremely powerful and influential with Henry VIII during the years of wacky shufflings when he was trying to ditch Katherine and marry Anne Boleyn. Cromwell has been portrayed pretty negatively in Tudor media before, generally as contrasted against Saintly Thomas More (see: A Man for All Seasons) and Mantel is pretty clearly writing against that, showing him a as a logical and clear-thinking as well as ambitious person who is trying to create a different kind of country than the one he grew up in. People of rank frequently remark that Cromwell is a person, with mild surprise; the line that sticks with me is where he's thinking about the struggle to get people to accept Anne Boleyn, and muses that a country where Anne Boleyn could be queen might be a country where Cromwell could be Cromwell.
Mantel is also really, really good at writing complicated politics, and the way they do and don't intersect with the personal - how political enmity can be a kind of friendship, and alliances can turn to enmity like that. I think it's a very good book. I didn't love it the way I loved A Place of Greater Safety, but that's possibly because the emotional intensity did not run quite so high. It's a more logical, quiet book, to fit the protagonist.
Also - I can't quite put my finger on why, but for some reason I felt like this book was a lot better for women than the others of hers I've read. Which is weird, because it's not like there were all that many of them. But, I don't know. An Experiment in Love and The Giant, O'Brien are the kind of books that make you feel like there is no way to be female and happy, at all, ever. A Place of Greater Safety does not make you massively depressed to be a woman but it does not make you feel like as a woman you can have much of an impact on anything either. In a weird way Wolf Hall does not have so much of that distinction, which is bizarre, considering it is Tudor England and you would think it would have even more of one. (And I love Mantel's portraits of Mary Boleyn and Jane Seymour, especially.)
Maybe the thing is that this book opens a bit of a broader world for everyone - and speaking of, it was SO WEIRD to reach the end of a Mantel book and not feel like the world was entirely a hopeless and crushing place! I was utterly boggled until I realized that she is currently writing a sequel which will presumably take us to Cromwell's execution and remedy that oversight.
Anyway, while I am talking about Tudors, I am curious: how much of a widespread phenomenon is Tudorphilia? Are the Tudors crazy overrepresented? Does everyone know the names of Henry VIII's six wives growing up? I feel like it's a bit of trivia that people are way more likely to know than, uh, any other piece of English-history trivia, and not only because of John Rhys Meyers (though the overrepresentation has increased in recent years). But I could be wrong on this. I would like to know all of your thoughts!
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 06:40 pm (UTC)Politics are confusing and hard to write so I'm always so amazed by authors who can make me care a lot about politics, Penman and Dunnett can manage it.
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Date: 2010-02-04 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 06:58 pm (UTC)When I did vampire larps I discovered that I'm not devious enough to run political plots.
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Date: 2010-02-04 06:55 pm (UTC)Lion is definitely oversimplified, but it does have Katharine Hepburn owning the stage (and, er, the kingdom), and...
okay, I just IMDBed the movie to see who else acted in it, because I forgot -- I only saw the film once in high school.
Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus of France -- here played with an unmistakably canonical (and vaguely incestuous, as Richard's mother is Philip's father's ex-wife) Richard/Philip relationship adding drama to England/France -- are Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton.
I ...
This would not be nearly as hilarious if Timothy Dalton weren't my Archibald Craven PB.
I think I need to rewatch this.
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Date: 2010-02-04 06:58 pm (UTC)In TOTALLY UNRELATED news, that reminds me I have an icon-set to send to you tonight. :D?
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Date: 2010-02-04 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 07:00 pm (UTC)I may be a little obsessed with the Plantagenets; Eleanor is my great historical love.
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Date: 2010-02-04 07:07 pm (UTC)I suddenly realized, after years of work, that I am writing my dissertation about medieval historical fiction.
(See, I wrote this chapter on a thirteenth-century story that Thomas Becket's mother was actually a HEATHEN PRINCESS who met Thomas's father when he was a prisoner in the castle of her father the Emir...)
After that, honestly, other historical wrongnesses don't always bother me!
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 07:08 pm (UTC)RYM
WHAT
SEND THIS TO ME IMMEDIATELY
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Date: 2010-02-04 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 07:10 pm (UTC)The myth of Perfect Richard makes me laugh a lot these days, especially after the Crusades class I took last year, where we read one of the early epic poems about Richard's exploits - "and then he slept with Philip! And then he massacred and ate some Saracens, and was like, MMMM DELICIOUS!"
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Date: 2010-02-04 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 07:19 pm (UTC)(That's why my life is awesome.)
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Date: 2010-02-05 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-05 03:45 pm (UTC)Astrolabe. What hippies.