#reading17

Only at a handful of points in the story do we know anything of what Anne thought. Only in Henry's love-letters and in remarks scrawled on [Anne's] Book of Hours do we know for certain what they said to each other. All the rest is of the order of what somebody said somebody else thought or said. (...) Many have concluded that only artistic imagination will bring us to the truth. That is a valid position. There is a place for Donizetti's Anna Bolena, for Anna of the Thousand Days, for the variant dramatizations by Rosemary Anne Sisson and Nick McCarthy in the television series Six Wives of Henry VIII and for the many literary attempts at biographical actualité, provided we recognize them for what they are: statements about ourselves. They explore our values, they tell us how we feel men and women would react, might react, should react in an imagined situation. What they can never quite tell us is how Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn did react.

It is indeed noticeable that a number of writers seem almost reluctant to write about Anne Boleyn in any detail. (...) No vindication of Anne was ever published. Her chaplain, William Latymer, presented to her daughter an encomium on her religious activities, and the Scottish Lutheran, Alexander Ales, wrote an account of her fall, placing all the blame on the enemies of the Reformation, but both men evidently had patronage in mind. Ales, indeed, included an address for any financial contributions Elizabeth would like to send. The reason for silence elsewhere is not far to seek. Few defences of Anne Boleyn have been entirely happy. Any vindication of the wife was an implicit criticism of the husband; if Anne was 'noble', 'virtuous' and 'worthy', Henry had been either a monster or a gull.

The knight, in the beginning, coming to behold the sudden appearance of this new beauty, came to be holden and surprised somewhat with the sight thereof; after much more her witty and graceful speech, his ear also had him chained unto her, so as finally his heart seemed to say, “I could gladly yield to be tied for ever with the knot of her love,” as somewhere in his verses hath been thought his meaning was to express.

Millions are condemned to stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.