I don't know what it is about the short-lived Tudor dynasty so compelling. After all, Henry VIII wasn't the only European king who fooled around with women to whom he wasn't married. Queen Victoria's son Albert, who became King Edward VI, had an extended affair with Lillie Langtry, after all. It's tempting to think that the story of Henry VIII and his wives is about the sex -- especially when the series currently running on Showtime is populated with so many relentlessly gorgeous people and more flesh than we've seen in any other treatment of this story. But there's so much packed into this particular piece of history -- the Reformation, Henry's break with Rome, the tragedies of the various women unfortunate enough to catch his eye and his interest, the relentless stream of pride goingeth before a fall. But one of the most compelling aspects of this story has always been Henry's moral relativism in the face of the intense religiosity that characterized the age in which he lived, and how that moral relativism led him to the heinous acts that books and movies and television have retold over and over and over again.
For all the fine dramatizations that have been done in the past depicting this story, and for all that this one plays so ridiculously fast and loose with certain historical details, there's a kind of raw immediacy that this series has. Once you suspend disbelief enough to buy that a slightly-built young man with cheekbones you could grate cheese on, impossibly perfect teeth and an Elvisish curl of the lip is the large, hearty king we know from the Hans Holbein portraits, and if you can avoid ticking off the many historical liberties taken in this series in the name of narrative, there's a palpable intensity here that sucks you into the emotional lives of these people.
In last Sunday's episode, we saw quite graphically the miscarriage that was literally the final nail in the coffin of Anne Boleyn's marriage to Henry. Anne has always been portrayed as this strong, defiant creature that has often made it difficult to find her sympathetic. We forget how she was pimped out by her family to curry favor with the king and expected to somehow hold onto his interest when her own sister had failed to do so. Imagine what it must have been like for an intelligent young woman to try to balance the headiness of attracting the attention and gifts of a king, one's obligation to one's family, and at the same time be witness to your own sister's plight as a discarded mistress. Imagine watching your male fetuses bleed out of you knowing that you only have so many tries to produce a male heir. We've always seen Anne Boleyn as a schemer, fully complicit in her own fate, a homewrecker who on some level we always felt got what she deserved. Natalie Dormer's interpretation of the character is just as self-assured as those that have preceded hers, but she finds the human part of Anne that we've so often missed:
Life for women in Tudor England just have been horrible:
Young girls were given hardly any personal freedom.
Religion was at the very center of life in Tudor England. And girls were raised to obey their parents without question.
Girls were taught their only function in life was to marry and bear children.
They learned they were commanded by God to render unquestioning obedience to their husband and to learn in silence from him in all subjection, the same way they behaved at home to their parents.
[snip]
Most people in the first half of the 16th century didn't believe in education for women. They held the medieval belief that teaching girls to read and write would cause them to waste their time and skills on love letters.
[snip]
Husbands of upper class girls were chosen for them by their fathers or other male relatives. Very few men and women of noble birth chose their own partners.
Marriages were arranged for political reasons, to cement alliances, for riches, land, or status, and to forge bonds between two families. The idea of marrying for love was considered bizarre and foolish.
Royal marriages were contracted largely for political, military, or trade advantages. It sometimes happened that the couple never saw each other until the day of their wedding.
[snip]
A girl's chances of marriage depended more on the wealth and social position of her family than on her beauty or accomplishments (though a comely appearance and a pleasing demeanor never hurt).
The Pre contract would contain a clause calling out the terms of the bride's Dower Rights; the amount settled by her husband or father for her living expenses in case of widowhood.
Even if she was widowed, she didn't gain and keep control of those funds unless she didn't return to her father's house or remarry.
[snip]
The Tudor concept of marriage fit into what they believed was the divine order. God ruled the universe, the King ruled the country, and a husband ruled his family.
Like subjects to a King, wives were bound in obedience to their husbands and masters.
Men expected to rule their wives and thereby gain their love and reverence. They believed a man could make, shape and form the woman to his will. They thought a loving, virtuous, and obedient wife was a gift from God.
For the woman, even queens, that meant total subjection to and domination by her husband, who was often a domestic tyrant.
Marriage was a period of upheaval and adjustment for any woman. Even more so for a Queen. Often she had to face a dangerous journey to a new land and a stranger, leaving her home, family, and native land never to see them again.
Royal wives could come to enjoy considerable power and influence as did both Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. But all such power emanated from her husband. She had no authority or freedoms except those he allowed her. Without him she was nothing.
Queen consorts were housewives on a grand scale with nominal charge of vast households and many estates which produced huge revenues.
They had a battalion of officials to administer the estates for them. The Queen only controlled the income allowed to her by the King. No major transactions of any kind could even be considered without his consent.
As a matter of fact, any decisions made, from financial matters to domestic issues, were subject to his approval. Usually the Queen had a privy council appointed by the King to oversee and advise him about her affairs.
The chief duty of the Queen was to produce heirs for the succession. She was also to set a high moral tone for the court and kingdom by being the model wife, full of dignity and virtue.
[snip]
The chief function of Queens and of wives of lesser status as well, was to produce sons to ensure continuation of her husband's dynasty.
Pregnancy was usually an annual event.
Many women and babies died in the childbed. Pregnancy and birth were extremely hazardous.
The expectant mother not only prepared a layette and the nursery for her new baby, but also made arrangements for someone to care for her child if she died during childbirth.
Even if she did survive the birth she could be physically scarred for life.
There was such a lack of medical knowledge even doctors, who were usually only called in if there were complications, had no real idea of how to treat or even diagnose.
Couple that with their almost total lack of understanding of even basic hygiene, and you begin to see why so many women died.
Anne Boleyn got caught up in power games played by men, was a pawn in her own family's ambition, succumbed to the headiness of being able to get a king to make her a queen, and then failed to remember what her function was.
Today we are once again hearing the rumblings of religious fundamentalism. That fundamentalism has worked its way into our government, where the judicial branch of government is one retirement away from the addition of another Samuel Alito to the Court. This breed of justice believes that because the word "privacy" is not seen in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, there is no right to privacy. There are people in this country who would return women to their place in Tudor England -- whose role is solely that of wife, mother, breeder. They would not only make abortion a crime, but they would also turn back the clock and overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, thereby allowing states to outlaw contraception the way some states outlaw sex toys today.
While some so-called feminists have obsessed about how Hillary Clinton has been treated by the media, and whether Barack Obama has been condescending, and have been threatening to stay home or vote for John McCain in November, they're forgetting how much of the progress women have made in the last four decades is because they are no longer slaves to reproduction. I have no doubt that Anne Boleyn wanted to have a male child as much as Henry did, and her inability to do so -- perhaps caused by Henry VIII having syphilis, as one theory has it -- cost her her life. Not so long ago, NOT wanting a child one had conceived could cost a woman her life.
A John McCain presidency means an end to the reproductive freedom we've all come to take for granted. I'm hearing women say that we should allow McCain to be president so Hillary can come back triumphant in 2012. John Paul Stevens is not likely to stay on the Court another four years. 2012 is too late. The march of the Court and of this country's attitude towards women cannot afford anothe four years of a Republican president in service to the descendants of those in the early 16th century who accused intelligent women of witchcraft, and behaded women on trumped-up adultery charges because their own Y chromosomes were too weak to turn a human egg into a healthy male child, and treated women as possessions and pawns in their power games and who twisted religion and their God to justify the most heinous of crimes against humanity.
These women claim to want their daughters to live in a world where nothing is off limits to them. We've come so far since Anne Boleyn lost her head because she didn't produce a male heir. Yes, there's more progress to be had. But the road we've been on for my entire adult life comes to an end with more conservative Supreme Court justices -- justices who will rule against pay equity and the right to self-determination. So if you're a Hillary Clinton supporter who is tempted to stay home just because you believe that a woman "deserves" the chance this year, just think about what you'll have to tell your daughters about how you helped the retrogressive aims of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade make sure that the world you envisioned and hoped for never comes to pass.
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