the wives of henry viii by antonia fraser

Henry was the centre of court life, and through him extended wealth, privilege and the future of families. Fraser brilliantly describes the way that the court revolved around Henry VIII, like planets orbiting the sun. Here is of course the problem for these women. She championed her own religious beliefs, until they clashed with the king's when she was forced to make an abrupt turn. Catherine Parr for instance, who survived Henry, was first the resourceful wife of Lord Latimer who managed their estates at the time of the rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. Instead, she argues, that 'on thew contrary, a remarkably high level of strength, and also of intelligence, was displayed by them at a time when their sex traditionally possessed little of either.'įraser takes us through the lives of these women, of whom we often know a surprising amount of detail from their letters and other documents. Thus Catherine of Aragon becomes The Betrayed Wife, Anne Boleyn is the The Temptress, Jane Seymour The Good Woman Anna of Cleves is The Ugly Sister, Katherine Howard The Bad Girl finally Catherine Parr is the Mother Figure.' 'as a series of feminine stereotypes, women as tarot cards. Antonia Fraser however challenges the cardboard caricatures of these women, suggesting that it is false to see them Traditionally we see these women as the passive victims of the increasingly irrational and tyrannical behaviour of Henry VIII, victims of his lust and violence. (Nov.This meticulous study of Henry VIII's six wives is a fascinating examination of the position and role of ruling class women in Tudor society. 50,000 first printing History Book Club and BOMC alternates. By firmly anchoring each woman's fate in Henry's failure to be philoprogenitive-most crucially in not producing male heirs-Fraser makes a major contribution to feminist scholarship. Unlettered, 21-year-old Katherine Howard, queen for just 18 months when she was beheaded in 1542 for the ``violent presumption'' she had committed adultery, met death on the block where her cousin Anne Boleyn had died six years earlier. Anne Boleyn, a learned woman, was innocent of the adultery she was accused of, but was beheaded because she could not produce a son. Catherine of Aragon, married to Henry for 20 years, displayed cleverness and bravery when she fought her husband's attempts to divorce her. From her scrupulous research and informed interpretations of historical events, Fraser succeeds in presenting Henry's queens as complex and intelligent women who struggled to express themselves in a world where females were subservient to and ruled by men. Fraser ( Mary, Queen of Scots ) here turns to the reign of Henry VIII, who ruled from 1509-1547, and the six women he married: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr.

The wives of henry viii by antonia fraser