The Sexualization of Anne Boleyn
Posted By Claire on August 25, 2010
sexualize, sexualise
vb
1. to make or become sexual or sexually aware
2. to give or acquire sexual associations
sexualization , sexualisation n1
This post has been inspired by my good friends at the History Police Facebook Group2 (thanks, Lauren!) and a discussion thread on that page regarding the sexualization of historical characters, characters such as Elizabeth Woodville and Anne Boleyn who are often accused of trapping their husbands by using their feminine wiles or sleeping their way to the top, or, in Anne’s case, holding out on their lovers until they reach the top.
Now, I don’t have a problem with sex (blush, blush), but I do have a problem with the way that Anne Boleyn is often portrayed in novels, movies and the media. When I started this Anne Boleyn site, I chose to find out the truth about Anne Boleyn, to find the woman behind the myth. The Anne Boleyn I found was not a whore or temptress, but an intelligent, ambitious woman, who had a major impact on those around her and on English history. It angers me that nearly 500 years on she is still being presented as the woman who tempted Henry away from his wife and beloved church, and a woman who even considered incest to keep her man and crown. Even some Anne Boleyn fans are presenting her as some kind of trophy wife, like a modern day footballer’s wife or celebrity. Others present her as a tragic heroine, a victim of a husband who sought revenge after being bewitched by her. Sometimes it seems that we haven’t moved on from the views of the likes of Chapuys, who called Anne “the Concubine”, and the Abbot of Whitby who called her a “common stewed [professional] whore” – nice!
I don’t doubt that Anne Boleyn had magnetism and that she enjoyed the courtly love tradition and flirted, but why oh why do some authors and directors have to make it so that her rise to Queen was based solely on Henry’s sexual infatuation with her and her dangling her virginity as bait? It’s almost akin to people slurring a woman company director by saying that she only got to that position because she slept with influential people or because she’s sexy. Henry VIII was not stupid. I can’t see him doing what he did – annulling his first marriage, upsetting his daughter, breaking with the church etc. – just for sex. As I wrote in my recent article “Anne Boleyn, Sex and the Church of England”, The Guardian newspaper, in its review of Howard Brenton’s “Anne Boleyn” play, spoke of how Anne “used her sexual stranglehold over Henry VIII to pursue the idea of religious reform” and that she “deployed her sexual power to become a ‘conspirator for Christ’ “3 – No, I don’t think so, I think there was a bit more to the English Reformation than that.
In a Sunday Times article on “The Other Boleyn Girl” movie, Philippa Gregory says:-
“The story is one of a woman using her sexuality to entrance and trap a man, followed by the brooding bitterness of his revenge.”4
That just makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall. Perhaps I shouldn’t let it bother me because it is, at the end of the day, historical fiction, but so many people take “The Other Boleyn Girl” at face value and believe that that’s who Anne Boleyn was, a temptress who trapped a King.
In “The Tudors”, we see Anne Boleyn holding out on Henry, teasing him and frustrating him by only letting him go so far, and in “The Other Boleyn Girl” we see Henry raping Anne out of frustration. We are led to believe that Anne Boleyn was playing a game, encouraged by her father and uncle, or that she had learned from her sister’s experience as Henry’s mistress, that the only way she could become queen was to keep Henry interested but deny him the gift of her “maidenhead”, as it is described in novels. Their whole relationship seems to be based on the promise of passion, the anticipation of that wondrous moment, and it is small wonder, therefore, that the marriage is dead within 3 years and that Henry wants rid of Anne. In these portrayals of Henry and Anne’s love story, there is no meeting of minds, no partnership, no shared ambition, just sex or the anticipation of it, how sad. I know that in Henry’s love letters to Anne, he talks about wanting to kiss Anne’s “pretty dukkys”, but the depth of his love for Anne, and not just sexual obsession, is evident from his letters when he is troubled that he may have offended her by asking her to be his one and only mistress. He loves her for who she is and for the fact that he can talk to her as an equal. Here is a woman who tells it like it is, who doesn’t just tell him what she thinks he wants to hear, a woman with whom he can debate things and plan the future. That is far more intoxicating to Henry than sex, it is Anne’s intelligence and ambition that he is drawn to. It is their shared interests and common goals that bind them together.
Anne Boleyn is not the only victim. Elizabeth Woodville is often portrayed as a woman who used her descent from the mythical Melusine and her knowledge of witchcraft to trap Edward IV and to further her family. Marie Antoinette is depicted as a woman with a voracious appetite for both sexes. Eleanor of Aquitaine was so hot-blooded that she left her frigid husband, Louis VII, for Henry II, and had previously had an affair with her uncle. And what about Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford? She is unfairly portrayed as someone who betrayed her husband and sister-in-law because of her jealousy of their close, or even incestuous, relationship, and as the woman who acted as agent provocateur to Catherine Howard and Thomas Culpeper, taking a sexual thrill out of their secret meetings and enjoying being a voyeur. Oh, and of course Elizabeth I became one of the greatest English monarchs because she was the Virgin Queen and used her sexuality, and the magnetism that she had inherited from her mother, to get what she wanted. Yes, Elizabeth used her single status and the marriage market for diplomacy, but the success of her reign did not rest solely on her sexuality and her status as the “Virgin Queen”, she actually had a brain too.
I’m sure that you will be able to add some historical characters to this list, so feel free to do so in the comments below.
Alexandra, a member of the History Police group, summed up my feelings on this issue well when she commented on Boudicca, saying, “I think Boudicca was sexy because she was powerful, not powerful because she was sexy”5 . We are doing historical characters a grave injustice when we credit their success and power to sex and their sex appeal.
Right, I think I’ll get off my soapbox now!
Notes and Sources
- Collins English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged, Harper Collins 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
- The History Police Facebook Group
- The Guardian Review of “Anne Boleyn”
- Philippa Gregory watches as her bestseller ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ gets the Hollywood treatment, The Times and Sunday Times, February 15, 2008
- History Police Discussion on “The sexualization of historical people”
How else could she be portrayed? Henry was married to Catherine. Anne was the other woman who was happy to destroy Catherine, the Church, whoever stood in her way. The historical facts bear this out. So to accuse people of “trashing” her for saying that she used sex to trap the King is nonsense. How else would you characterise someone who tries to steal another woman’s husband?
[Reply]
Claire Reply:
May 24th, 2011 at 1:52 am
The historical facts do not bear out that interpretation at all, only fiction and film portray Anne in that way. There is no historical evidence at all that she set out to trap Henry, that she used sex to manipulate him, that she was “happy to destroy Catherine, the Church…” and that she stole another woman’s husband.
[Reply]
juliane Reply:
April 2nd, 2012 at 8:49 am
The other woman, the other woman… Yawn. Catherine passed from Arthur to Henry. Anne simply yielded to royal pressure. Who’s the ahem? In my opinion, it’s best to avoid this kind of meddling, this troublesome tangle. Doesn’t bring anyone anything useful.
[Reply]
Although this element has been sensationalized and misrepresented, I think it would be a mistake to underplay the importance of sexuality in Anne Boleyn’s life and her cultural meaning in the centuries since her death. She refused the conventional role of mistress and ruled as queen partly by virtue of her sexuality, and fell when sexual fertility failed her. This isn’t to reduce her or detract from her other qualities- intelligence, courage, political astuteness, etc- as Timothy Leary once said, “Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodaisiac!” One of the reasons Anne is such a compelling historical figure is that she was a sexual female monarch, unashamed and self-validating in a very repressed and hypocritical age. To desexualize Anne would be as false as a Phillippa Gregory plot device.
[Reply]
Anne was young and vibrant,she knew how to make herself attractive, and had an added air about her because she was newly back from the french court and with her came all their refinements, which would have made her more noticeable and what underlined this was she was actually very intelligent. She oviously did not blend in un-noticed as most ladies of the court at that time. On saying that Anne would not have deliberately make herself into this person just to attract the king, she was doing as all the young ladies an gentlemen did at court, have fun, after all she was single, on the marriage market and a good catch. Was it her fault that a middle aged man, who was bored with his marriage got her in his sights? that rings true through the past to present day. She wasn’t the first after all, Henry had strayed on numerous occassion. It turned out that she wasn’t going to be another notch on his headboard. So yes she did have that something special, call it sexuality,attractiveness whatever it was, we all have it to a degree, its just that we usually get the ‘boy next door; she attracted a King. If it had not have been Anne it would have been someone else. The big question is would he have divorce Katherine for anyone else, personally I think he would have eventually, times were changing. To say Anne became Queen on her sexuality alone is singleminded,it was more complex than that, Henry had never persued anything for as long as he did Anne, and no matter how ‘sexy’ she was I would have thought even the deepest crush would wane after waiting for 7 years. She didn’t steal him, Henry gave himself to her, even when he knew he was married to katherine, so yes in the end she took him. The ultimate ‘Fatal Attraction’
[Reply]
Thanks Claire for another great article. I’ve been visiting this site for sometime now and I just came across it.
As a trained historian it’s always bothered me how historical figures are viewed through a modern lens. It’s frustrating when you’re trying to get to the “truth” and you have to wade through centuries of others doing the same thing. Many eras have produced different versions of Anne, the difficulty is trying to get to the real person under the layers of half truths and myths.
I think that sometimes we forget that figures like Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII were people first, with all of their personal strengths and weaknesses, as well as the expectations of their times. Anne is an interesting character because she didn’t do what most women would have done in her position, she didn’t give in to Henry’s sexual expectations. How she could be considered a “whore” for that has always boggled my mind. She chose to remain a virgin until marriage, which, in her time, was the conventional choice.
It is the classic “Catch-22,” submit and be called a “whore” or withold and be called a “whore” for enticing the man with the promise of submission. It’s really a no-win. My suspicion is that Anne held onto her virginity because that was all she had. Once the king took that she risked losing him, and also lost any chance of making the kind of respectable marriage she wanted. She was trapped.
It is often forgotten that women of the early 16th century were essentially the chattel of men. They belonged to their fathers, then their husbands, and rarely had the opportunity to choose how to live their own lives. In Anne’s case, by becoming the King’s “intended” she was controlled by no one. Her father couldn’t oversee her without risking the King’s offense, and since the King was besotted with her, he pretty much let her have her way.
Once they married, she was once again under the control of a man and had to submit in all things. That must have been extremely difficult for a woman of intelligence who had become used to a certain amount of freedom. Once she accepted the role of “wife” she was trapped in another “Catch-22.” Be the perfect submissive wife and deny the intelligent, interesting woman Henry had fallen in love with; or continue to be the challenging woman she’d been….so much more appropriate for a girlfriend than a wife. Her only real hope was to give him what he so desperately wanted, a son. When that didn’t happen she became too vulnerable to those, like Cromwell, who feared her power.
I find it particularly interesting that Anne Boleyn is famous for witholding her sexual favors, and for allegedly bestowing them on every man in site. The contradiction is mind boggling, and I suspect that as intelligent and witty as Anne was, she would have found it hilarious if it wasn’t so terrifying. Actually, the stories of her laughing hysterically in the Tower ring most true to me, how could she not see the irony in her situation?
[Reply]
Yes, yes, and Henry dangled a crown with rosy promises, painted Anne into a corner… And he’s a what? An uncommon stewed pig? Please.
[Reply]
Oh… I don’t know. In Gregory’s defense, she stated in “The Boleyn Inheritance” that Anne’s “wit of fire” was particulary attractive to Henry, and she ruined him for witty, fierce women. This is just fiction, but I can see, through many of the articles about Anne, how her wit and intelligence would have been very sexy to Henry. I agree with John. The mind is the ultimate sex organ. Those who slandered Anne (and continue to unto this day) reduce the sexual power of a woman to something dirty or bad, but it is not so. Just because those small minds twist her sexuality and use it against her need not mean that Anne did not employ her sexuality in her own desire to wed Henry! And we cannot forget that sexuality is one of a woman’s biggest guns in her “war chest”.
At least in my own experience, sexuality is a huge part of non-dynastic marriage and attraction, and as we know, Henry did not marry Anne for political reasons but for his deep desire to posess her. What for, then, if attraction was not a major part of this? Whether it is a woman’s body, her voice, her style, or her mind does not make too much of a difference in the end. She obviously struck the right cord in Henry’s soul.
Perhaps many authors go the bodice-ripping route for sales. I often wonder, though, how much of this is a backlash against the earlier times (think The Tudor Rose) when Victorian era authors almost completely ignored the sexuality of their heroines? In my own novel (set in Egypt, not Christian Europe) I had no choice but to contend with the growing sexuality of my female lead. To ignore it would have been to ignore a major, vital part of a woman’s life and marriage, a marriage that in this case was an obvious, documented love match that produced at least two known offspring. To omit the sexual motivation, the sexual intrigue, and finally the consummation of these powerful emotions is to do a disservice to the women we attempt to reconstruct on the same level as failing to write about their giving birth or any other huge part of that woman’s life.
Now, whether or not an author does this tastefully…. well, what offends one intrigues another. Authors should, IMHO, seek a medium ground. Real women are not all about sex; nor does a healthy or semi-healthy woman shun sex. Interestingly, Gregory’s portrayal of Margaret Beauford lacked all sexuality.
I prefer my historical media not to avoid sexuality, because it is ridiculous and not a truthful portrayal of the human condition. I do realize that Christianity had (has?) rather, er, strict beliefs against sexual pleasure and that many of these women, possibly, would have been altered by these religious confines. But all in all, as a reader and a writer, I am glad that history is more humanized now. As long as it is tasteful!
I am new to this site but I think it is absolutely wonderful, and I hope to continue on reading many more wonderful and fascinating articles about Anne Boleyn and the Tudor period. Thanks Claire (I hope I have that right!) for all your hard work!
[Reply]