The topic of body image and its associated behaviors are efficiently preluded on the first page of Susan Bordo’s book through Delmore Schwartz’s poem The Heavy Bear. It introduces the dualism of the body; how it is both our being as well as an inescapable pest. It expounds on the idea that the body is a “brute” equipped with a primitive need to consume in order to feel fulfillment. Essentially, the body is heavy baggage for many people, constantly pulling downwards towards what it “needs”, but not necessarily towards what the mind wants. The rest of the book really revolved around that and I enjoyed it.

What bothered me most about „The Creation of Anne Boleyn“ was that it lacked in substance. I was expecting a theory concerning Boleyn’s image and the way representations of her have changed through the years. I would have liked something of a statement as to whether her depictions have changed and how she has been perceived, and a discussion about why she is stills so well-known and popular.

Well, that is not what this book is about. If you are already a Boleyn enthusiast, there won’t be anything new in this one for you. Actually it contains quite a lot of retelling and is fairly repetitive. There really is no coherent theory in this text.

Bordo’s tone is quite condescending at times. Attacking fellow writers like David Starkey and Alison Weir seems to be her favourite pastime. And honestly, attacking Starkey’s work for being too much on the narrative site? Really? It’s not a secret that his style reads rather personal and story-telling-like (sorry, can’t think of a better word). So, yeah, easy target. But I think Starkey deems his readers intelligent enough not to take everything he writes at face-value. Readers do not need to be told to question what they are being told. However, Bordo does think so. She criticizes Starkey and Weir for not telling their readers to be sceptical! I am not the biggest Starkey-fan on earth myself, but what Bordo does can be categorized as nit picking at best.

And if she’s not bashing Starkey, then she is gushing about the beauty and insightfulness that is Natalie Dormer (the actress that played Boleyn in “The Tudors” TV show). Yes, I get it, you met her and you loved her. Of course you loved her! She shared all your opinions on Boleyn.

Bordo also seems to believe that in medieval times sex was a very secret thing that nobody knew about. Ridiculously she believes in the ideal of courtly love depicted in chivalric poetry. I had to put down my kindle, I was laughing so hard. A sample: “This was a culture in which sexual consummation does not seem to have been the apotheosis of personal fulfillment that it was to become as physical desire replaced spiritualized, courtly constructions of “longing” in romantic love”(p.53). Ha!

Part one of the book does quite a good job at retelling the story of Anne Boleyn, I guess. But like I said, this is old news to anyone interested in her as an iconic persona. Part two is a collection of what people posted on Bordo’s facebook page and what Natalie Dormer thinks about Anne Boleyn and her portrayal of her in “The Tudors”. There is also a chapter on that show where Bordo keeps on telling you how cringe-worthy it all was but how Dormer captured Anne’s spirit so well and blah blah blah.

All in all, there is not much flesh to her theory. I am not even sure if she has one. She keeps quoting scholars and facebook friends (and Natalie Dormer) – and she reuses quotes over and over – and I got the feeling she hasn’t done much work or thinking or analysing herself. Claiming that “we really have no way of knowing” is not a really good conclusion to all those theories she keeps dismissing.

The one good point she makes is that it was not all Anne Boleyn’s fault and people tend to make the mistake of appropriating all the blame to Anne and underestimating Henry – which is weird since Henry kept up the crazy and even turned it up a notch or two long after Anne was dead.

So there, I managed to end this on a positive note.

This is a hard book to rate for me. I feel like it vacilitated between a four and a two, which is why I left it at three, but I'm not completely comfortable with that rating. I guess a lot of my trouble was that I couldn't quite pin down what it was supposed to be. It was part biography, part social commentary, and part really personal, and all kind of thrown together.

I use the term "biography" in this instance rather loosely. If I hadn't had background on Anne I fell like I would have been in a bit of trouble trying to follow some of this. It bounces around a little bit too much for my taste and I feel like there is a lot of repetition and even re-quoting of the same passages from the same sources. It is heavily focused, perhaps rightly, on the trial and then backtracks to attempt to handle the charges against Anne.

Valid points against the neutrality of previous writers on the subject are brought up again and again, and then promptly ignored for this book's own narrative purposes, which makes it really obvious. Mary is a "spoiled brat", Henry is a sociopath, people's motives on writing badly about Anne are boiled down to an overly-simplistic view and those who write for her are ignored. Now, I don't really mind some creativity in terms of narrative or interpretation of events and people in my history. I know everyone does it, and that is why I read more than just one (or even two or three) non-fiction books on a given subject--in the hopes of being able to grasp the full narrative. My issue with it here is exclusively the unawareness of the language coupled with the awareness of everyone else doing it. It feels awkward to go from complaints about a lack of neutrality in the language directly into doing it.

The cultural history of Anne mostly consists of a discussion of her portrayals in popular culture and the responses to them. It was pretty heavily unbalanced in favor of picking apart the negative portrayals. Positive ones were brought up and then shortly dismissed unless words from one of those authors was needed to convict another, which was a shame, because I wanted to hear more about what they were doing right. Pages and pages and pages are devoted to complaints about historical inaccuracy in anything that is not kind in their portrayal of Anne, and occasionally in personal-sounding attacks against the authors.

The section on the fansites was probably my favorite. I found all of the interaction going on there to be fascinating and it was nice to hear thoughts about Anne from the kind of people who might also be reading this book, although they were clearly cherry-picked. I like the idea of an internet group that internally policed scholarship on the Tudors and required vigorous proofs for any statements made.

This was supposed to be a book to ease me into some more positive portrayals of Anne. I was aware that most historical fiction on her was pretty negative, and I had hoped this book would clear up why and steer me towards some interesting positive portrayals. Unfortunately, what it left me with was an awkward feeling towards her defenders. It was overzealous in her defense, and not quietly so. It was too focused on other authors. It left me with disbelief and a faint disquiet. Now I don't believe anyone. On the other hand, I am intrigued enough to pick up another book on Anne, and to reconsider what others have been saying about her, so in that regard the book succeeded at its purpose.

 

I should note that I am a fan of both Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon.  It seems as if many of Henry VIII’s wives had many characteristics in common.  There are exceptions – I’m not entirely sure how intelligent Katherine Howard was, but there seems to be more in common with the women, even ones as so opposed as Anne and Katherine of Aragon.

 

                I should also note that I am GR friends with a reader who had an exchange with the author of this book.  The exchange occurred prior to our GR friendship.

 

                In many ways, it seems as if Bordo wrote this book so she could gush over Natalie Dormer’s portrayal of Anne Boleyn in Showtime’s The Tudors. 

 

                She’s right, of course.  Dormer’s portrayal of Boleyn was absolutely beautiful and spot on.  Anne was sympathetic, but not a saint.  She was perfection in the role. I found the section of the book dealing with the series to be the must interesting, if the most fan crazy, part.  I think it would have been more interesting if there had been more discussion about physical looks of characters and gender, especially in regards to Meyers' refusal to don a fat suit.  If this book had simply been a cultural critique of The Tudors series or just a look at Anne Boleyn in modern literature, it would have been a far better book.  As it is, in some way it feels as if Bordo felt she didn’t have enough just about the Tudors and so had to pad the book.   

Whether you believe Anne Boleyn was the tragic pawn of powerful and ruthless men or a manipulative whore that stole a crown and spent her days scheming to murder her enemies, or something in between, you have to admit that Anne Boleyn was fascinating. Susan Bordo's "The Creation of Anne Boleyn" discusses how Anne has been portrayed in both fiction and non-fiction, TV, movies, and documentaries and how that has changed over time. I thoroughly enjoyed the way the author explored and compared the many versions of Anne's life and character throughout history and how each portrayal of Anne was adapted to fit in with the era in which it was written. It's easy to see how the "true" Anne Boleyn could be lost somewhere in history. It makes me hate Henry all the more for all that he did to remove any mention of her so that now, we're left with mostly conjecture about who she really was. Of course, that may be the very thing that causes me to be so drawn to her above many other dynamic women in history. I admit, I haven't watched many of the movies and documentaries mentioned but there are several that I am eager to see after reading this book. 

Bordo is very opinionated about the way she believes many popular authors have unfairly characterized Anne. From the beginning, this approach was very off-putting for me since my introduction to Anne Boleyn was from authors such as Alison Weir, Norah Lofts, and Jean Plaidy and I was almost offended at, what I felt, was Bordo practically accusing them of fabricating history (as far as Weir and Lofts, not much is said about Plaidy). As you see by my 4 star rating, I ended up finding this to be an excellent read, and I may have even rated it a 5 had she not been so harsh on Alison Weir. I am much more inclined to see Anne Boleyn much the way Bordo does, as an intelligent, charismatic, and complex woman as opposed to the sly temptress that she is so widely believed to be. However, I think that, with the lack of information available about Anne Boleyn and since the information that is available cannot necessarily be taken at face value, Alison Weir's interpretation of historical events and Anne's character is just as likely as Bordo's interpretation. 

I found "The Creation of Anne Boleyn" to be thought-provoking and it definitely motivated me to revisit some of my favorite Tudor reads and led me to discover some books and movies I wasn't familiar with. I appreciated that there were many points of view discussed and compared even though there was a clear bias. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is curious about Anne Boleyn because it does present so many differing points of view as well as the author's own opinion about Anne's character and why she has been portrayed so many ways.