The Creation of Anne Boleyn (53 page)

59. Hull and Alberge 2010.

60. Marshall n.d.

61. Hull and Alberge 2010.

62. Erickson 2011.

63. Mantel 2009, 317.

64. Ibid., 287.

65. Ibid., 137.

66. Ibid., 317.

67. Mantel 2013, 304.

68. Ibid., 345.

69. Ibid., 409

70. See page 101 for discussion of this incident.

71. Clapp 2010.

72. Billington 2010.

73. Bermingham 2011.

74. Dowell 2010.

75. Ridgway 2011.

76. Broadbent 2010.

77. Billington 2010.

78. Letts 2010.

79. Williams 2011.

80. Howard Brenton, interview with author, London, England, July 30, 2010.

81. Ibid.

82. Paglia 1991, 13.

83. Melissa Mazza, October 10, 2011, comment on
The Creation of
Anne Boleyn
Facebook page, accessed October 15, 2011,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

84.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta
, season 1.

85.
The Real Housewives of Orange County
, season 3.

86.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta
, season 1.

87. Stevens 2011. Stevens here is actually talking about prime-time sitcoms. But reality television, clearly, is the nastiest and—judging from its dominance as a genre—broadest platform for the bitch to perform on. Whether they are competing with their nails out on
The Bachelor
or hurling insults at one another (and sometimes threatening physical violence) on the “reunion” shows of
The Real Housewives,
the women of reality television, apparently, have no impulse control whatsoever. And those impulses are generally envious, narcissistic, knee-jerk defensive, and brutally catty. They seem incapable of seeing another person’s point of view, which is why their fights inevitably escalate into increasingly juvenile rants. They goad one another: “Bring it on!” is their favorite mantra. (Or what amounts to the same thing—“You don’t want to go there!”—which virtually ensures that they will.)
Are these people for real? Yes and no. Many of the housewives seem to have been chosen on the basis of the size of their houses and the ostentation of their decorating, pretty much ensuring that the shows won’t be about the lifestyles of the modest and self-restraining. The most attention-getting reality-show participants get rewarded with fame, book deals, record contracts—talent is irrelevant—so bad behavior pays off. (One of the housewives of the Miami franchise complained that their show wasn’t as popular as the others because the women weren’t being outrageous enough.) The footage is “real,” reality-TV execs emphasize, and captures nothing that didn’t actually happen. But psychological manipulation on shows such as
The Bachelor
(constant surveillance, feeding misinformation to participants, abundant alcohol, and isolation) and skillful editing ensures that the worst comes out, often in the mode of various regional and ethnic stereotypes.

88. Herbst 2010, 133.

89. Eades 2007.

90. Stepp 2011.

91. Ibid.

92. Denby 2009.

93. Douglas 2009.

94. N. Wolf 1994, xxvii.

95. Ibid.

96. Ibid., xxvii–xxviii.

97. Roiphe 1994.

98. Paglia 1992, 62.

99. Argov 2002.

100. Dargis 2008.

101. Emerson 2008.

102. LaSalle 2008.

103. Burr 2008.

104. Kosman 2008.

105. Merin n.d.

13. Anne Gets the Last Word (for Now)

1. Phyllis Wolf, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

2. Connie Panzariello, 2011, comment on
The Creation of Anne Boleyn
Facebook page,
www.facebook.com/thecreationofanneboleyn
.

3. Lara Eakins, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, November 25, 2011.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9.
The Tudors Wiki
2008.

10. Claire Ridgway, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.

11. Sue Booth, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.

12. Ibid.

13. Natalie Sweet, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.

14. Barb Alexander, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.

15. Natalie Sweet, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.

16. Claire Ridgway, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.

17. Jessica Prestes, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.

18. Sarah Bryson, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.

19. Sylwia Sobczak Zupanec, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 24, 2011.

20. Brown 2007, 75.

21. Ibid.

22. Marlessa Stivala, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

23. Karissa Baker, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

24. Sara Compton, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

25. Sophie Walker, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

26. Michelle Kistler, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

27. Makenzie Case, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

28. Jessica Crowley, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

29. Kristian, 2011, comment on
The Anne Boleyn Files
Facebook page,
http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/1142/anne-boleyn-the-great-whore
.

30. Cris Gomez, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

31. Sara Compton, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

32. Phillips 2000, 150.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 10.

35. Robyn, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

36. Brittani Hall, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

37.
The Tudors Wiki
2008.

38. Ibid., 2009.

39. Ibid.

40. Ilana Redler, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

41.
The Tudors Wiki
2008.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Marlessa Stivala, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

45. Michelle Kistler, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

46. Makenzie Case, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

47. Ilana Redler, interview with author and Natalie Sweet, e-mail, Lexington, KY, April 2011.

48. Howard Brenton, interview with author, London, England, July 30, 2010.

49. Ibid.

50. Brenton 2010, 11.

51. Howard Brenton, interview with author, London, England, July 30, 2010.

52. Brenton 2010, 113.

53. Ibid.

54. Howard Brenton, interview with author, London, England, July 30, 2010.

55. Ibid.

56. Brenton 2010, 35.

57. Ibid., 115.

58. Hilary Mantel, interview with author, e-mail, Lexington, KY, October 5, 2011.

Afterword: Anne, Susan, and Cassie

1. In France, fashionable women wore a different kind of hood than the British: rounded and set farther back on the head so a woman’s hair, parted down the middle and drawn to the sides, was visible. Anne is credited with having brought the style to England, which was far more of a transformation than it first appears, as over the years the hood itself became smaller and smaller, as well as placed farther back on the head, so that by Elizabeth’s time, the nunlike gabled hood had given way to highly decorative headbands that called attention to a woman’s hair as her “glory” rather than a vanity to be imprisoned and effaced.

2. Howard Brenton, interview with author, London, England, July 30, 2010.

3. I enjoyed these little enactments, which frequently made knowing “winks” to more sobering events and to the religious politics always at play in the Tudor court. The day I visited, the marriage of Henry and Katherine Parr was being celebrated. Katherine’s aunt, preparing her for the wedding, enthused over the fact that Henry was marrying “a good, decent woman . . . unlike some of her predecessors . . . and best of all, a Protestant!” Katherine herself made continual references to the things she daren’t talk about in Henry’s previous marriages. (“But we won’t linger on that on this joyous day.”) If you knew your Tudor history, the presentation was loaded with unspoken subtext about the dangers of a marriage to Henry. (Even “kind and loving” Katherine was almost taken to the Tower for her subversive Protestantism. Unlike Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, she was able to see Henry and talk him out of it.) The enactment’s oblique references, unfortunately, only carried irony if you came to Hampton Court with some knowledge of history. Judging from their whispered questions to one another, few visitors had. And beyond learning how 600 people were fed twice a day in an average year (8,200 sheep, 2,300 deer, 1,870 pigs, 1,240 oxen, 760 calves, and 53 wild boar), they wouldn’t get it from Hampton Court.

4. From the singular grammar (“The” Tower of London) and old Boris Karloff movies, U.S. visitors probably expect one dark, creepy building full of dungeons and torture chambers. In fact, the Tower of London is a complex of towers, built up over the centuries, that have served a variety of individual purposes, from medieval fortresses and places of royal refuge from outside attack, to strongholds for official papers and valuables, to royal residences and sites of important state ceremonies such as coronations (and trials), to prisons for high-status offenders such as Thomas More, Anne, Sir Walter Raleigh, and, for a time, Elizabeth I.

5. Rennell 2010.

6. Brenton 2010, 115.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

Sources

Books, Periodicals, and Websites

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Films in Review.
February 29, 2008.
http://www.filmsinreview.com/2008/02/29/the-other-boleyn-girl
(accessed March 25, 2012).

Allen, Vanessa. “Women turn history into a bizarre soap opera, says Starkey.”
Mail Online.
March 31, 2009.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1166125/Women-turn-history-bizarre-soap-opera-says-Starkey.html
(accessed March 15, 2012).

Anderson, Maxwell.
Anne of the Thousand Days.
New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1977.

Argov, Sherry. “Releasing Your Inner Bitch,”
http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2011/04/releasing-your-inner-bitch-may-help-you-land-the-right-male/
.

Atkinson, Brooks. “Anne and Henry: Maxwell Anderson Chronicles a Stormy Love Affair in a Historical Play.”
New York Times,
December 19, 1948.

Armstrong, Jessie.
My Friend Anne: A Story of the Sixteenth Century.
London: F. Warne, 1935.

Austen, Jane.
The History of England: By a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian (Note: There will be very few Dates in this History).
Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1993.

Bailey, Alyssa. “I might have a third nipple.”
Girls’ Life.
December 7, 2010.
http://www.girlslife.com/post/2010/12/07/I-might-have-a-third-nipple.aspx
(accessed February 20, 2012).