EVERY HISTORICAL FICTION or drama is the author's own recipe of three key
ingredients. The mixture is always the same: historical research (anything
from a pinch to a peck) the writer's prejudices and opinions (conscious and
murkily unconscious) and the conventions of the genre. I have just had the
thought-provoking experience of seeing my historical fiction, The Other
Boleyn Girl, be adapted into someone else's historical drama and it has
persuaded me to think about history, novels and film - their progenitors and
ownership.
The historical research is a difficult quantity, since it is no more an
objective account of the past than the novel that will be based, unsteadily,
on it. It is no coincidence that our prejudiced opinions of women of the
Tudor court are drawn from the devoted Victorian historians who were the
first translators and publishers of original Tudor documents, but were
deeply committed to their own view of women as either saints or whores. From
them comes our still-held but most unlikely thesis that Catherine of Aragon
was incapable of telling a lie, and our prejudiced view of Catherine Howard
as a schoolgirl slut.
Even a history reflects the prejudices of its author.
At least with a novel the readers know that they are getting authorial
interpretation. My own Tudor novels, starting with The Other Boleyn Girl,
balance history and fiction. The research for the novel takes nearly twice
as long as writing it, and it forms the backbone and the structure of the
story. The historical account is the story of the novel and the fiction is
the emotion, the motivation, the explanation for the historical facts. My
Tudor books are specifically set in a place and a time, and that is accurate
to the historical record when that is available. Sometimes, I can base a
scene in the novel almost exactly on an account by a contemporary
eye-witness. I took great pleasure in the colour of Mary Boleyn's dress at a
masque since I had seen the accounts from the royal wardrobe that told me
she was wearing green. The joy of this is an utterly private one.
Other writers are not so rooted in the historical record and their novels or
dramas are more approximate. I put down Judith Paris by Hugh Walpole and
never picked it up again, as his heroine escaped imprisonment by climbing
down a drainpipe, years before the installation of indoor toilets or
washbasins. We see the contrast between historical fiction and ahistorical
romance in some interesting authors who wrote both. Georgette Heyer's
Regency novels are set in a generic past, generally, post-Austen England,
influenced by her own middle-class life in postwar England, and by her
meticulous research. I found them utterly addictive. But her historical
fictions, such as The Infamous Army and The Spanish Bride, are solidly based
on the historical military records of the Battle of Waterloo and the
Peninsula War, and can be found in the library at Sandhurst. She herself
thought that the historical works were far superior to her romances, which
she considered rather silly.
But even a story researched from history and recounted as accurately as the
novelist can manage is going to be a vehicle for the writer's unconscious
prejudices and conventions. Anya Seton's heroines have an affection for
their children and a loyalty to their husbands that is pure 1950s. Heyer's
romantic heroes are innocent of alcoholism or the abuse of working women.
Walter Scott knowingly created the tartan myth, invented an entire national
history and managed to sell the idea of ancient North Britain to the English
reader.
My own interest in women's history and my aversion to English snobbery led me
to write The Other Boleyn Girl as a triumph of the common sense of Mary
Boleyn over the ambition of her sister Anne. If I had been a Victorian
novelist, or even one of the postwar English novelists I would probably have
written the novel from the point of view of the girl who would be queen.
I certainly would have written an account which suggested that Mary Boleyn's
marriage, adultery and then second marriage to a third sexual partner must
cast a slur on her reputation as a good woman, as a “lady”. Most likely if I
had been writing in my mother's generation, I would have written her either
as a victim of male sexual predation, or as a whore.
The idea that a woman could be sexually experienced and not a “bad” woman is a
modern one. While it is true to say that until I recovered the story of Mary
Boleyn from the footnotes of the history books no one had seen the potential
of her story, it is also true to say that she could only be a heroine to a
feminist, radical historian.
My novel can plough its own furrow. It has only one producer, one writer, one
director and one actor: all me. If the book is not bought and read because
it offends traditional readers, it will only be me out of work. In the novel
I have hundreds of pages to develop my view and persuade the reader of my
version of the characters. We follow Mary as she slowly realises that there
is an interesting life to be had outside the glittering circle of the court,
and this is both her realisation and also a revelation to the reader.
My unconventional take on the story does not fully translate to film.
Historical drama can explain only so much. The medium of film traditionally
shows the actions and the reaction of the characters. Even though the script
sets out to adapt my novel as closely as possible, the film has to focus on
the personalities of the two Boleyn girls, and their love affairs with the
King. It makes the emotions of the women the centre and the driving force of
the action.
Film is wonderful at conveying and evoking emotion, but books are better for
ideas and evoking thought. And films, especially those with a huge budget,
are bound to favour a conventional and popular view. It is assumed that the
court of the king is of more interest than the house of the commoner, and
undoubtedly it is a more beautiful setting. The combination of the snobbery
of the audience, their love of celebrity and the glamour of the court is
something brilliantly served by a film about handsome and sexually active
royals.
The great drama at the heart of my novel is the competition between Mary
Boleyn and her sister Anne for the attention of the King, and Anne Boleyn's
pyrrhic victory which would win her the crown but lose her her head. The
film emphasises this superbly, and the actors are riveting and beautiful.
The story is one of a woman using her sexuality to entrance and trap a man,
followed by the brooding bitterness of his revenge. My suggestion in the
novel is that the interesting story after the rivalry, is Mary's choice to
be an ordinary Tudor wife and mother. The film, however, focuses on the
drama rather than the humdrum and ordinary.
When I saw the film in its final cut I saw what I think will be a new telling
of the story of Anne Boleyn, a story of ambition that turns to
self-destruction, and of desire that turns to hate. It is not a film of the
adventure of a woman who has the courage and determination to go against her
society and seek and find an ordinary life. That is a story which perhaps
could be told only in a novel. The film is on the big screen, the novel is
on the small page.
They tell the same events but with a different emphasis. The title of the
novel, and now the film, was always intended as a question that the reader,
and now the viewer, can answer. Who is the most extraordinary heroine of
this story, the famous Boleyn; and who is the other Boleyn girl?
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
HarperCollins, £7.99
