The Boleyn Wife: An Interview and Implicit Review by Nan Hawthorne
NH: As you know, I read Vengeance is Mine when you first had it published through iUniverse. I enjoyed it then, but I discovered re-reading the expanded version published by Kensington Books as The Boleyn Wife even better. I don't know if that's the book or me, but either way it reflects well on how thoughtful the novel is. A lot of authors who went indie with their books would love to hear the saga of The Boleyn Wife. How did it come to be picked up by a mainstream publisher? Was it so successful as an indie that a book formerly overlooked interested them?
BP: Well, at the time I made the decision to publish with iuniverse, I had written two novels, The Confession of Piers Gaveston, and the original version of The Boleyn Wife, then known as Vengeance Is Mine. I was represented by an agent for about five years, but for whatever reason, she was unable to sell my work, maybe it was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe as a complete unknown being represented by a very large agency I just got lost in the shuffle, I don't know. Vengeance Is Mine did very well for a print-on-demand book, and after it had been out for a few months I was contacted by my current agent, he wanted to take a stab at selling it to a traditional publisher, and he succeeded. Kensington purchased the US rights, and a UK edition, as well as a Turkish translation are also in the works.
NH: The story of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife and the mother of Elizabeth I, is an oft-told tale. What did you hope to bring to the familiar story to make your telling unique?
BP: Ever since I first started reading about Anne Boleyn as a little girl I was always fascinated by the role Lady Rochford, her sister-in-law, played in Anne's demise--the accusation of incest. I always wondered about the how and why of it all. How could she do such a thing, and why would she? And how did she go on after? One doesn't just do a thing like that then forget all about it, and it never darkens the doorstep of one's mind again. No book, either non-fiction or fiction, ever satisfactorily answered those questions for me. So, after my first novel, when I was thinking about writing a second, I thought I might take a crack at it and see what I could come up with, after all, I didn't have anything better to do. Another aspect of Anne Boleyn's life that always attracted me was the close bond she had with her brother George. As a person who doesn't have much experience of these things personally, loyalty and devotion have always been qualities I value and admire greatly and take very seriously. There was a moment at Anne's trial, which is depicted in my novel, when George Boleyn read a paper aloud after he had been explicitly told not to, and thus sealed his doom. George Boleyn was an intelligent man, he knew exactly what he was doing, and I've always admired him for having the courage to do that.
NH: Your novel is primarily about Anne Boleyn, but her kinswoman, Katherine Howard, is a major part of it too. I felt this was a good decision, for two reasons: It completed the story about the narrator, Jane, Anne's sister-in-law, and the cause of her ultimate downfall, but I think more importantly it provided the reader with a better rounded view of Jane, Henry and the court. Is this what you you striving for? What else?
BP: Most of the novels I've read about Anne Boleyn have a very admiring tone, the author is clearly a fan, and on her side, and in saying this that is in no way meant as a complaint or criticism, she is a woman I admire very much, she had her faults, as do we all, but she was a fascinating and courageous individual, but I wondered what it would be like to read a novel from the viewpoint of someone who absolutely detested her, though Anne's finer qualities would still shine through in spite of this. This tied in perfectly with my fascination and curiosity about her sister-in-law's malice and motivations. But Jane's life didn't end with Anne's, it changed, she had to go on living with what she had done, and she went on to work further mischief, which ended up costing her her own life, so I couldn't just end the story with Anne's death, I had to keep going. I'm not a person who likes loose ends; it's a pet peeve of mine, I don't like to be kept dangling, so as an author I didn't want to do that to my readers if I could keep from it. As for Katherine Howard, many depictions of her that I've read portray her affair with Culpepper as a grand romance, one of the great love stories of history, though the facts as they have come down to us make it more likely that this was a more casual and sordid backstairs affair, though a highly dangerous one given the circumstances, and love had nothing to do with it. I've always seen her life as something of a tragedy, she never had the the right kind of love or attention, no one ever took time with her and gave her the things she really needed most in order to grow up an emotionally healthy person, and I believe her relationships show that she often confused sex with love, and I think this affected her behavior. She had the body of a woman but the mentality of a child and was thrust into a sophisticated world where going her own way, like the willful teenager she actually was, could, and did, get her killed.
NH: The one thing that struck me the most in your novel is that you developed extremely plausible motivations for all the really awful things the primary and secondary characters did. There is not much really known about Jane, is there? But the character you created for her is quite believable, in her unstable way understandable. How did you go about creating such a character?
BP: You're correct, there isn't much known about Jane, there isn't even a portrait of her. Since my novel was first written one biography has been published, but it is primarily speculative, and sheds very little light on her personality and motivations, though I admire the author for trying; it was a daunting task and biographers cannot (at least they're not supposed to) take the same liberties that novelists can and do. To be honest, I don't really know how I do it. I am the kind of person who always tries to understand, and to see things from all sides, to understand why people do the things that they do, especially when they hurt others, so maybe that has something to do with it. I'm not all that good at it in real life though, but somehow, it all seems to come together on the printed page.
NH: I can't say I really found a single person in the novel very appealing, and they reminded me, the Tudor court that is, of jetsetters playing fast and loose with each other's reputations. They were self-centered, ruthless, and reckless. I know you have a strong interest in old Hollywood. Did that play a part in how you drew the characters?
BP: As a writer, I owe a lot to classic Hollywood. I loved those old movies long before being into classic films was considered a normal or acceptable interest, before we had Turner Classic Movies on cable tv, it was another one of those things that made me like a zebra in a cow pasture growing up. I love all the care and detail that went into those films, particularly the ones made by MGM, like my all-time favorite "Gone With The Wind." When I write, I see the story playing out like a movie in my mind. As the author of course my vision of it will always be clearer, more distinct, than anyone else's, no one else will ever see it exactly as I do, but I strive with each round of proofreading, editing, and polishing to try to bring it into a sharper focus for the readers. As I read over the lines I've written, I try to zero in on things that only I, as the author, am seeing or feeling, and to try to find a way to make the reader see and feel them too. I have to be satisfied with how the movie in my mind plays before I feel comfortable letting go of a book. The amount of time I devote to this is often a sore point with those around me, which annoys me as I don't like being pressured to hurry up and get it done. Of course, details are a double-edged sword--you can't tell the reader every little thing, and you can easily go overboard and drown them in details. I once started to read a mystery novel--I can't recall the title now but it was one I really wanted to read--but by page 28 I knew more about the main character's furniture than I knew about him, and by that point I couldn't care less and moved on to another book.
NH: I noticed your loving detail about the clothes. Do you think that is one reason so many people love the Tudor era? Is it the glamor? Is it other things?
BP: I think that is definitely a part of it. Even before I could read I would get books about the history of fashion from the library and pour over them, also books about classic films with lots of costume stills and glamour portraits. I've always loved the work of MGM's brilliant designer Adrian, who dressed stars like my favorite actress Jean Harlow and did the breathtakingly beautiful costumes for the 1938 version of "Marie Antoinette," which is another favorite film of mine. It also ties in with my love of detail, and my style of writing, the movie playing in my mind. After all, what's a movie without costumes? And throughout history fashion has been about more than looking pretty, clothes and jewelry have been status symbols, used symbolically, to make a point or define a person or their loyalties, for example in my novel the headdresses, the French hood and the English gable hood, are used by the ladies to show whose side they're on, plus everyone needs a little beauty in their life, and even a plain or ugly girl can wear pretty clothes and jewelry.
NH: I struggled a bit with all the listening at keyholes scenes, but then I realized that I have known a couple people who would be every bit as sneakily inquisitive and paranoid. Was it difficult to find a way for Jane to be privy to all the seamy goings-on?
BP: This is a point readers often find difficult to accept or believe, and I can understand that. However, one of the things I have noted in reading about various royalty over the years is that in royal courts the walls often seemed to have eyes and ears, kings and queens had little privacy. Foreign ambassadors would have spies or informants in their pay at the various courts, and there were gossips and busybodies everywhere; even today we still delight in gossiping about the royals. How many times has a servant leaked stories about a celebrity or royal employer to the tabloids? I remember reading about Marie Antoinette catching courtiers with their eye at the keyhole or their ear against the door. In Tudor times, and after, people at court knew when the King and Queen slept together, and when the Queen got her period, like with Elizabeth I's various marriage negotiations, as she got on in years foreign ambassadors would bribe the laundresses or her ladies-in-waiting to tell if the Queen still bled so they would know if she was still fertile. And regardless of whether she was liked or disliked, Jane would have been a part of the Boleyn faction, the inner circle of which Anne was the center, she was one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting, she would have had inside knowledge and been an observer at most of the significant events in Anne's story. And in portraying her as an unstable character, I took it a step further and gave her voyeuristic tendencies. Given her hatred of Anne--and Anne was no fool--I couldn't see Anne sitting down and baring her heart to Jane, and pillowtalk with George would have been equally far-fetched, so I thought this fit better with her character. And I didn't want to have too many scenes where Jane said things like I heard this or that from so and so, or everyone was saying...
NH: I wanted to share the two areas where my experience of the novel changed. Because I had read it once, my view of the characters and what happens to them changed during my second reading. It was richer, for example in terms of the rather astounding loyalty of Anne and George, and also the men who were their entourage. What a contrast with what happened to Katherine later on. While I was less sympathetic with some of the characters, such as Weston whom I felt was cruel to Jane, I was the more struck by the courage he and the others showed. What do you have to say about that?
BP: I take that as a great compliment and thank you for it, and hope others will feel the same way. As a reader, I know there are lots of books I've read and never thought of again, but there are others I've gone back to, sometimes repeatedly. After the suspense of reading a story for the first time is gone and wondering how it's all going to come out, things I might have missed or overlooked before become apparent, sometimes I stop and think more. It's a bit like buried treasure, I gain more from it. And I'm glad you made the contrast between Anne and Katherine, that was one of the main things I wanted to show; Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard were cousins and they both ended up suffering the same fate, accused of the same crime, but apart from these similarities they were very different women, also, Jane's feelings for them were quite different as well. The courage and loyalty George and the "Evergreen Gallants," as Anne dubbed her friends in my novel, is one of my favorite parts as well. I think one of the reasons the stories of so many people who were executed are remembered and retold so often to this day is the courage they displayed in their final moments. For instance, many of the aristocrats who died during the French Revolution were rather spoiled and self-indulgent people, the only thing noble about them was their titles, yet when they were standing before the guillotine they achieved true nobility, few of them broke down and begged and cried for their lives, they died bravely, with dignity and majesty. There's a pathos and pride that can still reach out and touch us across the centuries. How many of us think Mary Queen of Scots was a silly woman yet are nonetheless moved by the way she met Death? As Gaveston says in my novel, The Confession of Piers Gaveston, "I am determined to make a good death since I could not make a good life," and I think, in many of these cases, that sums it up quite well. And with Anne and George and their friends it was very important to me to portray their bravery and dignity. I tried to track down all their scaffold speeches, and when I fictionalized I tried to be true to the characters' personalities as I had portrayed them, so some kneel before the block with quiet dignity, and then there is flamboyant Francis Weston giving a farewell performance, and Anne Boleyn making her speech double-edged like the sword that would take her life.
NH: Again, as in The Confession of Piers Gaveston, you demonstrate an ability to write first person narrative in such a way that the astute reader picks up that the narrator is not always telling the truth, not even to themselves. Piers and Jane are quite different people, but did you find they had this self-deception and self-sabotage in common?
BP: I did, yes. One of the things I'm sometimes drawn to explore in my novels is the conflict between the head and the heart. It's something I've also experienced in my own life, situations where the head, the reasoning mind, says one thing and the emotional heart another. As human beings we sometimes let our emotions rule us, there are times when, depending on the situation, we make excuses or even lie to ourselves, times when we can be stone-cold deaf to the voice of reason even when it's screaming at us, we know we're doing it, but, for whatever reason, we choose to waltz in the arms of Destruction or willingly follow the path to Disaster. We don't always know why, but we know we're doing it. Sometimes we try to pretend we're not or to ignore it, other times we recognize what we're doing, that we're caught in the grip of a dangerous and destructive compulsion, and want to stop, to break the cycle, but for whatever reason just can't do it. I saw that in both Gaveston and Jane despite their differences.
NH: I see the British company that is releasing this novel changed not only the title but your name. Can you shed some light on that?
BP: The name change, to Emily Purdy, was a cultural as well as a marketing decision. My real first name, Brandy, is not common or popular in England, and it was felt something more traditional and British would have greater appeal. As for the title change, to The Tudor Wife, my British publisher felt the title was too similar to other books already on the market, so they decided to change it.
NH: Are there any other issues you would like to address here?
BP: Some people have commented on the sexuality. Katherine Howard was a young woman who was introduced to sexual behavior at a very young age; in modern times this would have been considered child abuse. She was about five when she was sent to live with her grandmother and lodged in the Maid's Chamber, where the other girls and women were significantly older than Katherine and used to sneak their boyfriends in at night. Katherine was an observer and later a participant in all this. I did not invent this happening, though I did dramatize it, the language is a tad dry to a modern reader but it's part of the evidence that was collected when Katherine's past came back to haunt her, I just tried to breathe some life into it, make it more real for a modern audience, and to show how this affected Katherine's behavior and development as a person. I don't use sex for shock value, as hard as that may be for some people to believe, there's always a reason.
NH: I am curious. You are obviously concerned about how some people react to the provocative elements in your novels. If this really concerns you, why do you write them?
BP: If I thought about what people think of me and my books or how they may react, it would take me ten years to write a single sentence. I write what I write, what comes into my head as I'm sitting at the computer gets typed, and if it still feels right throughout the various rounds of editing and polishing it stays in unless my editor decides to take it out.
NH: Your prose never ceases to impress me. What are you working on now? I know we are all looking forward to whatever you write next and in the future.
BP: Thank you. I am currently under contract with Kensington to write another Tudor novel about the daughters of Henry VIII. If all goes well, it should be out sometime in 2011.
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