The Story of the Malakand Field Force Book

I'm always up for a new Anne Boleyn biography. Anne has been a huge part of my life since I was about eleven. She inspired me to research women's history; she began my pathway towards feminism; and she's inspired a tattoo that I'm soon getting. Also, I'd heard that Joanna Denny was talking shit about Philippa Gregory. And, well--talking shit about PG is always welcome where I come from. Little did I know...

The Good

Um, well. She's certainly passionate, isn't she? Nobody can deny that Denny LIKES her subject a good bit. Perhaps too much so. And she gets the basic chain of events right. But then again, so does wikipedia.

The Bad

Right of the bat, Denny has this terrible tendency to make assumptions and jump to conclusions. Now, I' not saying that coming to logical conclusions is not allowed at all in biographical writing. It's virtually unavoidable from time to time.

Yet Denny says, time and time again, "Anne thought", "Henry thought", etc. How is she to know what anyone thought? Was she there? No. She doesn't even provide good evidence as to why her subjects may have thought what. Denny is projecting her own desires--desires for a good story to her liking--onto people she didn't know and never will.

The problem is that this sort of tendency can veer into outright fiction if the biographer isn't careful. And Denny isn't careful. Sometimes the Anne Boleyn she described seemed like a totally different person (more on that later) than the woman detailed by authorities like Eric Ives. To be sure, Anne Boleyn was far from any sort of monster. Yet Denny goes so far to rehabilitate her image that she forgets that Anne was human. She was jealous; she could be petty; she had a tendency towards finery and manipulation. All of this has been evidenced by many, many accounts by many people. Of course she was also an extremely clever player, a loving mother, and ultimately a good woman. But she was not without fault.

Anyway. Denny goes on to make all these ridiculous assumptions without defending how she comes to them. She states them as facts vs. hypotheses. One glaring example of this is her assertion of Anne's virginity before "giving in" to Henry at Calais. Um, even those who believe Anne was a virgin before meeting Henry tend to remind the reader that this is, after all, still a theory vs. fact. Unless you're a time-traveling gynecologist, I doubt your ability to attest to Anne Boleyn's virginity.

The Ugly

Look, I love Anne Boleyn. Probably more than your average person. But it is unacceptable to not only glorify her but drag everyone else through the mud to further your anti-Catholic agenda. (I'm a Protestant, by the way. Not biased, here--unlike Denny.)

Denny immediately rubbed me the wrong way with blanket statements about how all Catholics were misogynists who forced their women to be meek and quiet. Because sixteenth century Protestants weren't misogynists, right? I must have been wrong about John Calvin stoning a woman to death for having premarital sex. Never mind that nations like Italy possessed plenty of learned, remarkable, CATHOLIC women like Caterina Sforza, Lucrezia Borgia, and Isabella d'Este.

She also proceeds to make all of these odd statements about how the house of Tudor didn't deserve the throne--ignoring the fact that, if we're going to consider every house that took the throne by force invalid, that would render... almost every house invalid. In a certain way of thinking. (Which is what Denny is all about.) At the same time, she attributes Henry VIII's mental problems to inheritance from Henry VI, even though paragraphs ago she stated that they were barely related. And hey, she also blames the deaths of the Princes in the Tower on Henry VII, totally ignoring any arguments towards Richard III's guilt.

IN AN ANNE BOLEYN BIOGRAPHY.

Catherine of Aragon is denounced as a selfish, stubborn hag. Henry VIII--while no peach, in my opinion--is an evil stalker who forces Anne to be with him. Anne's just a simple, Godly woman with no motives but the elevation of her faith. Not only do these gross misinterpretations perpetuate untruths--they also declaw Anne Boleyn to the worst degree. That, perhaps, is the worst of it all.

The Verdict

Boo, hiss, you know the drill.