SELF-FASHIONING AND THE
THEATRICALITY OF POWER IN HILARY
MANTEL’S WOLF HALL AND BRING UP
THE BODIES
Word count: 18,386
Mathilda Schacht Student number: 01608244
Supervisor(s): Prof. Dr. Guido Latré, Dr. Sarah Bonciarelli
A dissertation submitted to Ghent University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels
Academic year: 2019 – 2020 kik Schacht 1
Acknowledgements
I would love to thank my supervisor, Professor Guido Latré, who was always very kind and encouraging about my work. I enjoyed following his course about the Renaissance and I am forever grateful for all the help he gave me during my writing process.
I would also like to thank my mother and father. Their support has been and still is, priceless.
I am blessed to have people surrounding me with endless love. I am eternally grateful for my father’s help during my writing progress. I will truly miss our conversations about Master
Cromwell.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my friends who revised certain parts of this master dissertation. A special thanks to Nils and Ada, whose efforts I will always remember. Schacht 2
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations ...... 5
Introduction...... 6
1 Thomas Cromwell: The Historical Figure ...... 10
2 Obtaining and Maintaining Power in the Renaissance ...... 15
2.1 Institutions...... 16
2.1.1 God’s Representative on Earth...... 16
2.1.2 The King’s Council ...... 16
2.1.3 Parliament...... 17
2.2 Strategies ...... 17
2.2.1 Propaganda: Displaying Wealth, Status and Political Power...... 18
2.2.2 Patronage: the Exchange of Land, Honours or Titles for Loyalty...... 20
2.2.3 Consultation: Visiting the King on a Regular Basis...... 20
2.2.4 Coercion: Manipulation, Threatening and Implementing Sanctions...... 21
3 The Concept of Self-Fashioning ...... 22
3.1 Self-fashioning in Writing...... 26
3.2 Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors ...... 27
3.3 Thomas More and the Theatrical Metaphor...... 29
3.4 Theatricality as the Result of Self-fashioning...... 33
4 The Many Masks of Thomas Cromwell ...... 34 Schacht 3
4.1 Mask 1: Cromwell the Enigma...... 37
4.1.1 The Art of Displaying and Concealing...... 39
4.1.2 Cromwell the Murderer ...... 41
4.2 Mask 2: Cromwell the Enemy...... 43
4.2.1 The Case of Stephen Gardiner...... 43
4.2.2 The Case of Katherine of Aragon...... 44
4.3 Mask 3: Cromwell the Manipulator ...... 45
4.4 Mask 4: Cromwell the Ally...... 46
4.4.1 Anne Boleyn: Friend or Foe ...... 46
4.5 A Glimpse of the Real Cromwell...... 48
4.5.1 The Self-made Man ...... 49
4.5.2 The Cardinal’s Loyal Friend...... 51
4.5.3 Cromwell the Caring Family-man...... 52
4.5.4 Cromwell a Friend of the Arts...... 54
4.5.5 Cromwell’s Vice: Vanity...... 55
4.5.6 Through the Cracks of the Mask ...... 56
4.5.7 Cromwell the Religious Man...... 58
Conclusion ...... 67
Bibliography ...... 69 Schacht 4
List of Abbreviations
- WH = Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
- BB = Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
- TC = Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch Schacht 5 Self-fashioning and the Theatricality of
Power in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and
Bring Up the Bodies
Introduction
A little boy from Putney rises in society and becomes one of the greatest and most powerful statesmen that England has ever known. This is, in short, the story of Thomas Cromwell. A man who has been portrayed as a side character in many movies, television series, and novels.
By some, he has been depicted as a villain, by others as a hero. Never before has he been the sole focus of a trilogy. This changed when Dame Hilary Mantel put him at the centre of the stage in her famous Cromwell novels.
Mantel is a contemporary English novelist whose works include personal memoirs, short stories, and neo-historical fiction. Wolf Hall (2009) is the first part of her Cromwell- trilogy. The story focuses on the rise of the English statesman Thomas Cromwell and on
Henry VIII’s annulment of his first marriage to Katherine of Aragon, all leading up to the ascent of Anne Boleyn, the second wife. Bring Up the Bodies (2012) focuses on Cromwell’s struggle to obey the king’s wish to get rid of Anne, who was not able to produce a healthy male heir, and to marry Jane Seymour. Mantel won the Man Booker Prize for each of these works of neo-historical fiction. The third, and final part of the trilogy The Mirror and the
Light (2020) was published in March and has left critics in awe of yet another masterpiece. Schacht 6
Many literary critics anticipate that this novel will enable her to win another Man Booker
Prize.
An aspect that is often discussed within the literary field is what exactly makes
Mantel’s writing so brilliant and intriguing. Why can we not get enough of this man who lived so many years ago? People said to her, as she explains in her fourth Reith lecture for the BBC,
“[b]ut you know the end, people say. So how do you maintain suspense? It’s not a real problem. You succeed not despite the fact that your reader knows what will happen, but because of it” (Mantel, Reith 4). Despite the fact that people know how Cromwell’s life has ended, they keep on reading her novels. One answer to this question might lie in the fact that her writing is so erudite and that it covers many aspects of the English Renaissance. To dissect the elements that form Mantel’s way of writing seems an impossible task, as one can only get a glimpse by analysing the novels. It appears to be nearly impossible to distinguish all the elements that make Cromwell such an intriguing character because he keeps shape- shifting in a figurative way of speaking. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is to focus on the aspect of power and theatricality.
Cromwell did not have a noble background. He was a prototypical Renaissance man who was conscious of the fact that upward mobility was possible and made that his aspiration in life. The English Renaissance was a time when individuals were able to escape their class and rise in society, even up to the highest regions of power. This strife for a higher position can be seen as a game. How this power game was played is very specific to its context: the actions take place in the sixteenth century at the English court of Henry VIII.
This struggle for power and all its aspects, which took place in a time where power was not solely bound to heritage, but also to personal merit and individual profiling, will be Schacht 7 discussed in this dissertation. To make the subject more specific, the main objective will be to analyse how Mantel applied the power game, and the strategies to achieve it, to the characters in her historical fiction. About the genre of historical fiction Mantel states that “[in] any novel, once it’s finished, you can’t separate fact from fiction — it’s like trying to return mayonnaise to oil and egg yolk” (Mantel, Reith 1). In a metaphorical way of speaking, this is exactly the objective of this dissertation.
In order to fully grasp the literary character of Thomas Cromwell, it is important to understand the context of the historical Thomas Cromwell. In her Reith lectures, Mantel explained that she wanted to stay as close to the historical record as possible, thus it will be useful to elaborate on some of the highlights of his career and some of the key aspects that make Cromwell a typical Renaissance man. The source that was used to discuss the historical facts concerning Thomas Cromwell is Diarmaid MacCulloch’s biography Thomas Cromwell:
A Life (2019). The details of his career will not be discussed at length, and the goal is to highlight the aspects that MacCulloch finds striking or on which he has put a lot of emphasis in his writing. MacCulloch stresses that there are not many existing sources by Cromwell’s hand, which left Mantel a lot of room for interpretation. She explains that her “chief concern is with the interior drama of my characters’ lives. From history, I know what they do, but I can’t with any certainty know what they think or feel” (Mantel, Reith 1). Mantel stresses that she has not become a novelist to lie, she wants to offer a possibility. She believes that her task as a novelist is not to be a historian. As research for her Cromwell trilogy she went through all authentic sources she could find. She says that “[a] historian aims to work from speculation to certainty” and that “[t]he novelist works in a world where choices are still open”(Mantel,
Reith 4). Schacht 8
Another key aspect that will be discussed in this dissertation are the strategies that were used by people in the sixteenth century to obtain and maintain power. The existing structures of power will be highlighted as well as methods that were used by the king to emphasize his power. A lecture by Professor Wrightson is used to discuss this matter. Keith
Wrightson is a historian of Early Modern England. He is a Yale professor, specialized in the social, cultural and economic side of England’s history. In this lecture he gives an overview of the institutions of power in England in the sixteenth century and he elaborates on the most common power strategies of the monarch and the nobility. The emancipating Renaissance- man did not only have an increased consciousness of the self, but he also has the constant task to profile and adapt himself.
This type of profiling is what Stephen Greenblatt calls ‘self-fashioning’ in his book
Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980). He explores the idea that there was an increased apprehension of identity and of the fact that identity is fluid. This act of self-fashioning appears to be a crucial strategy to gain power and to get closer to Henry
VIII or anyone of importance. Every individual at court was subjected to a set of codes that regulated their behaviour. The combination of these codes and self-fashioning made the whole ordeal theatrical.
Thomas Cromwell is a strategist who is, in this theatrical environment, constantly aware of the roles that he needs to play in order to climb up in society. Sometimes he reflects upon these roles, but he almost never breaks character in front of people. The versatility and theatricality of his roleplay will be elaborately discussed and illustrated in the literary analysis part of this dissertation. Schacht 9
1 Thomas Cromwell: The Historical Figure
To understand the character that Mantel has created, it is useful to take a closer look at the historical figure of Thomas Cromwell. It is important to observe that the source for this chapter, a biography written by Diarmaid MacCulloch, was written after Mantel had published her books. This means that the biography has not been used as a source for her characters.
With this biography, MacCulloch aims to track the authentic Cromwell. He stresses that Mantel’s novels are brilliant but that they are nevertheless works of fiction based on the historical record: “Novels they remain, as Mantel herself has frequently (and with mounting weariness) emphasized to would-be critics” (TC 1). With this biography, he intends to trace the historical Cromwell through history and to have the reader experience the Cromwell that lived in the sixteenth century “by guiding[…] [them]] through the maze of his surviving papers – and a real maze they are, composed of thousands on thousands of individual documents” (TC 1). In a review of the biography in The Guardian, Jessie Childs writes that
“[a]nyone looking for the true story of Wolf Hall will be challenged, but also mightily rewarded” (Childs). She stresses that MacCulloch is a Professor specialising in the History of the Church at Oxford and that the reader should have some knowledge about religion to fully grasp the man that Thomas Cromwell was and what he stood for.
People generally consider Thomas Cromwell to be a mystery. Now, because of
Mantel’s lifelike writings, he has become a master orchestrator in people’s minds. There are a lot of myths surrounding the statesman and the role he played in history has attracted considerable interest from academics and non-academics alike. MacCulloch argues that part of this mythical idea people have of Cromwell can be attributed to the lack of Cromwell’s Schacht 10 own voice in what is written about him. The representation of Cromwell’s mysterious mastermind, is therefore also due to his absence in the surviving sources: “Cromwell may have wished to remain an enigma, yet the main reason that we find him enigmatic is not a personal choice, but a particular archival circumstance” (TC 1).
Although Cromwell’s voice is largely missing from surviving documents and letters,
Mantel has given Cromwell a voice through her writing. This voice is not his own, however; it is a voice manipulated by an author. In Mantel’s first Reith Lecture The Day is for the
Living, she explains what the readers of historical novels expect: “To the historian, the reader says, ‘Take this document, object, person — tell me what it means.’ To the novelist he says,
‘Now tell me what else it means’” (Mantel, Reith 1). She offers the reader a possible version of the ‘fill in the gaps’ exercise that is the historical record. In her first Reith lecture, she explains her take on the status of a novelist in comparison with the historian:
The historian, the biographer, the writer of fiction work within different constraints,
but in a way that’s complementary, not opposite. The novelist’s trade is never just
about making things up. The historian’s trade is never simply about stockpiling facts
(Mantel, Reith 1)
The first forty years of Cromwell’s life are the most difficult to describe for the historian because resources are scarce. MacCulloch starts by describing Cromwell’s family by focusing on Walter, his father. Walter Cromwell was a commercial brewer. MacCulloch writes that
“[a] yeoman like Thomas Cromwell’s father Walter found many ways of prospering, aiming to do well enough to break through social barriers to the esteem of being thought a gentleman” (TC 9). Walter Cromwell’s aim was to rise in society. This urge will be discussed in the following pages and referred to as ‘upward mobility’. Walter was a self-made man who considered any “respectable way” of earning money as an acceptable means to gain status. He Schacht 11 brewed beer commercially and had some land to his name for agricultural purposes. In
Mantel’s trilogy, Cromwell is often referred to as the son of a blacksmith. MacCulloch writes that he does not regard it as impossible that Walter might have been a blacksmith but there are no sources that authenticate this assumption (TC 9). In Wolf Hall, Walter Cromwell is portrayed as a brute who frequently abuses his son by beating him to the ground. He is cold, harsh and violent. It is Mantel’s choice to portray the man like this because there are hardly any historical records that prove he was ever violent towards his son. The existing sources were assembled by Diarmaid MacCulloch in his biography of Thomas Cromwell. The first source is novelist and bishop Matteo Bandello, who wrote romanticized stories about
Cromwell’s years in Italy. Later, John Foxe put this information in his hagiography.
Bandello’s record implies that Cromwell indeed ran away from his father, but this cannot be proved:
Bandello is the best we can do for the obscurity of Cromwell’s Italian years. He takes
his hero far from Putney, fleeing his father for Italy: that is the tiny spark of the later
idea about Walter Cromwell’s violence towards his son. (TC 22)
MacCulloch notes that Cromwell’s move to Italy might not have been connected to a feud with his father. He instead attributes it to Cromwell’s intelligence, curiosity and restlessness that he made this step forward in life (TC 22).
One of the fascinating things about Cromwell is the story of how a boy from
Putney managed to become an employee for one of the most powerful men in England,
Thomas Wolsey. MacCulloch attributes this upward mobility to Cromwell’s ability to speak
Italian. Wolsey allegedly needed someone to deal with the craftsmen making his tomb, which is how Cromwell came into his service—i.e. merely by chance and a useful set of skills. In
Italy, Cromwell became a highly educated man who mastered many languages. His Schacht 12 employment with Wolsey became the foundation for his entire career. Cromwell was devoted to Wolsey and made the remarkable choice of staying by his side when he fell into disgrace.
Anne Boleyn hated Wolsey, because he stood between her and the king and because he had proven himself unable to get Henry his divorce from Katherine of Aragon.
MacCulloch puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that Cromwell was a central figure in the development towards a parliament that is more often consulted and acquires more power.
“Cromwell had thus become parliamentary manager. This was not a function with an office attached to it, but for the first time he was given an identifiable role with a public profile […]
As so often in his public career, once Cromwell had taken over a piece of administration, he did not let go, using it to promote both royal control and his own intentions” (TC 157).
For a long time during his career, Cromwell was not a public figure. He operated behind the scenes and only became known to the public in a later time of his life. Once he had worked himself up, his power kept expanding until he was arrested and his life ended on the scaffold in 1540. MacCulloch stresses that Cromwell’s primal motivation for power were his religious beliefs. Once he had managed to get close to the king, he tried to introduce Henry
VIII to Tyndale’s translations, but he failed. This in sharp contrast to Anne Boleyn who succeeded in this mission. MacCulloch puts forward that it must have been difficult for
Cromwell to balance his loyalty to the king of England while also maintaining his evangelical ideals of reformation: “In view of Henry’s capricious approach to theology and frequent religious traditionalism, this was never going to be an easy combination to manage” (TC 211).
When Anne was presented as Henry’s queen in April 1533, Cromwell received a new title. He now functioned as Chancellor of Exchequer, which was in MacCulloch’s words, a
“small promotion in his snail-pace progress to outward signs of his already formidable power under the King” (TC 223). Throughout the biography, MacCulloch emphasizes Cromwell’s Schacht 13 talent to seize the moment and to take advantage of chance situations and opportunities. His appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer was one of them. The job description was rather vague; there was no clear boundary concerning what fell under his jurisdiction and what not:
“In 1533, it was nothing like as important an office of state as nowadays: the Chancellor had rather ill-defined duties, but that lack of definition was among the post’s advantages, which could bend it to Cromwell’s purposes” (TC 223). Bending situations to his advantage is a talent that characterizes Mantel’s Cromwell and it turns out that this talent was not entirely fictional.
As mentioned before, Cromwell’s voice seems to be missing in the historical record.
This absence is something that Diarmaid finds quite peculiar. It was like they could only retrieve his incoming messages but not the outgoing ones. To people of the twenty-first century, this might sound relatively normal, but bearing in mind how the Tudor archives worked the outgoing messages should also have been saved. MacCulloch has a hypothesis about Cromwell’s missing voice. He believes that once Cromwell was under arrest, his household started burning the documents, especially the documents and letters that he had written himself. MacCulloch states that nothing is as incriminating as your own writing. He believes Cromwell’s family wanted to protect him: “Their hope would have been to save their master from destruction, for a man is much more easily convicted by his own writings than by letters he has received” (TC 3).
As a part of The British Academy 10-Minute Talks on YouTube, Professor
MacCulloch elaborates on his biography. His key points are Cromwell’s missing voice and his loyalty to Thomas Wolsey. He also mentions Dame Hilary Mantel and how they had been in contact during their writing. He states that the voice Mantel gives to Cromwell might not be far off. As we have seen, Cromwell was indeed an ambitious, cunning and extremely Schacht 14 intelligent man. He craved power and never ceased trying to gain more of it. Although his victims never died by his hand in the literal sense of the term, they did in the figurative sense.
2 Obtaining and Maintaining Power in the Renaissance
There are two important sources for this chapter. The first is a lecture given by Yale
Professor Keith Wrightson, a historian of ‘Early Modern’ England. He specializes in social, economic and cultural history. His series of lectures (twenty-five in total) is called Early
Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts and they can be found on the Yale Courses YouTube channel. The second part of this section will focus on
Stephen Greenblatt’s work Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980).
In this work, Greenblatt explains how identity was formed by major literary figures who lived during the Renaissance such as More, Marlowe and Shakespeare. He elaborates on the concept of ‘self’ and how it is manipulated and changed under the pressure of authority. This will be useful to discuss characters like Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell in a later chapter.
2.1 Institutions
In the sixth lecture of the series, Professor Wrightson describes The Structures of
Power in Early Modern England. He explains how monarchs of the Tudor dynasty held on to power and asserted their authority. During the sixth lecture, he elaborates on institutions and strategies that provide, control and maintain the king’s power. The different sections of his lecture are “The Early Tudors”, “Parliament, Monarch” and “Propaganda, Patronage,
Consultation, and Coercion” (“Structures of Power”). Schacht 15
2.1.1 God’s Representative on Earth
During the Early Modern Period in England, the king was at the centre of the polity.
His task was “keeping the peace and defending the realm; maintaining the law and the administration of justice; and upholding the church: a relatively limited set of functions compared to modern government” (“Structures of Power”). To achieve these goals, the king enjoyed considerable power. To the English society in Early Modern England, God was considered as the only entity more powerful than the king on earth. The king’s power was absolute, but he was expected to listen to advice from others.
2.1.2 The King’s Council
The Council was responsible for giving advice and for executing administration work.
“They [members of the council] tended on the whole to proffer their advice to the king informally and occasionally when they were in attendance at court” (“Structures of Power”).
The council did not only consist out of noblemen, but there were also important members of the church, lawyers and professional administrators. They are often described as ‘men of business’, and together they formed “… the nucleus of a kind of royal bureaucracy”
(“Structures of Power”).
2.1.3 Parliament
A second powerful institution was parliament. This was a place where counsel and law joined forces. Parliament was used as a place to come up with resolutions for certain conflicts. The
Tudors made very good use of it, often with a specific agenda in mind. “In fact, on one occasion Henry VIII flattered it by saying that his royal dignity was never so high as when he met with Parliament” (“Structures of Power”). Schacht 16
Parliament, then, represented the whole realm and it had two great functions. First of all, only Parliament could make statutes: new laws which could override or modify common law custom. So the legislative sovereignty of the realm lay in Parliament where the king, the lords and the commons acted together (“Structures of Power”). The king called parliament when he was in need of money or when he wanted to implement new laws. The use of parliament increased during the Reformation crisis. Before parliament was only called for occasionally. Due to the Reformation crisis, parliament grew into an important part of the political process (“Structures of Power”).
2.2 Strategies
The Council and Parliament encouraged stability and made sure the country could flourish.
However, the monarch as an individual had a great influence on England. The personality of the king had an enormous impact on the way a country developed.
Kings were surrounded by the nobility who, in return, also had an influence on the monarch. Wrightson warns not to exaggerate the power of the nobility. Although they were wealthy and powerful, they did not have any specific areas of authority that were not governed by the king. In the end, everything belonged to the king.
The most important question that Professor Wrightson wants to answer is how the sovereign managed to maintain his authority. Not every monarch was successful in this assignment. The king had to keep control of noble families. About the nobility during Henry VII’s reign
Wrightson says:
They still enjoyed great prestige as regional leaders, and they still adhered to an
aristocratic code that certainly stressed loyalty, honour and service to the king. But
nonetheless they could be very haughty, very touchy, they assumed their right to rule, Schacht 17
they assumed their right to be consulted, and they could be very dangerous indeed if
they were slighted (“Structures of Power”).
In the second part of this dissertation, the nobility in Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up the
Bodies will be discussed. In order to discuss their strategies to maintain authority and power, I will use Wrightson’s analysis. He illustrates four ways in which Tudor kings succeeded to maintain and improve their relationships with the institutions of power and other influential groups.
2.2.1 Propaganda: Displaying Wealth, Status and Political Power
Propaganda was an essential strategy for obtaining and maintaining power. The ruler wanted to be known as a strong, healthy and wealthy man. They wanted envy of other kings and the common crowd needed to be impressed by their own king. In order to make the king seem more powerful, it was important to establish and put an emphasis on the king’s connection with God.
Great stress was laid in royal proclamations and ceremonial and symbolism upon the
divine nature of royal authority, on the fact that the king was ordained by God and his
subjects had a religious duty of obedience” (“Structures of Power”).
To show off riches and wealth, tournaments were organized and giant buildings were erected.
Everything needed to be a spectacle, hence the theatrical aspect of all that was organised. The main goal was to impress. “The image of royalty was cultivated in a kind of theatre of majesty
(“Structures of Power”)”. Even though it was very expensive, Henry VIII attached great importance to extravagance. This resulted in a luxurious court and a lavish clothing style.
These were things that Henry VIII also enjoyed to display his power in this way, but there was another form of propaganda that sprouted while he reigned. Schacht 18
During Henry VIII’s reign, royal portraiture rose to a form of publicity. One of the most famous painters was Hans Holbein the Younger. In Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
Holbein often appears as a character and he is quite amical with Cromwell. Henry VIII was keen on being represented as a very tall and large man. He wanted to outshine others with his posture and make other people seem dwarfish compared to him. People needed to be in awe of their great English king. “That kind of image of the king is the one that dominates our memory and it was meant to dominate those who saw his portraits” (“Structures of Power”).
The people who came in contact with these portraits were noblemen and people of high importance. As a consequence, the elite also had their portraits made under the influence of their king. They were a form of propaganda for nobility among the nobility. This enabled them to display their wealth and demonstrate their authority. Conducive to portraiture, tournaments and buildings, great processions were organised by the king to reach a larger audience. Henry VIII would travel through the country and stay in the houses of important families. “There were royal entries to the cities accompanied by great ritual, pageants, display, and everywhere the royal badge was displayed” (“Structures of Power”).
2.2.2 Patronage: the Exchange of Land, Honours or Titles for Loyalty
The second measure for a leader to maintain authority was patronage. The objective was to exchange lands, honours, etc. with the elite for their allegiance and devotion to the royal family. Accordingly, the elite would do the same with their connections and the goal of the king was achieved: a widespread adherence to the crown. The royal court was the centre of the patronage system.
2.2.3 Consultation: Visiting the King on a Regular Basis
As the royal court was at the heart of the polity, it served as an excellent location for consultation. This was the third measure to preserve control over English society. People Schacht 19 wanted to be and feel close to the king, and proximity to their ruler made them seem powerful. Henry VIII was famous for being easy to talk to.
Under the young Henry VIII, the gentlemen of the privy chamber, his personal
companions, those who hunted and engaged in other sports with the king, were
absolutely central figures in gaining access to the king, principal amongst them the
groom of the stool” (“Structures of Power”).
The people who surrounded him were able to consult him in informal circumstances. The groom of stool had a great deal of power and influence because he was very close to the king.
If you wanted power, you needed to be on good terms with the king or be able to offer him something he longed for or that others could not give him.
2.2.4 Coercion: Manipulation, Threatening and Implementing Sanctions
The last measure Wrightson describes is coercion. This was a more direct and forceful approach to exert power. When a King wanted something, he could use coercion to ensure he got what he wanted. When threatening and manipulating people did not have an effect, parliament made up acts of attainder. These acts could declare an individual guilty of treason and take away their lands. It also could deprive them of their high status and their position at court. For some of them, it could even result in death. These acts of attainder were often used to punish or threaten the rebellious among the elite. It was a very direct, interpersonal and effective way of handling things.
Trial procedures and treason trials could be extremely arbitrary. The council could
order arrest at will. It could order the torture of suspects — torture wasn’t normally
used in English law. Defence counsel was denied. Evidence could be fabricated to get
rid of unsuccessful losers in court factional struggles. At the very highest levels, then, Schacht 20
political conflict was played out to the death, especially under Henry VIII (“Structures
of Power”).
Coercion makes people fear the king, especially when one takes into account how fickle
Henry VIII was. A subject had to bend his principles to be in the king’s good graces, or things could end badly. A victim of coercion is Thomas More, whose stubbornness cost him his head.
By combining all these measures and political skills to preserve their power Tudor
Kings proved rather successful at this. Of course, the King was not alone in this, he was helped by his fellow statesmen. In the case of King Henry VIII, for example, Cardinal Wolsey
Thomas More, and Thomas Cromwell were very important advisors. Undoubtedly, these men had an agenda of their own and always tried to increase their own power while dealing with the king. Their identity was under great influence of authority.
3 The Concept of Self-Fashioning
When being true to oneself does not work to achieve power, there are other measures that can be taken to obtain what you desire in life. People might change their outward appearance, their way of speaking, and/or what they communicate verbally and non-verbally. When this is done convincingly, another identity is created. The creation of another ‘self’ is called self- fashioning. In Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980) Greenblatt explores the idea that an individual can shape a new identity. He states that “in sixteenth- century England there were both selves and a sense that they could be fashioned” (Greenblatt
1).
The verb ‘to fashion’ was never widely used to cover the manipulation of a self. He elaborates on how the connotation of the word ‘fashion’ has evolved through time. Although Schacht 21 the phrase ‘to fashion’ had already been used for a long time, a new association arose in the sixteenth century. Before, the word had been in use with a different meaning as it referred to the “action or process of making, for particular features or appearance, for a distinct style or pattern” (Greenblatt 1). In modern English it would translate to following a certain style or a fashion. During the Renaissance, this new connotation was established and the word seemed
“to come into wide currency as a way of designating the forming of a self” (Greenblatt 2).
The way Greenblatt interprets ‘to fashion’ is to indicate the formation of a new human identity. The new self is created as a mechanism to engage in society. This ‘self’ is a way for an individual to address the world and Greenblatt describes it as “[…] a structure of bounded desires” (Greenblatt 1). Anything a person wants to achieve can become the underlying motivation for fashioning a self.
An important question to answer is why this concept came into being. During the
Medieval period, there was less room for autonomy and self-expression. People were born in a certain position in society and their fate was to accept it. This changed during the
Renaissance period; there was a sense of anthropocentrism during this period. Individuality is something that shaped the Renaissance, and individual human beings became the centre of art, science, and literature. Greenblatt notes that “[t]he simplest observation we can make is that in the sixteenth century there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process” (Greenblatt 2).
As a result of this increase of the anthropocentricity, there was an enhanced awareness of social mobility. The ‘self’ then becomes a mechanism for the individual to move upwards in society. As this was now possible, people wanted to get as close to the king as they could since being closer to the monarch meant more power. As previously discussed in Wrightson’s take on strategies to gain power, matters like propaganda, and how one presents oneself had Schacht 22 become very important. The way a person behaved and spoke was now a strategic way to obtain authority over others.
Logically, the creation and fashioning of a self should lead to more power and this suggests more freedom and autonomy to determine who one wants to be. However, this is not the case for the sixteenth-century elite. It appeared that one’s freedom was severely restricted because of the appearance that needed to be upheld and the ‘character’ that one had to play, in order to please an authority.
Moreover, there is considerable empirical evidence that there may well have been less
autonomy in self-fashioning in the sixteenth century than before, that family, state, and
religious institutions impose a more rigid and far-reaching discipline upon their
middle-class and aristocratic subjects. (Greenblatt 1)
Individuals like the elite whose rank in society, unlike the king’s, was not set in stone were bound to partake in the process of self-fashioning. This sort of roleplay resulted in scenes where individuals behaved like actors saying their lines in a play. It resulted in an extended role play of pleasing one another and saying the right things in order to secure as many individual benefits as they could.
However innocent self-fashioning sounds, the historical record has shown that it could be quite a dangerous game. It becomes apparent that trying to bend one’s identity in a way that ensures upward mobility might lead someone to the chopping block.
To try to break through the fiction is dangerous – one can have one’s head broken. To
try to take a part of one’s own, ‘to step up and play with them,’ is equally dangerous.
On the one hand the great have the means to enforce their elaborate, theatrical Schacht 23
ceremonies of pride; on the other, those ceremonies are usually performed, ominously,
on scaffolds. (Greenblatt 14)
This citation illustrates how dangerous trying to achieve upward mobility is when a person is close to the crown. During the reign of Henry VIII, this ambition to become close to the king and the ‘strategic game’ of self-fashioning had proven to be quite a precarious one. Profiling oneself could cost someone his head. Henry VIII’s life is a perfect example of a life that is completely orchestrated. His wealthy appearance is of great importance, and there was a certain absurdity in the display of his riches. Many recognize the absurdity of these measures but willingly go with it in favour of their own aspirations.
To fashion a self is a risky and even life-threatening business because one wrong move might mean the end of a life. On the other hand, not partaking in this kind of folly or speaking against the theatricality is equally dangerous. Greenblatt states that people close to Henry VIII often had a rather short life expectancy. One remarkable example that Greenblatt discusses is the case of Thomas More.
Thomas More was very close to Henry VIII and Greenblatt emphasizes how impressive it was that More was able to survive at court for a long time. Greenblatt underlines that “the tragic drama of his end may obscure for us his remarkable ability to survive and flourish for decades perilous political waters” (Greenblatt 15). Thomas More is one of the authors that Greenblatt discusses regarding self-fashioning.
The authors that Greenblatt discusses in his book have a couple of similar characteristics. One of the characteristics that is emphasized by Greenblatt is how all of them, and especially Thomas More, embody considerable mobility (Greenblatt 7). More has profound social and economic mobility. Greenblatt further elaborates on More’s career; Schacht 24
“More, the son of a reasonably successful London lawyer, becomes a knight, Speaker of the
House of Commons, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Steward of Cambridge
University, and finally Lord Chancellor of England, the confidant of Henry VIII” (Greenblatt
7). This is important to mention because this mobility resembles how Thomas Cromwell made his way through life. He started as the son of a yeoman and similarly made his way to become one of Henry VIII’s closest confidants. There is a great deal of Greenblatt’s chapter on Thomas More that resembles the way Mantel depicted the character of Thomas Cromwell.
Based on these similarities, it can be stated that a considerable focus on the historical figure of
Thomas More as a self-fashioning Renaissance man is interesting for further analysis of the literary character of Thomas Cromwell.
3.1 Self-fashioning in Writing
Starting from the idea that the ‘self’ is something that can be fashioned, Greenblatt poses the question of whether a self could also deliberately be created through writing. He mixes the knowledge of the historical field, with cultural anthropology and psychoanalysis. He states that the forming of a self in literature is similar to the mechanism in real life. A self is always formed as a reaction to authority. The authority that causes the self to be fashioned does not necessarily have to be a monarch, it could also be the church, family or society itself.
Self-fashioning is in effect the Renaissance version of these control mechanisms, the
cultural system of meanings that creates specific individuals by governing the passage
from abstract potential to concrete historical embodiment. (Greenblatt 3)
Self-fashioning does not only refer to the behaviour from one person to another, but it can also be found in what an author has written, in the texts he has produced. Writing itself is a construction of a form of self and what is written is shaped under the influence of culture and Schacht 25 other texts. The act of writing then is a way of comprehending an individual’s adherence or refusal of authority. Greenblatt defends that fashioning a self is not that different in writing compared to the real world. He distinguishes three levels of self-fashioning in literature. The first is the manifestation of the author’s attitude and behaviour. The second is the expression of the codes with which that behaviour is formed and the third one is the reflection upon those codes (Greenblatt 4).
3.2 Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors
To further illustrate the concept of self-fashioning, Greenblatt describes Holbein’s famous painting The Ambassadors. He puts forward the view that the atmosphere created by this painting is a realistic reflection or representation of how reality is sometimes difficult to locate. What follows is a brief description of the painting.
Hans Holbein the younger, the German-born artist portrayed two men, Jean de
Dinteville and George de Selve. These two figures are standing on each side of a table. On this table, various objects are displayed. The most notable element of the painting is the anamorphic skull. This skull is not in its correct form when a person is standing in front of the painting. There is a certain angle in which the skull is visible but one has to figure out the perfect way to look at it.
The painting conveys numerous symbols and paradoxes. When looking straight at this painting, the figure of the skull is distorted. A person looking at the portrait has to adjust his position to see the skull in its correct shape. People have the need to “locate” reality and pinpoint the underlying truth beneath all that is happening in the world. At the court of Henry
VIII, communication was all about conventions and locating the truth between all the self- Schacht 26 fashioning and strategies for power was nearly impossible. Holbein The Younger’s painting evokes the thought whether it is even possible to reveal reality. Greenblatt argues as follows;
The effect of these paradoxes is to resist any clear location of reality in the painting, to
question the very concept of locatable reality upon which we conventionally rely in
our mappings of the world, to subordinate the sign systems we so confidently use to a
larger doubt. (Greenblatt 20)
While discussing the power of Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors Greenblatt remarks that there is nothing in the painting that “is not the product of human fashioning” (Greenblatt 20).
These men are young and successful, portraying the typical self-made Renaissance men. The table between them has an expensive-looking cloth on it and there are various instruments displayed on the table. These instruments are symbolic of, amongst other things, the professions of the two men. Greenblatt points out that “Dinteville and Selve are depicted in the context of the highest hopes and achievements of their age” (Greenblatt 17). They are portrayed as the perfect examples of upward mobility that was the general ambition during the
Renaissance. All of it resonates harmony, except for the distorted skull and the broken string of the lute. These two elements are in conflict with the harmonious mood of the painting and can be linked to discord.
Together these suggest a subtle but powerful countercurrent to the forces of harmony,
reconciliation, and confident intellectual achievement embodied elsewhere in the
picture’s object and figures. (Greenblatt 19)
Greenblatt asserts that none of these distortions can be seen if one looked at the painting in its entirety. It is only by studying the painting from a closer point of view that the disruptions of harmony become apparent. Greenblatt’s exposition of and insight into the painting are meant Schacht 27 to explain More’s estrangement. A world seemingly perfect reveals to be a deceiving appearance upon closer look.
When looking straight at the painting, the skull is not visible. Analogously, when everyone is fashioning themselves, it becomes difficult to recognize the truth. As Greenblatt stated, everything in the painting is fashioned by man. This also applies to Hilary Mantel’s novels, as well as to each and every character in her trilogy. They are fashioned by an author, as everything in a painting is fashioned by its creator.
3.3 Thomas More and the Theatrical Metaphor
As previously discussed, behaviour at the court of Henry VIII was based on conventions.
These conventions were not only well-established traditions like ceremonies, masques and banquets, they were also the way people addressed each other or the king. These conventions resulted in a sort of play that was performed. Instead of being true to themselves, courtiers played their part in social life at court. A young unmarried lady aspiring a husband would, for example, have behaved in a submissive and innocent way to attract an interesting candidate.
Courtiers would say what the king wanted to hear instead of speaking their mind about a certain disagreement or topic. These are the sorts of things that More was allegedly repulsed by, but he did take part in it. This was the theatricality of behaviour at court, and thus the theatrical metaphor is describing these conventions as a mere play or act performed by actors.
One very important occurrence of More’s life is his creation of the work Utopia.
Greenblatt discusses this work extensively and explains how the work fits in More’s take on the absurdity of life at court. Greenblatt explains that More’s attitude towards the theatricality of society should not only be attributed to More himself; this general aversion towards the society they lived in was also quite omnipresent at the start of the sixteenth century. It was a Schacht 28 society they embraced but also were repulsed by. Therefore it is important to keep in mind that Thomas More was also influenced by the society he lived in. Greenblatt calls More’s attitude against the world “More’s estrangement” (Greenblatt 17).
In his Utopia, he explores the theatricality and absurdity of the world he lives in. Greenblatt assumes the theatrical method to be More’s favourite.
More uses theatrical imagery to depict a world living out rituals in which it has ceased
fully to believe, to display the folly of human pretensions, to evoke the great levelling
power of Death, who strips the king of his rich robes and reduces him at last to the
same state as the poorest beggar (Greenblatt 27).
In More’s epigram “On the King and the Peasant”, in which the peasant exclaims that he cannot see the king and only sees “a man in an embroidered garment”, he poses the question whether a king is just formed by histrionics (Greenblatt 27). The peasant only sees a man covered in riches and does not grasp what makes this individual the king. “More’s sense of human absurdity then at once leads him to social criticism and undermines that criticism, enabling him to ridicule the ideology of the powerful but severely limiting the practical consequences of that ridicule” (Greenblatt 27). More was brilliant for making sure that the narrator Thomas Morus of Utopia often did not agree with the philosopher and world traveller
Raphael Hythloday. This enabled him to criticise certain behaviour or aspects of society without seeming to be the one who criticised.
Greenblatt emphasizes that this theatrical metaphor cannot only be found in More’s fiction, but also in his actual life. He explains that this metaphor coincides with the actual theatricality of the society More lived in. “Henry’s taste for lavish dress, ceremonial banquets, pageantry, masque, and festivity astonished his contemporaries and profoundly affected their conception Schacht 29 of power” (Greenblatt 28). There is a strong fascination with dressing up and extreme opulence. Greenblatt quotes a Venetian ambassador who described Henry VIII’s hands covered with rings and an impressive collar around his neck with a big diamond attached to it.
This to illustrate that display was immensely important. Even though Henry VIII was a monumental figure on his own, he felt the need to dress up. This behaviour can be linked to
Professor Wrightson’s theory of display as a power strategy. The monarch and the elite want to stand out from the crowd. “Even Henry’s vigorous and imposing bulk is fairly lost beneath the sheer mass of stuff jewels, feathers, yards of rich cloths — with which he bedecked himself” (Greenblatt 28).
Even though More’s writing indirectly raised a lot of questions about this opulence and theatricality, Greenblatt emphasizes that More was not just a critical bystander. On the contrary, he was an active participant, “an actor among the rest” (Greenblatt 29). In contrast to the character of Hythloday who professes critical thoughts, More has to play the ‘power game’ at court and fashion a self in his daily life. “Hythlodaeus, the fictional character, speaks for directness, for what we would now call authenticity; Morus, the ‘real’ man, speaks for submission to fiction, for accommodation to the play at hand” (Greenblatt 35). This was a matter that raised eyebrows with some of his contemporaries. “Certainly some of More’s most fervent admirers were mystified and even embarrassed by his participation in what he calls the ‘stage plays’ of the great, embarrassed particularly by his own professed theatricality”
(Greenblatt 30). This embarrassment by someone’s close environment about partaking in the theatricality will also be discussed and applied to the literary character of Thomas Cromwell in the literary analysis. Schacht 30
More’s attitude towards society somewhat resembles that of Mantel’s Cromwell. The following paragraph written by Greenblatt could be applied to More as well as to the literary
Cromwell. His behaviour corresponds with the way More fashioned his ‘self’.
For one consequence of life lived as histrionic improvisation is that the category of the
real merges with that of the fictive; the historical More is a narrative fiction. To make
a part of one’s own, to live one’s life as a character thrust into a play, constantly
renewing oneself extemporaneously and forever aware of one’s own unreality –such
was More’s condition, such, one might say, his project (Greenblatt 31)
Greenblatt believes that when people constantly act in fashioned ways, reality becomes difficult to localize. Everything is fashioned, similarly to Holbein’s painting where everything is an illusion and you have to look for the right way to approach the painting. As he explains, reality merges with the theatrical.
This brings us to the second and third level of self-fashioning. Level one is not applicable because Hilary Mantel is a twenty-first-century novelist. The works that were discussed in More’s case were by his hand in his own time. However brilliant Mantel’s writing, there is always a connection with the twenty-first century. The second and third level of self-fashioning can be found within Mantel’s descriptions. There is a constant tension between the perspective of the observer in the novel and the participant. Mantel often leaves the reader guessing whether the observation is made by an implied author or Cromwell as a character. The boundaries of where the character of Cromwell starts and stops are often vague and difficult to recognize. This is one of the aspects that makes Mantel’s writing so brilliant and engaging. There is an omnipresent suspense because of information that lacks, or that is given in crumbs. Cromwell, like More, pleases who needs to be pleased. Just like More,
Cromwell has the ability to be self-reflexive towards his artificial self. “More is committed to Schacht 31 asking himself at all times ‘what would More say about this?’ and to ask such a question implies the possibility of other identities unfulfilled by the particular role that he is in the act of projecting” (Greenblatt 31).
3.4 Theatricality as the Result of Self-fashioning
When courtiers approached each other with their fashioned selves, melodramatic behaviour was often the result.
Theatricality, in the sense of both disguise and histrionic self-presentation, arose from
conditions common to almost all Renaissance courts: a group of men and women
alienated from the customary roles and revolving uneasily around the centre of power,
a constant struggle for recognition and attention, and a virtually fetishistic emphasis
upon manner. (Greenblatt 162)
Instructions on how to behave properly in the presence of royalty or nobility could be found in behavioural instruction manuals. Greenblatt compares these guidebooks to scripts for actors, he refers to them as “[p]ractical guides for a society whose members were nearly always on stage” (Greenblatt 162). As mentioned before, the social interactions at court almost resembled stage plays with actors and actresses. Everyone was conscious of this unreality but almost no one dared to speak up.
This theatrical metaphor will be discussed in the literary analysis of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Mantel frequently uses this kind of images and the hypothesis of this dissertation is that the core element that shapes the literary Thomas Cromwell is his ability to switch between the roles he has to play. In what follows, these roles will be referred to as ‘masks’. Schacht 32
4 The Many Masks of Thomas Cromwell
In this literary analysis, the objective is to indicate that Cromwell is a man who fashions
‘selves’ and to single out and analyse as many of these self-made identities as possible. From an early point in Wolf Hall it becomes clear that Cromwell is conscious of the fact that he can create identities for himself and that he has done so in his past:
He Thomas, also Tomos, Tommaso and Thomaes Cromwell, withdraws his past selves
into his present body and edges back to where he was before. His single shadow slides
against the wall, a visitor not sure of his welcome. Which of these Thomases saw the
blow coming? (WH 71)
The stress on the single shadow emphasizes that he had many identities but they are all one person, one shadow. There were different versions of him in his past. This quotation establishes that Thomas is aware of the fact that one person can have multiple identities.
As explained, a fashioned identity will be further referred to as a ‘mask’. The first step in discussing the many masks of Thomas Cromwell, is to prove that he is conscious of the existence of ‘masks’. The following excerpt shows where Cromwell has found the inspiration to switch between the figurative masks he wears. This excerpt also accentuates that Cromwell is conscious of the different ‘selves’ he can present to the world and how he can use them to his advantage.
He looks down at them and arranges his face. Erasmus says that you must do this each
morning before you leave your house: ‘put on a mask, as it were.’ He applies that to
each place, each castle or inn or nobleman’s seat, where he finds himself waking up.
(WH 320) Schacht 33
The word ‘arrange’ indicates that he is conscious of how he appears to others. He is in control of his features and, as he does with other things, exploits this ability. The excerpt does not confirm that his fashioned selves have a convincing impact on others, but it does confirm that he is aware of the fact that he can arrange his mask. He then becomes the sculptor of his own face.
From the day he was sworn into the king’s council, he has had his face arranged. He
has spent the early months of the year watching the faces of other people, to see when
they register doubt, reservation, rebellion – to catch that fractional moment before they
settle into the suave lineaments of the courtier, the facilitator, the yes-man. (WH 321).
Cromwell proves to be a good judge of character. He recognizes the uncontrolled moments before people slip back into their fashioned selves. With or withhout empathising he observes the masks of others and uses them to sculpt his own. As this excerpt indicates, he has an ability and a fascination with descrying the masks and true selves of others. Masques, masks and role play are omnipresent in Mantel’s novel. They do not only function as amusement for people at Henry VIII’s court, they are also symbolic. In this story, everyone puts on a performance. Everyone is an actor in public.
In her language, Mantel often uses imagery and metaphors linked to theatre. Examples of the use of theatrical imagery and metaphors can be found in Mantel’s descriptions of executions.
These executions are what Cromwell calls “a necessary art” (BB 162). Anne’s French executioner Christophe is described as an “expert in his art” (BB 461). When he shows
Cromwell how he practices sword-wielding, he is described as a performer: “He whirls like a dancer on the spot, his arms held high, his fists together as if he were gripping the sword” (BB
467). It is not only Mantel’s language that is laced with theatrical imagery, the executions Schacht 34 serve as a spectacle themselves. When thinking in terms of power-strategies, they are used to display the king’s power and to show that people, however powerful, still are dependent on the king’s mercy. Showing or denying mercy can also be seen as a way of fashioning a self and as a power strategy.
Actors put on masks before a performance. Analogically before people attend court, they put on a mask as well. Courtiers are like actors staged in a play, constantly trying to convince each other that the mask fellow courtiers see before them, is truthful and trustworthy.
He, Cromwell, is no longer subject to vagaries of temperament, and he is almost never
tired. Obstacles will be removed, tempers will be soothed, knots unknotted. (…), his
spirit is sturdy, his will strong, his front imperturbable. The courtiers see that he can
shape events, mould them. He can contain the fears of other men, and give them a
sense of solidity in a quaking world: this people, this dynasty, this miserable rainy
island at the edge of the world (WH 522)
In this extract, the narrator describes Cromwell as a master orchestrator. Cromwell is nearly at the pinnacle of his powers, he is capable of orchestrating events and influencing people.
These talents can be attributed to his ability to quickly switch between certain ‘masks’. He figures out a certain situation and is able to fashion himself in a suitable way.
In conclusion, Cromwell is a man who is aware of the fact that people can arrange their faces and comportment and thus put on masks to approach others at court, especially those of higher status. He has studied the arranged faces at court and learned from them. His goals to reach upward mobility and to achieve his ideals become easier to reach by the Schacht 35 method of self-fashioning. Is important to note that these masks are completely intertwined with each other. Cromwell is not just one thing, he can be many things at once.
4.1 Mask 1: Cromwell the Enigma
At the start of Wolf Hall, Cromwell is already in the Cardinal’s service, but there is no information in the novel on how he got there. Neither the narrator nor Cromwell reveals a lot about Cromwell’s past, it is shrouded in mystery. MacCulloch stated in his biography that there are only a limited amount of sources about Cromwell’s younger years, which gives
Mantel as a writer of neo-historical fiction a chance to fill in the gaps. She did not invent an entire backstory and left the gaps open. There are no big revelations about Cromwell’s youth or past in Italy. Similarly, as a literary character, Cromwell is very secretive of his past to others, as he does not want people to know the details of his life before he came to court.
Sometimes some information is shared with the reader, in an anecdote or through one of
Cromwell’s thoughts, but most of his past remains hidden from the reader.
As MacCulloch argues, Cromwell might have liked the thought of being an enigma to others. This mysterious representation of him is omnipresent in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the
Bodies. Certain parts of his endeavours and how he had gradually become rich are kept from the reader. Still, there are scenes in which he discloses a part of his past although the majority remains a conundrum.
But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal.
It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man’s power is in
the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression Schacht 36
of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into
which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires. (WH 359)
Cromwell relies on the fact that people do not know a lot about him. They might fear the worst and he exploits those concerns. He tricks people by feeding their fear. He does not spill a lot of information and makes them wonder about what remained unsaid. Remaining silent is a strategy that Cromwell frequently uses, in contrast with Anne Boleyn, who often loses her self-control and speaks her mind. Cromwell knows that not revealing his past, his thoughts, and his future actions leave other courtiers with a sense of fear. People do not know what to expect of him, they can only rely on the stories they have heard from others.
Schacht 37
4.1.1 The Art of Displaying and Concealing
In contrast to his quest to remain a mystery to people, Cromwell loves to display his power and wealth in various ways. People need to know that he is very powerful and that he is rich, other than that he does not like to disclose too much. Other courtiers are not to know how he had come to where he was. The way he puts himself on display is by portraiture. This display, paradoxically, emphasizes how little people knew about him. As Professor Wrightson argues in his lecture, portraiture had become a popular form of propaganda in the sixteenth century.
It was a way to advertise a person’s wealth and authority. Additionally, it might also have been a way to keep things private. A lot can be hidden in a portrait; imperfections can be erased and one can choose what to reveal and what not. Cromwell’s relationship with this form of display changes throughout the novels. In Wolf Hall, he is very eager to see how Hans
Holbein the younger has painted him. The portrait Holbein delivered to Cromwell at the start of Bring Up the Bodies highlights an interesting characteristic of Cromwell.
When he saw the portrait finished he had said, ‘Christ, I look like a murderer’; and his
son Gregory said, didn’t you know? Copies are being made for his friends, and for his
admirers among the evangelicals in Germany. He will not part with the original – not
now I’ve got used to it, he says – and so he comes into his hall to find versions of
himself in various stages of becoming: a tentative outline, partly inked in (BB 7-8)
Loving to be on display but desiring to remain an enigma seems contradictory. Cromwell appears to have found a solution to combine these two urges. By having his portrait made and hung up in houses all over England, people will know who he is and that he is important, which makes him powerful. The importance of display was something Cromwell presumably recognized and exploited in his own way. His face is everywhere but who he is becomes what Schacht 38 others make of him. Only those very close to him might see through his strategies and multiple identities. He wants people to see the mask that he needs them to see.
In Bring Up the Bodies (2012), Cromwell ponders on how difficult artists find it to start painting his face. “Wherever they begin, the final impact is the same: if he had a grievance against you, you wouldn’t like to meet him at the dark of the moon” (BB 8). The result is an intimidating portrait of a man. In contrast to how Henry VIII is portrayed, with lavish diamonds and a histrionic appearance, Cromwell is portrayed in a more modest way. A portrait of Henry VIII might be as intimidating as one of Cromwell but in a very different manner. Cromwell would not have needed histrionics and bombastic elements to appear powerful. He reacts shocked to the fact that he looks like a murderer, but simultaneously, he rather enjoys it. Hans Holbein the younger might have been a great estimator of how people wanted to see themselves. Henry VIII is made to look extremely powerful and impressive while Cromwell looks quite dangerous and unsettling. Hence, Hans is an artist skilled at painting the fashioned selves of others. Schacht 39
4.1.2 Cromwell the Murderer
In Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012), many characters claim not to trust
Thomas Cromwell. As explained before, they are hesitant about what to expect of him. Some might fear the worst and spread rumours that he could have been an assassin, a man who has done violent things in his past. Although Cromwell seems far too religious to kill someone with his bare hands, his actions are often perceived as cold-blooded.
Cardinal Wolsey suspects that Cromwell has killed a man in his past and asks him about this. Thomas neither confirms nor denies this and simply says: “My lord cardinal, I was a soldier” (WH 73). There is a strong indication that he has killed people in his past before but he never confirms it. By never confirming nor denying the accusations of others, he reinforces his enigmatic status. The mask he wears becomes less see-through because of rumours and assumptions made by others.
The next excerpt further illustrates how little courtiers know of him and how the absence of confirmation invokes a stream of rumours. In the following excerpt, Cromwell hears Mark Smeaton talking about him and the Cardinal.
Yes, for sure the lawyer will come down with him [Cardinal Wolsey]. I say lawyer,
but who is he? Nobody knows. They say he has killed men with his own hands and
never told it in confession. But those hard kinds of men, they always weep when they
see the hangman. (WH 168)
This excerpt illustrates the many myths that were circling around court. Instead of confronting
Smeaton he remained silent about the matter. Cromwell was aware of the rumours about himself but he enjoyed people wondering about him. Schacht 40
People close to Cromwell know he will stop at nothing to achieve his goals. His ambition is power and staying close to the king. Anne’s French executioner mentions to
Cromwell that before meeting him, he had heard several rumours of his ruthlessness and hate towards the Boleyns.
‘They told me you are in charge of everything. In fact they joke to my saying, if you
faint because she is so ugly, there is one who will pick up the sword, his name is
Cremuel and he is such a man, he can chop of ttohe head off the Hydra, […] But they
say it is a lizard or serpent, and for each head that is chopped two more will grow.’
(BB 467)
This could mean that people think Cromwell would stop at nothing to achieve what he wants, but also that there will always be obstacles coming his way. In a figurative way of speaking, it could mean he can achieve the impossible.
Through Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012), Cromwell has made several victims. One of them is Thomas More and near the end of the second novel, former queen Anne Boleyn. There is no proof that Cromwell enjoys people thinking of him as a murderer, but several scenes in the novel indicate that he does not mind people being scared of him. Whether Cromwell has truly killed a man, is quite irrelevant to this analysis. He shapes the rumours into a mask and carries it to his benefit. As MacCulloch described, the lack of information is what inspired many myths surrounding the historical Cromwell. Instead of completely filling in the gaps of history, Mantel refrains from statements and leaves
Cromwell’s mask where it is. She indulges his by letting him keep this mask.
4.2 Mask 2: Cromwell the Enemy Schacht 41
4.2.1 The Case of Stephen Gardiner
Before Cromwell rose to this position, Stephen Gardiner had been King Henry VIII’s Master
Secretary. Similar to Cromwell, Gardiner’s career started by working for Cardinal Wolsey.
Both Gardiner and Cromwell wanted to be in the Cardinal’s favour and this resulted in hostility between the two of them. Gardiner often mocked Cromwell about where he came from, he enjoyed pointing out that Cromwell was a nobody. Gardiner said, “‘God damn you,
Cromwell. Who are you? What office do you hold? You’re nothing. Nothing’” (WH 339).
Even Gardiner cannot escape Cromwell’s enigmatic mask. When Wolsey is disgraced,
Gardiner does not help him and proves disloyal. Cromwell takes offence to this lack of loyalty to their master as he went out of his way to help the Cardinal.
Cromwell never forgives Gardiner and even vows to seek revenge. In Wolf Hall
(2009) Gardiner is Cromwell’s true enemy and their dislike for each other is quite explicit.
Their waenemy only to benefit himself. The hatred he feels for Gardiner seems to be authentic and not theatrical nor part of his self-fashioning. Schacht 42
4.2.2 The Case of Katherine of Aragon
Cromwell pities Katherine and admires her for her perseverance to remain queen and a loyal wife to Henry. He respects her rooted values even when they clash with his needs or what he has to do. He compares her clothes and jewellery to a sort of armour that could protect her from a sword. An interpretation of this could be that she wears these gowns and gemstones to show that she is still a queen. Katherine wants to prove her love for the king publicly by always waiting for the king to dine with her. King Henry denies her this privilege as he feels it would be unfair towards Anne Boleyn, his new love. He comes to her and claims that he would choose her above any other woman as his queen, but that it cannot be so. He states that they have sinned and that in the eyes of God, and she is still his brother’s wife. The King appears to put on an act and blames his absence on God judging him. He feels as if having a simple dinner is too much for his conscience.
Cromwell rarely reveals to the reader how he truly feels about a certain person, but he does imply that he admires Katherine.
She is standing on her status, she is standing on her rights; the windows are rattled,
from here to Constantinople. What a woman she is, Thomas Cromwell remarks in
Spanish: to no one in particular. (WH 89)
He knows he cannot help her because his loyalty is with the king, but he respects the woman that she is. He thinks highly of her. The root of this admiration might be exactly the thing he needs to stop: her undying loyalty and devotion to the king. This might be recognizable to
Cromwell because he always remained loyal to Thomas Wolsey. The mask Cromwell wears towards Katherine and the lady Mary is that of the enemy. A polite enemy, but an opponent all the same. Sometimes Cromwell seems to enjoy bringing people down, but this is not his sentiment towards Katherine or her daughter. Even though he feels for them, he has to remain Schacht 43 loyal to the king who wants to dispose of their presence. His sentiment is inferior to his loyalty, and thus his undying urge for power wins from his urge to help these women.
4.3 Mask 3: Cromwell the Manipulator
Cromwell knows how to behave in order for people to respect him. He is incredibly conscious of his own behaviour and in Bring Up the Bodies, there are more insights in his character or fashioned self that reach the reader.
At the start of the novel, some information is shared about his clever ways of getting what he wants.
He has a way of getting his way, he has a method; he will charm a man or bribe him,
coax him or threaten him, he will explain to a man where his true interests lie, and he
will introduce that same man to aspects of himself he didn’t know existed. (BB 7)
Thomas Cromwell is always aware of who the person is that he wants to please and how he has to address him or her. Not only is he a puppeteer of the courtiers but also a puppeteer to his fashioned self.
A great example in Bring Up the Bodies (2012) of manipulation and a show of
Cromwell as a cunning and coercing man is when George Boleyn, Anne’s brother, has been brought before court. Cromwell hands George a piece of paper and asks him whether this statement was made by the queen, or whether he recognizes these words. Cromwell informs
George that he does not have to read this statement out loud, but because George wants to amuse the people at the court, he reads it anyway.
He has read it because he thinks the crowd will like it. And so they do, though the
laughter is shocked, incredulous. But from his judges -and it is they who matter – there Schacht 44
is an audible hiss of depreciation. George looks up. He throws out his hands. ‘These
are not my words. I do not own them.’ But he owns them now. (BB 447)
By reading the words on that paper out loud, George had made them his own. It seems as if
Cromwell knew that Boleyn was not going to be able to resist the amusement he would cause.
This event ensured that it did not even matter whether George recognized these words, now he certainly did. Saying that George was not obligated to read the words out loud seemed like a reversed psychology trick, by doing this Cromwell had succeeded to achieve what he wanted. Because now they had proof that George Boleyn had mocked the potency of the king of England. The literary character Thomas Cromwell shows an incredible ability to predict what people will do. He has insight into George Boleyn’s personality and uses it to his advantage. This makes him function as a puppeteer. He pulls the strings and once more, the puppet dances.
4.4 Mask 4: Cromwell the Ally
4.4.1 Anne Boleyn: Friend or Foe
There are only a few people who are nearly as clever as Cromwell is with words and who see through his ‘act’. One of them is Anne Boleyn. He often thinks that she is on to him but does not fall out of character. Sometimes Cromwell thinks he can detect a glimpse of an
Anne who aspires to be his equal.
She stretches out her hand to him, hardly knowing who he is; any man will do? He
takes her fingertips. Her black eyes snap open. It’s like a shop when the shutters are
taken down: good morning, Master Cromwell, what can we sell each other today?
(WH 430) Schacht 45
He, Cromwell and Anne Boleyn often need something from one another which makes their conversations seem like a negotiation between tradesmen. They are doing business covered under a language that adheres to courtly etiquette and the obedient act that they both put up.
There is a tension between her and Cromwell. They treat each other as friends because they need each other. Anne is in trouble when he has no need for her anymore. This is a part of the plot from Mantel’s second novel in the Cromwell-trilogy Bring Up the Bodies (2012).
There is a constant power-game between the two of them. When Anne is new to court, she does not notice Cromwell right away. Once he rises on the social ladder, she realizes he might be useful to her. Cromwell sees through her little tricks and games but he realizes that they do work on other people. Anne is all about power and she wants loyalty from Cromwell. She needs him to be her ally, especially when the king starts trusting Cromwell’s advice on various matters. Cromwell assumes that Anne is always interested in using people to benefit her. He knows she always wants something. She has realised that Cromwell is an important man and she wants him to serve her.
Cromwell and Anne are both intelligent, persuasive and clever courtiers. The following sentence serves as a good summary of how Cromwell thinks about Anne; “At New
Year's he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people” (WH 296). He knows she has a short temper and she is always ready to strike her enemies in a figurative way. Anne is on the constant lookout for her enemies, because she knows that many oppose to her marriage. Similarly to
Cromwell, she aspires power but she often acts almost schizophrenic that people want to take her power away.
In playing Anne’s ally, Cromwell has to take on another role to remain loyal to various parties. He claims to do translation work. Schacht 46
I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language, then person to person.
Anne to Henry. Henry to Anne. Those days when he wants soothing, and she is as
prickly as a holly bush. Those times – they do occur – when his gaze strays after
another woman, and she follows it, and storms off to her own apartments. He,
Cromwell, goes about like some public poet, carrying assurances of desire, each to
each. (WH 421)
Cromwell has to switch between kinds of behaviour and adapts his language according to the situation. This means he is able to switch between masks easily. At one moment he is soothing one person, then another in an entirely different way. He has become an actor playing different parts in a play.
4.5 A Glimpse of the Real Cromwell
As previous chapters have indicated, it appears to be nearly impossible to grasp the true character of Thomas Cromwell. In the novels, it is impossible to find a ‘self’ that is not fashioned. This is the case because every version of a character’s self is fashioned by their author, Hilary Mantel. Suspending the knowledge that Mantel created these characters, enables a search to the non-fashioned self of Cromwell. Schacht 47
4.5.1 The Self-made Man
‘So now get up.’ Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles
of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if
someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.
(WH 3)
The first four words of Wolf Hall foreshadow the incredible life and story of Thomas
Cromwell and his rise to a much higher position in society. The narrator describes a boy lying on the ground, looking for help. In Mantel’s novels, Cromwell is the son of a cruel blacksmith and not a commercial brewer. The boy, helplessly lying on the ground, will somehow become one of the most influential statesmen that England has ever known. “So now get up”, a command given by Walter, Cromwell’s father, who urges Cromwell to get up after he has been struck down by him.
MacCulloch writes: “Thomas Cromwell never had the advantage of a university education, but he more than made up for it by efforts of self-help, which remain utterly hidden from us” (TC 9). These “efforts of self-help” are what Greenblatt calls self-fashioning. Much of what Cromwell had achieved was the result of conversations and agreements of which there are no historical sources to be found. In the chapter called “Ruffian” in MacCulloch’s biography of Cromwell, MacCulloch mentions that Cromwell described himself in his younger years as a ruffian. In Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Cromwell is very protective of his past. He likes to conceal his history from the other characters, and even from the readers of the novel.
In Wolf Hall (2009), Katherine of Aragon makes a remark about Cromwell’s personality after he has given her the news that she should surrender her position. She says: Schacht 48
“The blacksmith makes his own tools” (WH 291). This could be seen as a metaphor for
Cromwell as a person who makes things happen. If the authentic version of the truth does not fit his needs, he will shape a new truth.
When Thomas Wyatt is detained, Cromwell visits him and explains how he will make sure that Wyatt will be safe. He reveals to Wyatt, who he considers a friend, how he feels about all his past actions.
He says softly, ‘I think I have been training all my years for this. I have served an
apprenticeship to myself.’ His whole career has been an education in hypocrisy. Eyes
that once skewered him now kindle with simulated regard. Hands that would like to
knock his hat off now reach out to take his hand, sometimes in a crushing grip. He has
spun his enemies to face him, to join him: as in a dance. He means to spin them away
again, so they look down the long cold vista of their years: so they feel the wind, the
wind of exposed places, that cuts to the bone: so they bed down in ruins, and wake up
cold. (BB 418)
Cromwell calls himself his own apprentice, meaning that everything he achieved in life was because of self-help. He speaks openly about what he has managed to become and it seems as if he is quite proud of it. This is not part of a theatrical display of power, as he is alone with his friend whom he cares for. He relishes his past achievements and acknowledges to himself that he has a great influence on people. Schacht 49
4.5.2 The Cardinal’s Loyal Friend
A side of Cromwell, more difficult to detect is his caring side. When Cardinal Wolsey is mocked in a performance, Cromwell swears to revenge him. Seeking vengeance might by his way of justifying the horrors he brings upon these men in the future. Even though a part of his motivation for searching retribution is for his own benefit, there is a hint that Cromwell has a deep respect for Wolsey and even cares for him.
One of the virtues that Cromwell possesses is loyalty. Given that he is an opportunist and a manipulator, one could think that his loyalty would always lie with the highest bidder, the one who will ensure him riches and power. On the other hand, Cromwell does not like to be dependent on somebody else. He likes to think of himself as a self-made man. His first big employer was Cardinal Wolsey, and Cromwell always remained loyal to him. When Wolsey was not able to get Henry’s marriage to Katherine annulled, he fell from grace. Even though
Cromwell realizes staying loyal to Wolsey might be a dangerous affair, he remains. Even after
Wolsey’s death, Cromwell seeks vengeance for those who shunned Wolsey.
The following excerpt is a rather important one because it describes in detail why Cromwell wants to avenge Wolsey. The entire excerpt is included because I will refer to it in later chapters of this dissertation.
At Hampton Court in the great hall they perform an interlude; its name is ‘The
Cardinal’s Descent into Hell’ […] The entertainment is this: a vast scarlet figure,
supine, is dragged across the floor, howling, by actors dressed as devils. There are four
devils, one for each limb of the dead man. The devils wear masks. They have tridents
with which they prick the cardinal, making him twitch and writhe and beg. He had
hoped the cardinal died without pain but Cavendish had said no. He died conscious, Schacht 50
talking of the king. He had started out of sleep and said, whose is that shadow on the
wall? (WH 266)
In his mind, Cromwell uses these actions to justify these men’s executions. His hatred towards them is not theatre nor a part of his self-fashioning. He wants to see them dead for what they did and he manages to assure their downfall.
Even though Cromwell is a man who aspires upward mobility, his feelings towards
Thomas Wolsey appear to be real. He never refers to Wolsey as his friend but he remains loyal to him even after his death. Because of his turbulent past, Cromwell might unconsciously seek a father figure in Wolsey. Even though the Cardinal does not know all the details about his past, he does seem to know Cromwell’s character quite well and he trusts him completely. His loyalty to Wolsey does not seem to be part of self-fashioning as it appeared to be a dangerous situation when Wolsey fell into disgrace.
4.5.3 Cromwell the Caring Family-man
His family and his family home, Austin Friars, is a part of his life that Cromwell deeply cares for. After his daughters and his wife have died he holds his wife’s prayer book he feels like
“[…] he can feel the imprint of her small fingers under his own” (WH 155). Later, while he is reading he is getting emotional at the thought of his deceased family members and he feels the presence of his daughter. “Grace, silent and small, turns the page with him” (WH 155.). When he looks up, his eyes are tearful.
Cavendish cannot see his daughter’s fingers touching the page, or his wife’s hands
holding the book. George simply looks at the pictures, upside down. He takes a deep
breath and says, ‘Thomas …?’ ‘I am crying for myself,’ he says. ‘I am going to lose
everything, everything I have worked for, all my life, because I will go down with the Schacht 51
cardinal – no, George, don’t interrupt me – because I have done what he asked me to
do, and been his friend, and the man at his right hand (WH 158)
This part of his crying is a bit dubious. The reader has an insight into Cromwell’s thoughts and emotions. He is mourning his family but then, when Cavendish wants to know why he is crying, he laments his future in which he will lose everything he has worked for. The reader can interpret this in multiple ways. Maybe he has used his teary eyes to convince Cavendish to pity him, and to help him. Another possibility is that his thought process truly went from his family to the instability of his career. He cannot change the fact that Cavendish has seen him cry, he can however us this to his advantage. ‘Knowing’ Cromwell, that is what he would do.
Rafe Sadler and Richard Williams are two men that Cromwell has taken into his home at Austin Friars. He is quite fond of them and sees Rafe as his apprentice. When one of his daughters reveals that she would like to marry Rafe Sadler, he is content. For Richard
Williams, whose name is later changed to Richard Cromwell, Thomas Cromwell has great plans as well. He would like him to wed Mary Boleyn, as this would be beneficial to his family. Even though he wants fortune for his family, he gives Richard the choice of rejecting the idea. This indicates that Cromwell deeply cares for him as well.
Cromwell’s feelings for his family members are genuine. Around them, his behaviour is calm and authentic and there is less theatre or self-fashioning involved.
4.5.4 Cromwell a Friend of the Arts
Throughout the novels, it becomes clear that Cromwell has an extravagant taste. He loves elegant fabrics, clothes and beautiful tapestries. His taste is extremely luxurious and the richer he becomes the more he displays his wealth at his home at Austin Friars. Schacht 52
Among his connections, there are a couple of well-known artists like the young poet
Wyatt and Hans Holbein the Younger. Cromwell is rather friendly with them and seems to enjoy their company. Thomas Wyatt is one of the arrested men who are under de suspicion of having had carnal relations with Queen Anne Boleyn. Others do not understand why he likes
Wyatt this much. In his mind, Cromwell reveals why he cares for Wyatt.
He understands honour but does not boast of his own. He is perfectly equipped as a courtier, but he knows the small value of that. He has studied the world without despising it.
He understands the world without rejecting it. He has no illusions but he has hopes. He does not sleepwalk through his life. His eyes are open, and his ears for sounds others miss. (BB
339)
He seems to enjoy people who perceive the world in a pure way. People who can express pain and beauty at the same time. Where Hans Holbein the Younger paints idealized versions of people, Cromwell admires Wyatt for showing the truth.
Cromwell’s affection towards people who produce beautiful things seems to be authentic. As portraiture had become a way to display power and wealth, Cromwell uses
Holbein’s portrait of him as a way to induce fear in others. Schacht 53
4.5.5 Cromwell’s Vice: Vanity
As stated above, Cromwell is a typical Renaissance self-made man. He came from nothing and ended up being a powerful statesman. This impressionable career has, however, caused one of Cromwell greatest vices. He became a vain man. This vanity is not centred around the features of his face, but it all has to do with the display. He likes to display his riches to convince people of how powerful he is. People close to him, like Johane, sometimes dare to remark on this.
I heard with my own ears you say to Thomas Avery, oh tell Stephen I want it, I don’t
care what it costs. All these painted pictures of people we don’t know, all these, I don’t
know what, lutes and books of music, we never used to have them, when I was a girl I
never used to look at myself in the mirror, but now I look at myself every day” (WH
311)
She is confronted by the fact that vanity is now one of her characteristics and discloses to
Cromwell that she does not feel comfortable with this new trait. She also criticises him for bringing his riches inside the house and for showing them off. Johane is one of the closest people to Cromwell and in Wolf Hall Cromwell’s vanity becomes one of the reasons they end their romantic endeavour. Although Johane comments on his behaviour, he does not self- reflect on this personality-trait.
Thomas More also comments on Cromwell’s exquisite taste: “More says, ‘What do you think, gentlemen? Walk on it, or hang it on the wall?’ ‘Walk on it.’ ‘Thomas, your luxurious tastes!’”(WH 228). Even though this display is a power strategy, it is also inherent Schacht 54 to Cromwell’s character. He honestly enjoys beautiful things. He likes the feel, sound and looks of fabrics and jewellery, but having them enhances his status.
4.5.6 Through the Cracks of the Mask
The goal of the following paragraph is to get as close to the core of Thomas Cromwell as possible. There are certain instances in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies where the reader may catch a glimpse of Cromwell’s truest self.
Starting from the idea that there is an increased awareness of the self, people realise that they can determine what others get to see. “Try always, Wolsey says, to find out what people wear under their clothes. At an earlier stage in life this would have surprised him; he had thought that under their clothes people wore their skin” (Mantel WH 84). This citation illustrates that Cromwell now realizes that people are not always showing their true colours.
He understands that comportment can be changed to benefit a certain cause and uses this knowledge to adapt his own.
After the previously discussed event where Anne Boleyn is imprisoned and seems to laugh at her own misfortune, Cromwell had a conversation with Wriothesley in which they discussed whether Anne was guilty of her crimes or not. Here we get an insight in the cunningness of master Cromwell.
‘You are not going to begin on that witchcraft business?’ ‘No. But. If she [Anne
Boleyn] says she is not worthy, she is saying she is guilty. Or it seems to me. But I do
not know guilty of what.’ ‘Remind me what I said. What kind of truth do we want?
Did I say the whole truth?’ ‘You said the truth we can use’. (BB 359) Schacht 55
Cromwell sometimes gives the impression that he thinks himself invincible. This is also a part of his fashioned self. A self that is untouchable, mysterious and dangerously powerful.
The play in which the late Cardinal Wolsey is dragged to hell by four men, gives
Cromwell a purpose. He wants these men dead. Although his hatred towards these men seems sincere, he exploits it. Near the end of Bring Up the Bodies Cromwell has reached his goal, the men are dead. “A gentleman asked me [Wriothesley], if this is what Cromwell does to the cardinal’s lesser enemies, what will he do by and by to the king himself” (BB 475). Cromwell is furious about this question and knows that it was posed by Stephen Gardiner. He describes the question stings “like a knife between his shoulder blades” (BB 475.). At this moment,
Cromwell does not succeed to arrange his face the way he wants to. He is affronted by the thought that people would think he was not a loyal subject and servant to the king. “Perhaps, caught in the little panes which distort and cloud, Wriothesley sees a dubious image: confusion, fear, emotions that do not often mark Master Secretary’s face” (BB 475.). Here
Wriothesley possibly catches a glimpse of Cromwell’s true emotions. One moment later,
Cromwell’s mask is on again. “He turns, when he thinks it is fit for Wriothesley to see his face. His smile is implacable” (BB 475).
Cromwell does not like to show his true emotions. Only people who are very close to him catch glimpses of his impulsive reactions. Thomas Wolsey is close to Cromwell but even he cannot grasp his essence. He says to Cromwell: “If you ever plan to be off your guard, let me know. It is something I should like to see” (WH 21). This implies that Cromwell is always very aware of what is happening and how he should respond to various situations. Even though he enjoys displaying his riches, he is incredibly careful about displaying his emotions. Schacht 56
4.5.7 Cromwell the Religious Man
Religion is generally a very personal feature of one’s character. In a world of self-fashioning and theatricality it can be difficult to determine who is honest and authentic about their beliefs and who is not. Cromwell’s religious ideas are a major topic in Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring
Up the Bodies (2012). His beliefs are mostly communicated to the reader through his thoughts or by the narrator. On rare occasions, he has direct conversations about his opinion on religious topics. The question is whether Cromwell’s religious behaviour is a part of his self- fashioning or not. Excerpts of Wolf Hall (2009) will be used to discern whether he is authentic about his beliefs and to detect whether his behaviour is theatrical and part of his self- fashioning.
Similar to the historical Cromwell, the character Thomas Cromwell is a religious man,
He refers to God and the Bible on numerous occasions in the novel, but his ideas about how one should practise one’s belief are different from those of his contemporaries. Instead of reading the Bible in Latin, he prefers the English translations made by William Tyndale. He is very secretive about his preference because people like Thomas More believe Tyndale to be a heretic.
The historical William Tyndale was an English scholar who became one of the most prominent figures of the Reformation. He is most famous for his translation of the New
Testament and a part of the Old Testament into English. Tyndale was convinced that the practice of praying to saints should be condemned. He also denounced that the scriptures should only be interpreted by authorized clergy. In his work The Obedience of a Christian
Man (1528) he stated his conviction that the king should be head of the church instead of the
Pope. In 1535 Tyndale was captured just outside of Brussels and he was executed. Before The
Act of Supremacy and Tyndale’s works were widely accepted, he had to flee from England. Schacht 57
In Wolf Hall (2009), More’s unstoppable hunt for Tyndale and his followers is described. He had spies everywhere and was constantly hunting for people who he assumed had read the translations. Thomas More believed that Tyndale and everyone who read his work and tried to spread his copies was a heretic.
When Cromwell talked to More he pretended to support More’s quest for heretics, while secretly persuading others to read Tyndale.
He wants his wife Liz to read it. “He has said, Liz, there’s Tyndale’s book, his New
Testament, in the locked chest there, read it, here’s the key; she says, you read it to me
if you’re so keen, and he says, it’s in English, read it for yourself: that’s the point,
Lizzie. You read it, you’ll be surprised what’s not in it” (WH 39)
Thomas Cromwell wants Liz to realise that certain things aspects of religion that she perceives as normal were not initially part of the Bible. Cromwell’s fascination with
Tyndale’s translation stems from the fact that a lot of rules and regulations that were common in the Roman Catholic church were later on added to the original version. He believes the
Bible should be accessible to everyone who wants to read it in an approachable language. Liz is reluctant, she prefers reading her prayer book because Tyndale’s translation work is strictly forbidden; this already becomes clear because Cromwell hides it in a locked chest. By saying
“[…] what’s not in it” he means the clergy, nuns, the Pope and the celebration of certain saints (WH 39). Schacht 58
Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what
you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I
believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece
more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this
world: and the next world too. Show me where it says, in the Bible, ‘Purgatory’. Show
me where it says relics, monks, nuns. Show me where it says ‘Pope’. (WH 39)
Thomas Cromwell is frustrated that most of the Roman Catholic doctrine was not originally mentioned in the Bible. Cromwell is a man who dares to think critically about his world and things that he has learnt. He does not doubt the existence of God but he has become sceptical about the practises surrounding Christianity.
When the king finally read Tyndale’s work that legitimizes him to be head of the church, he declared himself as such by The Act of Supremacy.
More is now required to swear to the Act of Supremacy, an act which draws together
all the powers and dignities assumed by the king in the last two years. It doesn’t, as
some say, make the king head of the church. It states that he is head of the church, and
always has been. If people don’t like new ideas, let them have old ones. If they want
precedents, he has precedents. A second enactment, which will come into force in the
new year, defines the scope of treason. It will be a treasonable offence to deny Henry’s
titles or jurisdiction, to speak or write maliciously against him, to call him a heretic or
a schismatic. This law will catch the friars who spread panic and say the Spanish are
landing with the next tide to seize the throne for the Lady Mary. It will catch the
priests who in their sermons rant against the king’s authority and say he is dragging Schacht 59
his subjects after him to Hell. Is it much for a monarch to ask, that a subject keep a
civil tongue in his head? (WH 589)
Refusing to sign this act became More’s downfall. Even though he frequently self-fashioned to please the king, this is where he stood his ground. More’s refusal lead to Cromwell and the
King using coercion to make him change his mind, but he kept refusing and was later executed. A conclusion that could be drawn from this excerpt is that Cromwell believes the king of England should be and has always been, head of church.
On his crusade to make Tyndale’s translations acceptable he found an unexpected ally in Anne Boleyn. Even though their relationship fluctuated, as was described in a previous chapter, they found common ground on this matter. They both wanted the king to realize that he is the head of church and that he does not have to take orders from the Pope. In a conversation between Cranmer, Cromwell and Anne, the latter says:
Master Tyndale says, “One king, one law, is God’s ordinance in every realm.” I have
read his book, The Obedience of a Christian Man. I myself have shown it to the king
and marked the passages that touch on his authority. The subject must obey his king as
he would his God; do I have the sense of it? The Pope will learn his place.’ (WH 242)
This is not fashioned behaviour, nor theatrical, both Anne and Cromwell seem to believe that the Pope has too much power and that the king should be in charge of religious affairs. As
MacCulloch describes, it was indeed Anne who managed to convince the king of Tyndale’s value. “In a well-attested story, Anne Boleyn had introduced the King to an evangelical tract of 1528 forcefully advocating a royal resumption of power from the Papacy: William
Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man (TC 110). One of the major reasons King Henry Schacht 60
VIII was in favour of Tyndale’s writing was his marital dilemma, as head of the church he could grant himself his separation from Katherine of Aragon.
The previous excerpts indicate that Cromwell realized that certain aspects of the
Roman Catholic doctrine were not required to practice his faith. By reading Tyndale he came to the conclusion that the clergy and the Pope had too much power and he believed that people should be able to interpret the Bible without the license of authorized clergy.
Aside from being sceptical about the powers of priests and the Pope, Cromwell also denounced widespread superstition. The only person who should be a direct representative of
God should be the king. An important character and historical person to discuss is Elizabeth
Barton or ‘The Holy Maid’. She was an English Catholic nun who was executed for making prophecies against the marriage of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. In Wolf Hall (2009)
Thomas Cromwell had a couple of encounters with The Holy Maid. In his biography of
Thomas Cromwell, Diarmaid MacCulloch explains Barton’s fate. He believes she was “[…] doomed from the moment she claimed to have been supernaturally uprooted in autumn 1532 from Canterbury and flown over to Calais in the wake of the King and his Court (she would have heard the noise of his progress past her nunnery on the Dover road) (TC 234). She claimed to have been teleported and made other claims about being presented with sacred objects that were meant for a royal ceremony. “This theft by teleportation, in the presence of
Anne Boleyn herself, directly denied the King’s divinely conferred authority to rule” (TC
234).
In Wolf Hall (2009), Cromwell and Cranmer had to interrogate the maid. MacCulloch describes how the historical Cromwell had a particular way of interrogating the Maid. She was always treated as a respectful lady who fell into their charismatic trap. Barton is Schacht 61 portrayed in Wolf Hall (2009) as a rather dramatic character. She was not afraid to speak to the king and other powerful men and she claimed to be compelled by God to do so.
When Cromwell met the Maid, he asked if she could locate the spirit of Cardinal
Wolsey. He ensured her that he was a wealthy man who would give her a fitting offering if she could locate him. She asked him what he wanted to know about Wolsey’s spirit and his answer was: “Whatever you recommend. But of course I’d need to know he wasn’t in Hell.
There would be no point throwing away good Masses on a hopeless case” (WH 398). Even though he asked her to use her powers, it seems like he did not believe in her talents. His request to make certain that Wolsey’s soul was not in hell can be seen in a humoristic way.
Cromwell joked about the fact that he would not want to waste money on a soul that was already lost. He sounded like he was mocking the Maid when he said “[…] whatever you recommend” (WH 398).
When Elizabeth Barton met King Henry she claimed to have seen his mother and that he would be struck by lightning. Henry was quite susceptible to these kinds of predictions and visions. In a conversation with Cromwell about the matter, Cromwell tried to give a logical explanation to the king.
‘Your Majesty,’ he says, cautious, ‘you know that in the cathedral one of the windows
has an image of your lady mother in glass? And would not the sun shine through, so it
would seem as if she was in a dazzle of light? I think that is what the nun has seen.’
(WH 399)
This excerpt proves that Cromwell uses rationality to soothe the King’s mind. He is less superstitious than Henry is, and he is able to offer him a logical explanation for the Maid’s visions. King Henry asks him whether he believes in these visions and Cromwell reveals he Schacht 62 assumes “[...] she can’t tell what she sees in the outside world from what is inside her head.
Some people are like that. She is to be pitied, perhaps. Though not too much” (WH 400). In
Wolf Hall (2009) Thomas Cranmer and Cromwell deal with her in the charismatic and cunning way MacCulloch described in his biography. They want her to feel free to talk and meanwhile they write down every word she utters. In his thoughts, Cromwell calls her “[...] a mouse under the cat’s paw” (WH 481). Thomas Cranmer, who later also became one of the leading figures in the Reformation, and Cromwell use theatricality to win Barton’s trust. They fake genuine empathy for her situation and act as if they believe what she predicts.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Cromwell was not susceptible to superstition and fortune-telling. He wanted to practise his religion in a pure way free of superstition. His comments towards the Maid and rational explanation to Henry proved that he did not believe her claims.
A matter that seems contradictive is that Thomas Cromwell, a deeply religious man could bring people down without hesitation. When Thomas Wyatt is imprisoned, Cromwell reveals to him an uglier side of his character. He is often cruel and coldblooded when he talks about his enemies. In Wolf Hall (2009) Cromwell reveals that he has read Machiavelli.
He has got Niccolò Machiavelli’s book, Principalities; it is a Latin edition, shoddily
printed in Naples, which seems to have passed through many hands. [...] Someone
says to him, what is in your little book? and he says, a few aphorisms, a few truisms,
nothing we didn’t know before (WH 105).
In How Machiavelli was Misunderstood, an article written for the New Statesman, a political and cultural magazine from the UK, John Gray explains his thoughts on the most common misconceptions about Machiavelli. Schacht 63
In Machiavelli’s opinion, Christian morality and political morality are not to be confused. Machiavelli states they are two separate realities existing next to one another.
Christian morality is far more connected with values like love, amicability, mercy, justice… etc. A country wants to be autonomous, safe and powerful, to obtain and maintain these goals one will not be aided by the Christian values described above. Compassion and trust are not relevant in securing power and autonomy. One should be aware of hostility because when power is involved, power can be taken away. Machiavelli believes all strategies to keep the power are justified and morally acceptable when it contributes to the freedom and the autonomy of a nation.
Machiavelli breaks the old connection between religion and power, in which the clergy refers to God to legitimize their power. Because he dared to separate religion from politics, he was seen as a heretic. He believed that upholding Christian virtues is not compatible with obtaining and maintaining power. “His objection to Christian morality was that, taken seriously, it was incompatible with the necessities of power” (Gray). Machiavelli then elaborates on various efficient ways to keep a nation safe and powerful. John Gray states that many people misinterpret Machiavelli. He was not an advocate for cruelty for no reason, he only believed that to maintain power, sometimes more cruel measures should be taken. This vision has nothing to do with religion, he states that religious morality is another world with separate rules.
The character Thomas Cromwell might agree with this interpretation of Machiavelli.
He also sees these two worlds separately. Being a good human being is another reality than doing the right thing to ensure power. Schacht 64
Cromwell’s convictions do not seem to be a part of his self-fashioning. He wants religion to be pure and free from certain Roman influences. He denounces the exaggerated power of the clergy and the Pope. His disapproval of Tyndale is theatre, underneath is a very religious man who thinks that the word of God should be available for more people to read.
He dares to question the society he lives in and all the practices that come with Roman
Catholicism. Yet, he will easily ignore typically religious values when power is in play. Schacht 65
Conclusion
The objective of this master dissertation was to discuss how Mantel has integrated theatricality, power strategies and self-fashioning in her novels Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring
Up the Bodies (2012), focussing on the character of Thomas Cromwell. The main sources used to discuss these works of fiction are MacCulloch’s biography of Thomas Cromwell, a lecture by Professor Keith Wrightson on power strategies in Early Modern England and
Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980).
The power techniques that were common in England under Henry VIII’s reign, as well in society as at court, are incorporated in Mantel’s description of Thomas Cromwell’s way of operating. He participates in the highly regulated and theatrical carousel that is his life at court. He displays his power and wealth in various ways and he grants favours that cause others to depend on him. He succeeds in becoming close with Henry VIII and eventually serves in his royal advisor. He makes himself indispensable. He has a cunning way of manipulating people into doing what he wants them to do, he puts them under pressure, and intimidates them or makes sure that others will inflict harm on them. He undertakes these measures to obtain all the power he can get.
A more subtle way to achieve power and upward mobility is self-fashioning. In
Mantel’s novels, Cromwell is a man who is aware that identity is fluid and that new selves can be created and used to secure upward mobility in Early Modern England’s society. Mantel portrayed Cromwell as a socially intelligent and capable man, who has mastered all the power techniques to ensure his rise in society. He can change swiftly between social codes that involve theatricality and with which he tries to position himself within society. Schacht 66
He lives in a Machiavellian universe in which he believes that religion with its morals and power, with its own set of rules, are two separate worlds. He sincerely longs for a religion that is pure and free of certain aspects of the Roman Catholic doctrine. Because he believes the virtues of religion and the morals to gain power are two separate worlds, he can justify his cruel actions.
Mantel also describes how Cromwell can transcend these general power strategies by recognizing them and using them to his advantage. He is capable of shifting from mask to mask and from part to part in the theatrical life at court. It is hard to determine where the theatrical and self-fashioning Cromwell begins and where he ends. Even his most authentic moments seem to contribute to his desire for power.
This complex shapeshifter will come to meet his end in the third and final part of the trilogy. It will be interesting to see how Mantel shapes his character and how the master orchestrater falls into disgrace. Maybe, in his final moments, the masks will fall off. Schacht 67
Bibliography
Childs, Jessie. “Thomas Cromwell by Diarmaid MacCulloch review – What Hilary Mantel
Left Out.” The Guardian 22 September 2018.
maccolloch-review>. Gray, John. “How Machiavelli Was Misunderstood.” 6 May 2020. The New Statesman. 2 August 2020. review>. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago (Ill.): University of Chicago press, 2005. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Making the Real Thomas Cromwell Stand Up. Prod. The British Academy. 22 April 2020. —. Thomas Cromwell: A Life. United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 2019. Mantel, Hilary. Bring Up the Bodies. London: Fourth Estate, 2012. —. The Mirror and the Light. 2020. —. “The Reith Lectures.” 2017. BBV. 25 March 2018. —. Wolf Hall. London: Fourth Estate, 2009. Tyndale, William. The Obedience of a Christian Man. 1528. Reprint. Ed. David Daniell. England: Penguin Books, 2000. Schacht 68 Wrightson, Keith. The Structures of Power. Prod. YaleCourses. 10 March 2011.