The wives of Henry VIII

British schoolchildren remember the matrimonial sequence by learning this little rhyme: "Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived." Thus were the fates of the six women who--unfortunately, for most of them--entered into legal matrimony with the great Tudor king, Henry VIII. Esteemed British biographer Fraser brings her considerable talent for blending impeccable research, fresh interpretation, and an easy-flowing style to bear on a collective biography of Harry's half-dozen queens. That "the six women have become defined in a popular sense not so much by their lives as by the way these lives ended" is Fraser's point of departure; in the end, she has reconstructed cradle-to-grave portraits of Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Catherine Parr as individuals dynamic in their own right, aside from the manner in which each was dispatched. Contrary to popular notion, King Henry was no bluebeard simply out to satisfy a gargantuan sexual appetite; Fraser's Henry is a husband who married five times for love and once for reasons of state. It's an aspect of English history--Henry and his wives--that can and has been treated either as silly or salacious. Fraser's tack is to see it in its personal and political seriousness. (Reviewed Oct. 1, 1992)0394585380Brad Hooper

Fraser ( Mary, Queen of Scots ) here turns to the reign of Henry VIII, who ruled from 1509-1547, and the six women he married: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr. From her scrupulous research and informed interpretations of historical events, Fraser succeeds in presenting Henry's queens as complex and intelligent women who struggled to express themselves in a world where females were subservient to and ruled by men. Catherine of Aragon, married to Henry for 20 years, displayed cleverness and bravery when she fought her husband's attempts to divorce her. Anne Boleyn, a learned woman, was innocent of the adultery she was accused of, but was beheaded because she could not produce a son. Unlettered, 21-year-old Katherine Howard, queen for just 18 months when she was beheaded in 1542 for the ``violent presumption'' she had committed adultery, met death on the block where her cousin Anne Boleyn had died six years earlier. By firmly anchoring each woman's fate in Henry's failure to be philoprogenitive--most crucially in not producing male heirs--Fraser makes a major contribution to feminist scholarship. Illustations not seen by PW. 50,000 first printing; History Book Club and BOMC alternates. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Fraser here attempts to provide a fuller view of the six women who unenviably danced around the maypole that was the corpulent King of England. Fraser, the distinguished author of many historical studies, including The Weaker Vessel ( LJ 8/84), portrays in fascinating detail the women who sought to be included in and were sometimes destroyed by the power structure of the times. Inevitably, more time is spent on Catherine of Aragon (after all, Catherine and Henry were married 24 years, whereas all five of his other marriages only totaled a little over ten years), and although Fraser claims to have tried to avoid any bias, she betrays a lingering sympathy for Henry's first queen. One cannot help but speculate, as the author does, what history would have been like if Catherine had provided Henry with a male heir. Not only were Henry's wives prisoners of their biology, but also Henry himself. Fraser's readable style, empathy for her subjects, and piquant use of historical details and anecdotes make this a satisfying addition to the history shelves. Recommended for all public and academic libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/92.-- Katherine Gillen, Denver P . L . (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Fraser (The Warrior Queens, 1989, etc.) brings her personable voice and vivid historical imagination to the six women who married Henry VIII. This group biography pales, though, beside the richly informed and, however cautious, convincing (and almost identically titled) study of the same women by Alison Weir (p. 106). In her preface, Fraser insists that, contrary to popular rumor, she does her own research--which here amounts to a rather superficial sifting through common primary sources to the neglect of social history, and even of Weir's study. Fraser's interest is ``to discover the women behind the stereotypes'': Catherine of Aragon, whom Fraser says has been pigeonholed as the ``Betrayed Wife''; Anne Boleyn, as the ``Temptress''; Jane Seymour, as the ``Good''; Anne of Cleves, as the ``Ugly''; Catherine Howard, as the ``Wanton''; and Catherine Parr, as the ``Mother Figure.'' Fraser claims to destroy these stereotypes by finding in each woman intelligence, courage, passion--qualities that Weir offered convincing proof of--and by finding, behind the actions of each, political pressure to create an heir matched against the biological difficulty of doing so--for which Weir offered a compelling argument as well. In fact, Fraser's generalizations produce new stereotypes of rather stupid, passive women, pawns in a fatal game governed by nature and politics. For subtlety, individuation, depth, detail, and cultural, economic, religious, and domestic background, Weir's book is superior, although there the monumental figure of Henry dominated--a figure whom Fraser characterizes as ``the gigantic Maypole...all round which these women had to dance.'' Royalty buffs would do better to read Weir's book--though neither it nor Fraser's reflects contemporary historical preoccupations with the commonplaces of daily life, or feminist interpretations of the brutal and wasteful marriage rituals that victimized Henry's wives. (Twenty-four pages of illustrations--not seen.)