Sean

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

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I don't know anything about the period, did he in fact preside over the torture and burning of 'heretics'? If so, how is he beloved by anyone?

 

There's no good answer to this question, but I won't let it stop me.

 

In short, More's persecution of Protestants as heretics have been seen to be in keeping with the times, perhaps rightly so. The sixteenth century was a time of religious upheaval and bloodletting, with the punishment for heterodoxy being the same as it had been throughout the history of Christianity: death. It's almost unfair to expect Thomas More to have acted differently. if he persecuted heretics less thoroughly, he would be derelict in his duties as chancellor. If he persecuted them not at all, he would be derelict in his duties as a Catholic.

 

That said, Thomas More is beloved because he was a prolific author and was friends with prolific authors, all of whom admired the same moral rectitude that actually made him a bit of a monster in hindsight. His trial and execution, as well as his Catholicism, have turned him into an underdog for British historians in particular. If you want to be remembered fondly after you're dead, the two easiest ways are to have a lot of material surviving that shows how great you were and to have the circumstances of your death be as unjust as possible. I almost like how Cromwell is aware of all this, in later chapters. He knows More is gaming the system but cares more about the present himself.

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I think Mantel effectively communicates the aspects of More's character that have contributed to his historical appeal. Throughout his trial and up to his execution, he is portrayed as admirably firm in his convictions. The novel is obviously more sympathetic to Cromwell, and despite being historical fiction Wolf Hall has a strongly modern perspective, one from which it is much easier to relate to Cromwell's open-minded pragmatism rather than More's moralistic steadfastness.

So while there are clearly recorded parts of More's actual historical life that invite entirely justified criticism, I think it's worth remembering that this novel itself is ultimately fiction and Mantel has chosen how to frame each of her characters.

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Mantel wrote this really great article on her experience writing Wolf Hall, specifically on how Cromwell ended up being represented in the novel: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/07/bookclub-hilary-mantel-wolf-hall

 

It sounds like she went into writing the book with no agenda to portray Cromwell as sympathetic or not, more that she wanted to write something on the life of an interesting historical figure. Of course, when you write a book entirely from one perspective, it's hard not to sympathize with the main character, which is one of the reasons why Cromwell comes off so well in these novels.

 

 

 

and despite being historical fiction Wolf Hall has a strongly modern perspective, one from which it is much easier to relate to Cromwell's open-minded pragmatism rather than More's moralistic steadfastness.

 

I agree that as people living in the 21st century, it's much easier to identify with Cromwell than More, but I found myself wondering how often Cromwell's progressive values were played up to make him more palatable for modern audiences.

 

Mantel is literally the only source I have for what Cromwell might have been like, so for all I know he was as much as a progressive as he comes off as in the the books, but there were a few instances where I found myself questioning if Cromwell's ideals were overexaggerated. The most glaring being in his relationship with his daughters and his wife: Cromwell is depicted as being fairly egalitarian regarding gender roles -- at least for someone living in the sixteenth century -- and I understand that this is meant to contrast More's disdain for his own wife and daughter, but sometimes even I had a hard time believing that Cromwell would really have been that open-minded.

 

It's not necessarily a criticism against Mantel, this book is still fiction and she has absolutely no responsibility for being 100% accurate in her portrayal of Cromwell, it's just something I noticed while I was reading.

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From that link (another superb piece of prose), on the use of "he":

 

It didn't make sense to call him "Cromwell", as if he were somewhere across the room. I called him "he".

 

Similar to many of you, I was confused for a moment at some of the uses of "he"/"him", but definitely feel that it adds to the feel of the prose. For me it made him feel more intimate, and also gave him more of a forceful personality; made him the centre of each interaction, even as he converses with a king, as (*checks previous page*, of course) The Argobot previously mentioned.

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I think Mantel effectively communicates the aspects of More's character that have contributed to his historical appeal. Throughout his trial and up to his execution, he is portrayed as admirably firm in his convictions. The novel is obviously more sympathetic to Cromwell, and despite being historical fiction Wolf Hall has a strongly modern perspective, one from which it is much easier to relate to Cromwell's open-minded pragmatism rather than More's moralistic steadfastness.

 

So while there are clearly recorded parts of More's actual historical life that invite entirely justified criticism, I think it's worth remembering that this novel itself is ultimately fiction and Mantel has chosen how to frame each of her characters.

I agree that as people living in the 21st century, it's much easier to identify with Cromwell than More, but I found myself wondering how often Cromwell's progressive values were played up to make him more palatable for modern audiences.

 

Mantel is literally the only source I have for what Cromwell might have been like, so for all I know he was as much as a progressive as he comes off as in the the books, but there were a few instances where I found myself questioning if Cromwell's ideals were overexaggerated. The most glaring being in his relationship with his daughters and his wife: Cromwell is depicted as being fairly egalitarian regarding gender roles -- at least for someone living in the sixteenth century -- and I understand that this is meant to contrast More's disdain for his own wife and daughter, but sometimes even I had a hard time believing that Cromwell would really have been that open-minded.

 

It's not necessarily a criticism against Mantel, this book is still fiction and she has absolutely no responsibility for being 100% accurate in her portrayal of Cromwell, it's just something I noticed while I was reading.

 

It looks as though the historical Cromwell had a warm relationship with his wife and trusted her with some business, if the one surviving letter is anything to tell, but who knows what. I also think that, intentionally or not, Mantel ends up wooing the reader with the recognizable and reassuring "modern" mentality of Cromwell, using him then as a jumping-off point in order to acclimate the reader to less sympathetic historical figures, like Thomas More and Henry VIII Tudor. Cromwell's respect and admiration for More, bitter almost to the point of hateful, was really striking to me, as was his gentle acceptance of the king's many flaws, never dismissive or demeaning. 

Oh, and Katherine of Aragon! Poor, strong Katherine. My favorite quote in the book comes from Cromwell's first mention of her:

 

Is a woman bound to wifely obedience, when the result will be to turn her out of the estate of wife? He, Cromwell, admires Katherine: he likes to see her moving about the royal palaces, as wide as she is high, stitched into gowns so bristling with gemstones that they look as if they are designed less for beauty than to withstand blows from a sword. Her auburn hair is faded and streaked with gray, tucked back under her gable hood like the modest wings of a city sparrow. Under her gowns she wears the habit of a Franciscan nun. 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.

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Maybe it's just my neuroses, but the only real flaws I could find in the novel was that it was too seductive; by the end of the book, I thought Cromwell was the perfect man. It's not quite a Mary Sue, since the characterization is several orders of magnitude higher, but it still feels too easy. The book covers his rise, but it still seems strange and off-putting that there were no setbacks of his own making. The writing is so wonderful that it papers over this problem, but it has bothered me since I finished it.

 

I'm also worried that it was too smooth a read; the parts that I enjoyed the most was when Mantel stepped outside of the simple structure, such as Cromwell's fever-dreams and that goddamn amazing chapter "An Occult History of Britain". Does a novel need to be challenging to be truly great? Does Wolf Hall seem like the sort of novel you could re-read in the future and discover new layers of meaning? I loved Mantel's language, but I still seem drawn to the other side of the argument.

 

These are nitpicky/vague objections because it's perfectly executed in every respect; the novel rides on whether Mantel can sell us on loving Cromwell, and boy oh boy does she nail it. So excited to read Bring up the Bodies when it hits paperback.

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Maybe it's just my neuroses, but the only real flaws I could find in the novel was that it was too seductive; by the end of the book, I thought Cromwell was the perfect man. It's not quite a Mary Sue, since the characterization is several orders of magnitude higher, but it still feels too easy. The book covers his rise, but it still seems strange and off-putting that there were no setbacks of his own making. The writing is so wonderful that it papers over this problem, but it has bothered me since I finished it.

 

I'm also worried that it was too smooth a read; the parts that I enjoyed the most was when Mantel stepped outside of the simple structure, such as Cromwell's fever-dreams and that goddamn amazing chapter "An Occult History of Britain". Does a novel need to be challenging to be truly great? Does Wolf Hall seem like the sort of novel you could re-read in the future and discover new layers of meaning? I loved Mantel's language, but I still seem drawn to the other side of the argument.

 

These are nitpicky/vague objections because it's perfectly executed in every respect; the novel rides on whether Mantel can sell us on loving Cromwell, and boy oh boy does she nail it. So excited to read Bring up the Bodies when it hits paperback.

 

These were almost precisely the same reservations I had, although they (similarly) aren't pronounced enough to significantly lessen my appreciation for or enjoyment of the novel. I entirely agree about Mantel being at her strongest when she goes off the rails a bit--"An Occult History of Britain" destroyed me, and was a big reason I rank Wolf Hall above Bring Up the Bodies, although the latter was excellent. 

 

The hagiographic treatment of Cromwell remains a nagging worry of mine--I sort of feel like I should be inherently distrustful of such a sympathetic portrayal. But even being aware of that, I'm ultimately won over.

 

The one area in which I basically disagree with you is about the notion of "too smooth a read." I don't think that's a meaningful or useful metric of anything, not in and of itself. Vonnegut is rarely a "difficult read" but he's my favorite English-language novelist. I don't think layers of meaning have to be buried in syntactic complexity; they can reside somewhere deeper.

 

I'm a little bit drunk right now and I just played Dota 2 for some terrible reason so I'm having a hard time typing and sorry if this isn't a great post!

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I uh, think you might be more lucid when you're drunk. Is that possible?

 

 

Everyone should write their book reviews drunk now.

 

I really think that some of Cromwell's more Mary Sue-ish qualities are lessened in Bring up the Bodies because that book actually shows him making mistakes. Just looking at the Cromwell from Wolf Hall, it's hard to imagine that a man like that would ever mess up enough to be executed, but Bring up the Bodies gives you at least an inkling of what will ultimately cause Cromwell's ruin.

 

Cromwell is a Walter White/Frank Underwood character, but written backwards. Characters like Walter White start off slightly flawed, but eventually reach a point where they literally cannot make any mistake. Cromwell starts off infallible, but because of his ego (or his friendship with the king), he starts making mistakes that have actual consequences. I'm really curious to see how Mantel takes his arc into the the third book, which I'm hoping has the most nuanced portrayal of Cromwell (if the progression of his character from the first to second book holds true.)

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I'm a little bit drunk right now and I just played Dota 2 for some terrible reason so I'm having a hard time typing and sorry if this isn't a great post!

Please tell me you streamed/recorded this. Also, may we have the match ID pretty please?

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 Does a novel need to be challenging to be truly great? 

 

Hmm, are you trying to say that Wolf Hall is flawed because it was a quick read or because it had a fairly simple plot? I guess, what exactly do you mean by challenging? 

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Hmm, are you trying to say that Wolf Hall is flawed because it was a quick read or because it had a fairly simple plot? I guess, what exactly do you mean by challenging? 

I would not call either of those things the core of being a challenging read, rather peripheral properties.

 

In the case of Wolf Hall I would not call it a challenging book, because there is very little required of the reader besides keeping a lot of historical figures in their head. The main character is eminently likeable, very little goes wrong for him after the first part of the book and in general it's just a pleasant, smooth experience that does not require or stimulate one to re-evaluate anything about themselves or the human experience in general. Note that I don't exclude the possibility of this happening (I know it was a wonderful reminder to me that people always have been and always will be people, with all their typical interactions).

 

I anticipate that the trilogy as a whole will be truly great.

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Hmm, are you trying to say that Wolf Hall is flawed because it was a quick read or because it had a fairly simple plot? I guess, what exactly do you mean by challenging? 

 

I feel like the most successful novels need to teach you how to read them, because they come with a style calibrated to draw out the themes they want. With Wolf Hall, Mantel certainly accomplishes that to an extent—simply referring to Cromwell as him (almost an miniscule god), dipping in and out of stating his thoughts outright—but at the same time it's still familiar enough that I almost wonder whether she could have gone further. But it's hard to make a criticism that hypothesizes some other version of a book that you can't quite imagine.

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Finished this morning, my first audiobook, via audible promo. Quite sumptuous and fabulous. I was seriously heartbroken when young Anne died. I was a bit surprised at the last 20% when the driving force for most of the book, the divorce and Anne Boleyn seem to fade to the background, though I guess Mantel chose a pace for the history to unfold.

 

I took Greg's comment as a reference to WH being all plot and a bit light on theme. I find no fault with with the book for this, but the other way leads to something I mentally revisit more often. Though one line that really stuck with me: "You don’t get on by being original. You don’t get on by being bright. You don’t get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook."

 

Also, young Ralph, boy or hedgehog, is the Mary Sue of Wolf Hall.

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I feel like the most successful novels need to teach you how to read them, because they come with a style calibrated to draw out the themes they want. With Wolf Hall,.

I wouldn't say this to be the case for Gatsby at least. I think I know the type of book you mean, but isn't that just a subset of all truly great books? Where does personal taste begin ti factor into this?

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Everyone should write their book reviews drunk now.

 

I really think that some of Cromwell's more Mary Sue-ish qualities are lessened in Bring up the Bodies because that book actually shows him making mistakes. Just looking at the Cromwell from Wolf Hall, it's hard to imagine that a man like that would ever mess up enough to be executed, but Bring up the Bodies gives you at least an inkling of what will ultimately cause Cromwell's ruin.

 

Cromwell is a Walter White/Frank Underwood character, but written backwards. Characters like Walter White start off slightly flawed, but eventually reach a point where they literally cannot make any mistake. Cromwell starts off infallible, but because of his ego (or his friendship with the king), he starts making mistakes that have actual consequences. I'm really curious to see how Mantel takes his arc into the the third book, which I'm hoping has the most nuanced portrayal of Cromwell (if the progression of his character from the first to second book holds true.)

I agree with all of this.

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This is my favourite passage in the novel, as it both stands on its own but is also a great explanation of Cromwell's power and intrigue:

 

“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 of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”

 

I really think that occasional allusions to the protagonist's past is such a powerful story device. A really great example of how small glimpses can be much more powerful than encyclopedic background stuff. From  nerd's perspective (not me, I am not a nerd I am a cool man), try to remember how the wonder of Star Wars erodes away as the backstory gets fleshed out further and further. The same applies to Cromwell's character, I think. 

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I agree completely. It's the power of Mantel as an author that preserves the nothing that is Cromwell's past before meeting Wolsey and entering the documentary record as a defining point of character, instead of just eradicating it. The truth is, today we don't know anything besides the stories Cromwell and Wolsey told, which makes the indulgences that the former shows towards the latter's inventions of the latter all the more arresting.

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Everyone should write their book reviews drunk now.

 

I really think that some of Cromwell's more Mary Sue-ish qualities are lessened in Bring up the Bodies because that book actually shows him making mistakes. Just looking at the Cromwell from Wolf Hall, it's hard to imagine that a man like that would ever mess up enough to be executed, but Bring up the Bodies gives you at least an inkling of what will ultimately cause Cromwell's ruin.

 

Cromwell is a Walter White/Frank Underwood character, but written backwards. Characters like Walter White start off slightly flawed, but eventually reach a point where they literally cannot make any mistake. Cromwell starts off infallible, but because of his ego (or his friendship with the king), he starts making mistakes that have actual consequences. I'm really curious to see how Mantel takes his arc into the the third book, which I'm hoping has the most nuanced portrayal of Cromwell (if the progression of his character from the first to second book holds true.)

 

I could be 100% wrong here but i always interpreted that change in the character as not Cromwell becoming fallible but as Cromwell realising he was fallible.

I mean isn't it a very human thing, all plans start out perfect in our mind. 

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I could be 100% wrong here but i always interpreted that change in the character as not Cromwell becoming fallible but as Cromwell realising he was fallible.

I mean isn't it a very human thing, all plans start out perfect in our mind. 

 

But aren't those two basically the same idea? The moment you realize you're truly fallible is the moment you become fallible.

 

The larger point I was trying to make is that Wolf Hall lavishes so much praise and attention on Cromwell to the point where he almost becomes unbelievable as a real person and starts to feel more like a character in a piece of fiction. Which is probably the correct way to portray him in the first book of a trilogy, since it allows Cromwell to be the clear hero. The next book is all about setting up Cromwell's eventual execution, so it does more to ground Cromwell in reality. That grounding is part of the reason I love the second book so much. (Also, everything about Anne Boleyn) 

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To be clear: I'm not trying to disparage the pronouns; I'm glad the book was written this way. I just think that Mantel has a few lapses with the pronouns in Wolf Hall where the writing could probably have been a little sharper.

I just started this a few days ago, and I agree. It kind of feels like the book was originally written as first-person, then Mantel used find/replace to change every "I" into a "he". It mostly works, but when it doesn't it's really jarring.

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But aren't those two basically the same idea? The moment you realize you're truly fallible is the moment you become fallible.

 

The larger point I was trying to make is that Wolf Hall lavishes so much praise and attention on Cromwell to the point where he almost becomes unbelievable as a real person and starts to feel more like a character in a piece of fiction. Which is probably the correct way to portray him in the first book of a trilogy, since it allows Cromwell to be the clear hero. The next book is all about setting up Cromwell's eventual execution, so it does more to ground Cromwell in reality. That grounding is part of the reason I love the second book so much. (Also, everything about Anne Boleyn) 

 

I don't think they are the same. When you think your infallible you are still making mistake but you aren't noticing them, or worse you are mis-attributing those mistakes on others in your memory.

 

I wonder if the use of 'he' was a choice made at least partially as a reflection on the tradition of the royal 'we'. That archaic tradition that when the monarch speaks as 'we' she/he is seen as speaking for both themselves and god. Making them by implication infallible. 

That principle is something that we see Henry use extensively, and I think sometimes in the book we see Cromwell disguising a personal moral judgement as pragmatism even to himself. His self image is someone so pragmatic that 'he' would never make a mistake, that just as Henry links his infallibility with God, Cromwell links his with his logic/pragmatism.

 

(In a weird way he reminds me of the protagonist during the 1st part of Sense of a Ending)

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I gave the book another shot, but I think it's not for me. I love history, and for a while I thought I could get into the story, then it just died in yet another chapter that took two hours to read.

 

From the lack of a cast, and some hints on the regular old video games cast, it seems like Sean is struggling to get through it as well. I'm excited for The Sun Also Rises, though.

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Early in Bring Up the Bodies, page sixty-six or so, Cromwell explicitly states what was my favorite motif of his from the previous book. To paraphrase him and Mantel, marriages go stale and children grow up, but a master stays your whole life. It's maybe the least modern thing about Cromwell, but it saves anything and everything else of him from even a hint of my dislike.

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