Carolly Erickon- The Last Wife of Henry VIII

Sometimes I enjoy combining the parts of me that like English, and the parts that like history (which I did as a minor in my undergraduate). In my "Politics of Early Modern Women's Writing", we've been reading pieces written by Elizabethan & Jacobean women, but for most of them, there's not a whole lot known about their lives. Think about how little we know about Shakespeare; consider that for women, this lack is compounded by the fact that they lived not in what we would consider the public sphere. However, some of them are people about whom a lot are known, and Catherine (or Katherine) Parr, the last wife of King Henry VIII, is one of those women.

Normally, I would not look for historical information from a fictional source, but while I still read The Last Wife with a large dose of scepticism, I felt better trusting Erickson's portrayal than I might have otherwise because she was initially a historian. Even if her portrayal is skewed (which it by necessity must be, as all fictional portrayals of historical characters are), I still feel like I know more about Parr, which is what I wanted along with a good read. Of course, Erickson's portrayal is problematized by the fact that a) she has to create a likable character, b) she's working with limited information, and c) she has her own personal biases. However, as long as I kept that in mind, I felt safe enough.

Catherine Parr was Henry VIII's last wife, and Queen Elizabeth I's step-mother. By the time she married Henry, she was in her early thirties and had already been married twice. Her first husband died of exhaustion and sickness, and the second of old age. Catherine married Henry knowing that he had his eye on her from the time of her first marriage, and also knowing that he had killed, either by neglect or execution, five previous wives. She married him anyway, outlived him, and went on to marry one last time: the dangerously unbalanced Thomas Seymour, who abandoned her after failing to overthrow the government. She herself died after giving birth to a daughter, Mary, in her mid-thirties. She was quite a fascinating person- smart, well-educated, opinionated, strong- and not at all liked by her step-daughter the future queen (who, according to Erickson, was infatuated with Seymour and may have borne his child. So much for the Virgin Queen!)

Erickson's writing is not particularly commanding, and most of the interest 0f the book comes from her choice of character. I'm interested to read her book in Marie Antoinette, which garnered some critical praise. This book reminds me of a more sophisticated version of some YA fiction that I read when I was in school- Catherine, Called Birdy, and that sort of thing. Read it for the history and the sense of time, and you won't be disappointed.