Amee Kelley

Patterson

English 102-003

27 September 2010

Nothing but Pawns

In the work The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory shows us the story of two young girls and

their roles in male dominated society. She show us how the families use the girls to gain political power

and raise their social standings. Gregory shows how this can affect the girls and the rise and demise of

the families. In a since the girls of the Tudor Era are nothing more than pawns to their families to be

traded and played as the men see fit.

Philippa Gregory was born in Nairobi, Kenya on January 9, 1954. She moved to England when

she was two years old. She went the Sussex University and completed another two years at University of

Edinburg to get her doctorate in 18 th century literature. She has taught at the University of Durham,

University of Teesside, and the Open University, and was made a Fellow of Kingston University in 1994.

She also spent two years working at BBC radio in between attending universities. She has written many

novels on the Tudor Era with the most notable one being The Other Boleyn girl. The success of The

Other Boleyn girl coupled with Gregory’s fascination with this time period has led her to write five more

novels about the Tudor family. She is an accomplished historical fiction writer.

The Other Boleyn Girl is a novel about Anne Boleyn and her family’s obsession to be the family

that gives Henry VIII a male heir for the thrown. The story is told from the point of view of Mary Boleyn,

Anne’s sister. Mary was the first girl that the family presented to the King to be his mistress in their play

for political and social power. She has had two children by him, one a girl and the other a boy. However,
while in confinement with her second child Henry’s eyes wander from her and to her sister Anne. The

family makes the decision to now use Anne as the pawn. Many tragic events follow their decision that

leads to the death of many, two of them their own family members, and subsequently the fall of the

Boleyn family.

I feel that I should be able to write a very informative research paper on this topic. Philippa

Gregory has done remarkable research of her own for her historical fiction novels. I think that I can take

what she has found and use that to help me find a good starting point for my own research. It seems

that from what I have found so far that the novel does indeed represent the culture of the time and

place it is written. It was quite popular for the men in higher class families to use the women as pawns

to get what they wanted. Marriage was more about what you could get from it whether it be money,

land, a title, or other form of political and social power than about the girl’s feelings. Age was not a

factor either. Girls could be married as soon as they were sexually mature, around age 10 or so, to men

that would be old enough to be their fathers of even grandfathers. The women were expected to

produce heirs and do as the men told them.

I am very happy with the novel that I chose and do not think that I will have any problem finding

more information on this time period. The only problem that I do see is finding good literature criticism

for my novel. However, I can find criticism for the movie that was based on the novel and somehow

incorporate that into my paper to fulfill that requirement. All in all I think that I should be about to write

a well written and informed paper of how during the Tudor Era women were used as pawns by their

families.