As a lover of history, I appreciate the precise details and human experience that create the historical novel. Historical fiction can be rife with purple prose, blatant inaccuracies, and needless eroticism. But when it is done well, a historical novel makes characters come to life, building empathy and perspective.
The latest stop on my medieval and renaissance reading journey was Janet Wertman’s Jane the Quene, a historical novel about Jane Seymour’s rise to queenship. I read this title en Audible and enjoyed Wertman’s calm and clear narration.
After finishing this novel, I find that the most striking impression is balance. Wertman employs a dual perspective, switching between Jane Seymour and Thomas Cromwell. She avoids head-hopping [1} and keeps us strictly within the third-person limited view of Jane or Cromwell. She does not get sloppy or switch perspectives to recount the same scene, which I’ve found in less capable works of historical fiction [2]. Both perspectives reveal other characters in relief. Cromwell’s view highlights the political maneuvering of Henry VIII’s kingship as well as the unique challenges of being a king’s counselor. Jane’s perspective is more personal, illustrating the precarious situation of a daughter and maid-of-honor in Queen Anne Boleyn’s household.
While Wertman’s Cromwell feels a bit sinister, I like and admire Wertman’s Jane. I’ve met fictional Jane Seymour in Alison Weir’s Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy. Weir’s Jane is capable and wistful while Mantel’s Jane is introspective, quirky, and distant.
Wertman’s Jane is ready for a hero’s journey. Wertman zooms us in to see a Jane who struggles for self-assertion, who rides the waves of self-doubt and confidence. Wertman has crafted an emotionally rich landscape, and she does not rush the reader through Jane’s difficult moments. This Jane contends with distant parents and a bossy brother; she feels the constraints of 16th-century womanhood. And this Jane makes mistakes. She utters hasty words, misjudges people, and even enjoys a little overconfidence. She’s no bland angel but a woman trying to figure herself out and find her place.
Wertman also creates an Anne Boleyn that is easier to deal with. While she doesn’t portray Queen Anne as pious or even-tempered, Wertman alludes to the intense political difficulties of Jane’s rise to queenship. Jane’s sister, Elizabeth, is eager to defend Queen Anne, who offered her financial support. Wertman also gives us an Anne Stanhope who is easier to love; though she is brusque and pushy, Jane freely acknowledges that her sister-in-law’s loyalty is fierce. . \\
So Wertman’s novel feels balanced because she attempts to do right by the characters she includes. By narrowing the perspective to Cromwell and Jane, Wertman allows us to understand that we can only know people through our experience of them. Wertman does not attempt to resolve all the misconceptions or defend everyone; she concentrates on an emotionally resonant story of sincere and flawed characters.
More to Explore:
Wertman appears on my favorite Tudor podcasts!
Notes:
This section is also known as, “Emily Plays Editor.” These are my fussy thoughts and pet peeves about craft.
- Head-hopping: A literary habit of giving the reader multiple characters’ thoughts at once without setting up a truly omniscient narrator. Head-hopoping is sloppy and annoying, a way of “having your cake and eating it, too” by lazily handing the reader all the characters’ thoughts and reactions without showing them reflected by the primary character-narrator.
- Some historical novels will attempt a Weertman-style dual narration, switching between two lovers, for example, so that we see the scene from both perspectives. While this may sound like a good idea, I see it as the author keeping a chokehold on what the reader perceives. The author is dictating how the characters see and react to each other, instead of leaving the reader room to imagine how the non-narrator might imagine the other character.
On the Blink 