Being Jane

Plain Jane or Jane the Fair? Pious Jane, friend of Queen Katherine and champion of the Catholic cause? A saintly little wife? Or plotting, calculating, ambitious Jane? 

It has been a really difficult journey of discovery to decide which side of the coin to play, as an actress. While the personalities of these women do manage to emerge through the ages, they are often characterized by stereotype. No doubt, stereotype is fun to play with, especially when we are dealing in enlarged, baffoon versions of these queens as we do in our show. But I would like to know this woman, have some sense of her I can be certain of. Jane has been especially difficult to put my finger on because there is arguably the least amount of information on her out of all the queens of Henry. Her actions seem to suggest duplicity, and the accounts of her person from the time are too weighted by the controversy. 

Here are a few things I do know about Jane: 

• She was a supporter of Katherine of Aragon and the Catholic cause, which would have made her a very attractive pawn. 
• Also, once she was Queen, she reconciled Henry with his daughter Mary Tudor. She was reputably demure and soft spoken, gentle even, and not well educated. 
• She wrote almost not at all. Ironically, she seems to have been very adept at playing her mistress Boleyn's own game. 
• She refused Henry's advances but kept herself near.

It is frightening to think, though, at what point it became clear to her that supplanting Anne Boleyn would mean not divorce, as in Aragon's case, but certain death. Jane must have had some moxy to go forward knowing that would be the result. If she had any choice at all... Here is a delightfully worded snipet from Victorian Historian Agnes Strickland: 

Jane saw murderous accusations got up against the queen, which finally brought her to the scaffold, yet she gave her hand to the regal ruffian before his wife's corpse was cold. Yes; four-and-twenty hours had not elapsed since the sword was reddened with the blood of her mistress, when Jane Seymour became the bride of Henry VIII.

I relate very strongly to this segment from Karen Lindsey's Divorced Beheaded Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of The Wives of Henry VIII: 

In all the events in which she took part, Jane as an individual seems puzzlingly almost eerily absent. Her brother pushed her at the king, and she, in Strickland's apt word, "received" Henry's advances. Acting as a virtuous woman was supposed to, and as Henry seems to have wanted her to, she held out for marriage, passively watching the horrifying process of Anne's destruction. 

Did she believe in Anne's guilt? Was she angry with Anne for betraying Henry? With Henry for killing Anne? Was she frightened at the thought of marrying a man who humiliated one wife and was about to kill another? Did she ever turn to her brother and say "get me out of this?" We don't know. We don't even have enough material to make an educated guess. Was Jane willing to be used against Anne? Was she eager? Did will have anything to do with it? And what of love? The King mourned her for years. He had her painted beside him in a family portrait long after she was dead, in fact at the time Catherine Parr was his queen. What kind of a woman does Bluebeard love? I can guess a quiet one, calculating or not. A woman with a firm sense of duty and self-control who learned quickly not to interfere in politics. A woman who could attract Henry and even hold him. 

And who knows how long she would have been favored if she hadn't gotten out of the whole situation by dying? After doing her ultimate wifely duty, and giving England a Prince, of course.

 -Brianna