I am currently reading an historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel about Sir Thomas Cromwell, the powerful adviser to King Henry VIII. It’s called Wolf Hall; it won the 2009 Man Booker Prize; and it’s a great read.
I may have more to say about the book when I’m done, but for now, I just want to highlight part of one paragraph, which I found quite arresting because it made me think about the way ideas and beliefs we no longer endorse — and for the most part would say we no longer believe — still affect societal attitudes and public policy. The paragraph is part of a conversation between Cromwell and his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, who is the one speaking in the quoted paragraph. The woman they are discussing is Anne Boleyn — whom, of course, King Henry VIII wants to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, to wed:
“Ah, but women, you see. Women reading the Bible, there’s another point of contention. Does she know what Brother Martin thinks is a woman’s place? We shouldn’t mourn, he says, if our wife or daughter dies in childbirth — she’s only doing what God made her for. Very harsh, Brother Martin, very intractable. And perhaps she is not a Bible woman. Perhaps it is a slur on her. …
That sentence I emphasized, when I read it for the first time, resonated in my ears almost in a physical sense. It seemed incredibly important, incredibly relevant. And it does seem to me that anyone who believes that this view of women — of a woman’s reason for being — does not linger, as a ghostly presence, underneath our public conversations about issues like abortion, pregnancy, childbirth, and the role of women in society in general, is fooling themselves.
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