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COSTUMES AND CREATION IN THE NOVELS OF HILARY MANTEL ABOUT THOMAS CROMWELL
Boris M. Proskurnin
Doctor of Philology, Professor in the Department of World Literature and Culture Perm State University
614990, Russia, Perm, Bukireva st., 15 [email protected]
The author of the essay shows that costumes in Mantel's novels perform general anthropological role to characterize personages, to stress some peculiarities of their inner worlds, mood and social backgrounds. Costumes in the novels often carry out symbolical and many-leveled functions. Much rarer, than traditionally is thought of costumes in a historical novel, they mark definite material world of a definite historical period. Though costumes do not play prevailing role in Mantel's narratives, along with some other material realias they act as historical and cultural guideways which direct readers' imagination of the historical past which Mantel reconstructs. The author of the essay shows that it is more important for the writer to construct psychological, spiritual and emotional atmosphere of the past times, 'to settle' the readers inside the mind, system of values, priorities, world understanding of her protagonist - Thomas Cromwell. The author asserts that Mantel succeeds in it: readers take Cromwell for a hero who deserves their interest, sympathy and empathy, whose views worth thinking and analyzing as the ones which are the most relevant to the perspective of the history of England. The essay demonstrates Mantel's contribution into the development of English historical novel.
Key words: Hilary Mantel, Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, Anne Bo-leyn, historical novel, narrative, costume, detail.
To speak about costume in fiction means to speak about detail in literature on the one hand; on the other hand it means to speak about the world of things and its reconstruction in fiction by means of word images. James Wood in his famous 'How Fiction Works' rightly asserts that 'in life as in literature, we navigate via the stars of detail', but, he continues, life is amorphously full of details, and rarely directs us toward it. Whereas literature teaches us to notice' [Wood 2008: 52].
Roland Barthes characterized the milieu of a man, in particular - of a nowadays man, as the 'world of goods' [quote from Freedgood 2006: 4]. In
© Proskurnin B. M., 2016
the XIX century literature, this world, by Elaine Freedgood, 'got used to itself and things began to demand visibility' [quote from Freedgood 2006: 9], or/and, as Wood writes, 'palpability' [Wood 2008: 56]. Remember the idea of James Wood, 'So during the nineteenth century, the novel became more painterly' [Wood 2008: 62]. It happened mostly because of the art of detail and its cult, so obvious in Balzac, Zola, Hardy, Turgenev, Chekhov, James, etc.
On the whole, novelistic art in the XIX-XX centuries moved towards the reduction of the quantity of details in narration (the marks of the world of goods, by Barthes), so it moved towards deletion of the staff (things) which just exists in the bulk of the novel and does not demand readers' interpretation and which does not bear any subtextual meaning (metonymical or, more, metaphorical). Rolland Barthes wrote about it: 'many objects lie around in the realist novel to signify a generic real rather than to suggest something particular about it' [quote from Freedgood 2008: 9].
Lessening of the number of depicted things (objects) in the novel leads to fetishising of the ones which are left, in other words - to making larger the artistic fullness of the things which are used by the author for depicting, it leads to increasing its plot significance (James Wood rightly attributes it to post-Flaubertian tradition; [Wood 2006: 58]). So, we may say that lessening of the number of things incorporated into narration leads to, figuratively speaking, turning a thing into a detail; Wood directly connects the history of the novel as a literary genre with the rise of detail's role [Wood 2006: 58]; in other words we may say that fetishising of detail increases the trope character of literary text; it leads to using more metaphors and other means of artistic condensation of the text. By Freedgood, our reading becomes more and more 'a kind of reflexive, thematic reading that derives from picking out metaphors...' [Freedgood 2006: 7].
Contemporary literature is more selective in things to be depicted than, say, the XIX century literature. Gerard Gennette stressed that quite often a narrator is governed by what could be called 'mock reality', 'imaginative reality', or 'referential illusion' (as Barthes defines) which he/she constructs 'by the presence of what is there and what demands to be shown [Freedgood 2006: 9]. It means that contextual, narrative, character-making, plot-making roles of the details which a writer uses go up. Here happens what Paul Ricoeur describes as follows: '[s]ome objects, in other words, are removed from the work of producing the text's referential illusion and are promoted to metaphors' [quote from: Freedgood 2006: 10]. As Wood stresses, in literature (especially beginning from the XIX century) 'mostly detail is functional or symbolic' [Wood 2006: 69]. It does not contradict to the assertion of Geoffrey Leech who writes in his Style in Fiction that 'the
contribution of a specific detail may be both symbolic and realistic at once' and that 'symbolism and verisimilitude' are not opposed to one another because due some 'unforeseen combination of attributes' 'literature achieves both generality and uniqueness' [Leech 2007: 125].
Costume exists and operates mostly as the detail of a portrait of a personage; one of the aims of a writer when he/she uses costume as a portraiture detail is to evoke reader's visual concept of a personage, and more - to strengthen figurative intensity of the text.
What do art-specialists mean while using the term 'a costume'? By them [see Захаржевская 2005], a costume is a type of clothes which reflects social, national, regional, historical affiliation of a person. Costume and its history is one of the keys to comprehend customs, traditions, folkways, rites of a people. Costume in the arts is the means to recreate an epoch. One of the famous Russian specialists in the role of a detail in literature, Boris Galanov, in the book 'Painting by Words: Portrait, Landscape, Thing', exclaims on the matter of costumes in arts in general and literature too, 'magnificent emphatic power of the clothes' [Галанов1974: 100].
Literature gives many examples of various functions of the clothes (costumes).
It is a sort of commonplace when we speak about costumes in anthropomorphic aspects: clothes strengthen some features of a person who wears it; and it helps to understand better a personage's inner self (on the basis of synonymous or antonymous parallelisms). Quite often a personage is presented by the author via (with the help of) his clothes or even is replaced by the clothes she/he wears. A personage's clothes can act as a sort of 'visiting card' or as a mark of him/her. That's why such a notion is used as 'indicating costume' (in Russian - «говорящий костюм»). A costume (as a significant detail, or, as Wood argues, a 'detail-on-duty') may act as means of creating peculiarity and specificity of the place and time, as means of creating of the personages' worlds, as means of their self-identification (personal, social and national spaces of a personage) and, at the same time, as means of relations between the inner world of a literary work and outer world, with its, external world, context of both the reconstructed time and the time when the artistic world is produced.
One of the obvious aspects of a costume as a detail in historical narrative is historical plausibility and reliability; costumes in such kind of narration, along with other material and non-material tokens, are to help our imagination to remove us into the epoch the writer is reconstructed.
Let us look at the example from one of the mostly read in Russia Sir Walter Scott's novels Ivanhoe (1819). I am sure many of you remember this:
The eldest of these men had a stern, savage, and wild aspect. His garment was of the simplest form imaginable, being a close jacket with sleeves, composed of the tanned skin of some animal, on which the hair had been originally left, but which had been worn off in so many places, that it would have been difficult to distinguish from the patches that remained, to what creature the fur had belonged. This primeval vestment reached from the throat to the knees, and served at once all the usual purposes of body-clothing; there was no wider opening at the collar, than was necessary to admit the passage of the head, from which it may be inferred, that it was put on by slipping it over the head and shoulders, in the manner of a modern shirt, or ancient hauberk. Sandals, bound with thongs made of boars' hide, protected the feet, and a roll of thin leather was twined artificially round the legs, and, ascending above the calf, left the knees bare, like those of a Scottish Highlander. To make the jacket sit yet more close to the body, it was gathered at the middle by a broad leathern belt, secured by a brass buckle; to one side of which was attached a sort of scrip, and to the other a ram's horn, accoutred with a mouthpiece, for the purpose of blowing. In the same belt was stuck one of those long, broad, sharp-pointed, and two-edged knives, with a buck 's-horn handle, which were fabricated in the neighbourhood, and bore even at this early period the name of a Sheffield whittle. The man had no covering upon his head, which was only defended by his own thick hair, matted and twisted together, and scorched by the influence of the sun into a rusty dark-red colour, forming a contrast with the overgrown beard upon his cheeks, which was rather of a yellow or amber hue. One part of his dress only remains, but it is too remarkable to be suppressed; it was a brass ring, resembling a dog's collar, but without any opening, and soldered fast round his neck, so loose as to form no impediment to his breathing, yet so tight as to be incapable of being removed, excepting by the use of the file. On this singular gorget was engraved, in Saxon characters, an inscription of the following purport: "Gurth, the son of Beowulph, is the born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood'. [Scott, Ch. 1]
Literary critics rightly say that Scott was very good at using material items, artifacts which were basic for reconstructing historical content of an image though his accuracy in this respect is relative since from time to time he uses artifacts of one historical period when reconstructing another especially if the epochs in terms of global history are not crucially far from one another. It oftener happens in his late novels (so called 'mediaeval' ones, for example). In one of the essays on him academician Boris Reizov writes, 'All Scott's heroes in their endless variety represent diversity and contradictions of historical epochs in its deep social cross-sections' [PerooB 1971:
308]. At the same time, Boris Reizov argues that Scott is a very good historical novelist just because he artistically 'fights' against 'despotism' of documents and other evidences of the epoch and bases his reconstruction of history on the 'law of sufficient substratum' [Реизов 1971: 307], i.e. drawing the perspectives of the process of history the results of which are already known to the readers and which are 'the future' for the acting personages of the novel. 'To understand historical patterns, which created the image means to make an investigation of the epoch, its mores, national traditions, ways of life, social relations', writes Reizov [Реизов 1971: 307].
This 'fight against despotism of documents, evidences, artifacts, etc.' very well correlates with the tendency of lessening those 'images of the world of goods' (the term of Rolland Barthe) in the work of literature which exist only for supporting 'mock-reality', 'generic real' and does not add layers to authors' meaning. It is especially obvious in the XX century literature and in historical novel too, if we remember some examples of the genre of the time: I, Claudius by Robert Graves, Les Rois Maudits by Maurice Druon, Пётр I by Aleksei Tolstoy, Rose Tremain's, Gore Vidal's or Edgar Doctorow's historical novels and many others. Most of all this 'fight against despotism of documents' or, better to say, the play with facts and events, is remarkable in the historicasl novel of the postmodernist times and after them. The authors of the historical novels of the postmodernist times quite bravely experiment with the metanarrative which is called 'history' and fantacise, nevertheless, not forgetting Walter Scott's practice: much as though a writer is free to reshuffle the facts, moments, places and faces (famouse Scott's 'achronosity', i. e. blending and amalgamation of historical times for the purpose of the resurrection of atmosphere and flavour of the era) he/she should follow the known vector of development of history and the historical process' results. It very well corresponds with the process of 'plotting the history', replacemnet, so to say, of 'big history' by private story of life of a personage - imaginative or existed in real but significantly interpreted by the writer. I think it will be relevant here to use the characteristic of the XX century literature given by Alberto Moravia as the one where the life of a human being and society is given not 'directly' but as the result of its pouring into the inner world of a personage. It leads us to the idea of the principle which may be called 'view measure' (мера видения), when the amount of the depicted (or 'mock') reality is limited by the personage's perspective; it is quite understandable that the quantity and quality of the things which the personage 'notices' are correlated by this 'view measure'.
The Mantel novels we are speaking about - Wolf-Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012) - are structured just on this basis: point of view of a
main hero determines historical, social, moral, cultural, psychological horizons of the plot and narrative.
As I have already written in the essay published in the ninth issue of Footpath, these novels (and the whole trilogy, I presume) develop the theme of the emergence of new England which began in the reign of Henry VIII: political and ideological collapses of the feudal paradigm in England were accompanied by ideological revolution inspired by the breaking-off with Roman Catholic Church, when Protestantism and therefore a protestant way of thinking and organizing life began to dominate in the country. By Hilary Mantel, Thomas Cromwell is a figure in English history who pushed England in that direction and who marked the image of this new England in his very personality and his way of thinking. The conflicts of the novels are based on some essential contradictions (oppositions) of the time: new versus old, real versus ideal, practical versus visionary. All collisions in the plot are focused at the figure of Thomas Cromwell through whose point of view we look at the events of the 1520s - 1530s. In all of them Cromwell is the first and indispensable element: Thomas Cromwell - Katherine of Aragon (the problem of the male heir of Henry VIII as the pledge of a new era in England's history); Thomas Cromwell - old nobility (as the reflection of the new social structure in England due to the protestant ideology); Thomas Cromwell - Anne Boleyn (as the reflection of the problem of the male heir the birth of whom should bring piece and prosperity for new England); Thomas Cromwell - Henry VIII (as the sign of autocracy and its costs for an individual and as a sign of the frame limits for potentialities and possibilities within autocratic paradigm).
The plot is constructed as a self-account of Thomas Cromwell in his moving up the political career, moreover - as his explanation to himself (and therefore to readers) his own life. In other words, to agree with Colin Burrow from "London Review of Books', the novel ('Wolf Hall', but no doubt it works in the second novel too) 'constructs a story about the inner life of Cromwell which runs in parallel to scenes and pictures that we thought we knew' [Burrow]. And what is more, we may say that epoch-making period of English history is poured out into the hero's internal world and the result of this congruency is being narrated.
As we see Cromwell is depicted as who is a man quite 'learned' by severe life, who had to survive under the circumstances of fight for life both in direct and figurative meanings beginning from his childhood (quite remarkable in this respect is the first episode of Wolf Hall when his father brutally beats him) and in many real fights he participated in France as a mercenary as well as in the battles of political and economical sort in Italy and England. Cromwell is depicted by Mantel as a practical man who had to
develop in himself the gift of finding the most proper way to the goal put forward under current circumstances, the gift of running games, calculations and manipulations - firstly just to survive and then to go up the social and political ladder. He is sure that eventually he acts to develop such a paradigm of life in Britain which brings the country closer to the ideal state of peace, stability, real happiness and flourishing of the people: here he is in opposition to Thomas More whose Utopia is based on conservative and dogmatic ideas which are far from real life and are absolutely visionary. Cromwell is sure that he lives in the moment of the 'dawn' of some new England and his task is by all means (Mantel's version of Machiavelli) to support this 'sunrise'. He is deeply in the context of the situation and tries to benefit from it to fulfill his task as much as possible (and even more than possible, especially when he adjusts circumstances to the goal - the line of his policy in the case of Anne Boleyn is the main example here). His vision of himself, people around him, the past and the present is extremely utilitarian and selective; it concerns the material world around him too; Cromwell doses very much what and how much he sees. It is true when we analyze what of the clothes he sees and thus includes in his perception of the world and people around him.
Mantel does remember that the refractor (the narrative centre) of the novel is a man, who is good at understanding a lot about material world (we have lots of examples of some kind of polymath of Cromwell who seems to know everything: languages, geography, history, philosophy, customs and taxes, book-keeping and audit, arts and crafts, materials and fabrics, etc) but who is not concentrated at clothes (though twice he is pleased that his wife Lizzie when sewing shirts for the children follows the fashion and designs a shirt for Gregory like the king's one made by the queen [Mantel 2009: 92].
A costume detail is really a detail in the narrative. There is no any extensive, a-la-Scott, description of any personage's costume. Quite remarkable is a colour palette used by Mantel in terms of costumes: red is definitely domineering , as well as white, black and grey; when we speak about domineering materials and fabrics we have to mention here velvet, silk, leather and broadcloth (fine cloth - Italian and Dutch) which 'flows like water' [Mantel 2009: 343]. First two are mostly connected with the royalty, while cloth - with Cromwell. It is only twice we meet him wearing velvet clothes: once that was grey velvet when Princess Mary speaks of him as a gentleman just because he is in grey velvet which she likes [Mantel 2009: 136]; and Cromwell was in red (crimson) velvet robes at the coronation of Anne. Characteristically enough, when his 'robes' came he was slightly appalled though full of irony ('Dear God", he laughs; [Mantel 2009: 460]): the col-
our of these robes is very much symbolical when we remember the role of Cromwell in the fate of Anne, the Queen.
The first fashion item we meet in the narrative is Thomas's father Walter's boot when he savagely beats his son, 'The twine has sprung clear of the leather, and a hard knot in it has caught his eyebrow and opened another cut' [Mantel 2009: 5].
Cromwell is quite laconic in perception clothes of the people who are around him whether this is the king, or both queens, or princesses, the nobles, townsfolk, peasants:
Henry crosses the room. Stamp, stamp, stamp in his riding boots; he is ready for la chasse. He turns, rather slowly, to show his majesty to better effect: wide and bright.' [Mantel 2009: 182-183]; 'Hans has drawn the king, benign in summer silks. [Mantel 2012: 7].
When after a long time of fighting for his right to divorce Katherine of Aragon and to marry Anne Boleyn Henry VIII gets Anne as his wife and the queen, the king leaves the church where the wedding ceremony took place and 'puts on his hat. It is a big hat, a new hat. And in that hat there is a feather' [Mantel 2009: 416]. We are said before that the king smiles, and we immediately understand the feelings of him and why we are asked to keep attention at this new big hat and at the feather which sticks out so proudly now (the subtle irony of Mantel is great). We also understand why Cromwell informs us in the beginning of 'Wolf Hall' that the king 'well barbed and curled, tall and still trim from certain angels, and wearing white silk, makes his way to his wife's apartments' [Mantel 2009: 88]: mentioning such details as white silk, curls, angels brings us to the belief that Henry VIII has nothing bad and evil in his intention to persuade Katherine to give him divorce and that everything he is doing is for the better of the country which Katherine now proclaims as the country so much dear to her heart.
There is an item of the clothes which acts as a trough image in both novels and that is a white cap (coif): it is a white cap of Liz which Cromwell sees the last on the day when his wife dies and what 'he will want to catch again': 'that flash of her white cap' [Mantel 2009: 104]. It symbolizes, no doubt, for Cromwell the most important value in the life of his: the value of family's happiness, when a house becomes really home (the role of his houses, especially Austin Friars, is very much noteworthy due to the same reasons: he was deprived of home in his early years and seek for it during all his years of wandering; and that's why he cherishes homes he created himself; his permanent love to his wife and to his daughters who all died because of sweat fever are one more through feeling to characterize Thomas Cromwell).
White linen cap plays a very important role in the scene of Anne's execution in the second novel. It is one of the scenes where Hilary Mantel mastery of making pictures visible and exciting at the same time is at its best:
... and one of the women gives her a linen cap. She pulls it on. You would not think it would hold her hair, but it does; she must have rehearsed with it. But now she looks about as if for direction. She lifts the cap half off her head, puts it back. She does not know what to do, he sees she does not know if she should tie the cap's string beneath her chin. <.. > The queen is alone now, as alone as she has ever been in her life. She says, Christ, have mercy, Jesus have mercy, Christ receive my soul. She raises one arm, again her fingers go to the coif. ([Mantel 2012: 396-397].
The situation when Anne does not know what to do with this cap, the thing that she is not used to, the thing which for Cromwell is a symbol of a happy family life, cosiness, home comfort and tranquility is remarkable: Anne did not get this happy family life; and when just a second before the mortal whiz of the sword she touches the cap it may be read as her search for a sort of redemption.
One more item of clothes and the colour of it are the images which act as stippled lines put through both novels (and it helps to some extent to understand the title of the first novel): I mean here white dresses in which Jane Seymour, the future third wife of Henry VIII, appears in novel - in the beginning unnamed and slightly visible (pale, vague, even frail), but gradually occupying quite a definite place in the world of Cromwell. 'She is wearing pearls, and white brocade embroidered with stiff little sprigs of carnations' [Mantel 2012: 11], we read in the very beginning of the second novel. The white dress as well as her permanent blushing when any man addresses her or just looks at her, the king is among them, are the symbols of virginity and maiden purity, at least for the king (such his appraisal is stressed by Mantel during both visits of Henry VIII to the Seymours' estate White Hall). Readers, meanwhile, due to Cromwell's sagacity, understand that Jane is not a pure and holy person, at least in her thoughts and words.
By contrast, Anne Boleyn is associated not with white dresses. When the news about Katherine's death comes, 'Anne, the queen wears yellow, as she did when she first appeared at court, dancing in masque' ([Mantel 2012: 144]; in Wolf Hall see this [Mantel 2009: 66]. It is understandable why Cromwell's sight, a male one, stresses that, as well as the pearls around 'little neck' of Anne which she nervously tugs [Mantel 2012: 196] or Anne's love to wear masques and masquerade costumes. Once we see her 'standing in a pool of sunlight, dressed as Maid Marian and shooting at a target' [Mantel 2009: 316]: if Jane Seymour is doing practically nothing to become the queen, Anne is fiercely struggling for it and it explains her militancy and resoluteness. The costume of the girl-friend of Robin Hood un-
derlines her determination and will to hit the target - to become the queen. The same idea presents when Cromwell sees her playing the role of Perseverance in Christmas mystery play at court in December 1521 when she began her court career [Mantel 2009: 67].
Anne's affection to bright clothes, costumes and masks annoys Cromwell and stresses her theatricality and even peacockery in many ways emerged in her due to her up-bringing at the French court; here we may remember the episodes of the meeting of two kings in Calais - Francois I and Henry VIII and how much ironical is the view of Cromwell of the French court, the fashion of clothes, the manners and mores of the French king and his courtiers.
It is quite an opposite matter with the Christmas masquerade costumes of Cromwell's two daughters who died very early and the loss of whom was a painful wound in the soul of his. After their sudden death, these costumes are kept in the store room. Once we read that Thomas Cromwell 'slides off the canvass sleeves that protect its rays, and checks that they are unchipped and unfaded. There will be better years, when they will hang it up again; though he cannot imagine them. <...> The Three Kings' robes are packed into a chest, as also the sheepskins for the children who will be sheep. The shepherds' crooks lean in a corner; from a peg hang angel's wings. He touches them. They make a soft sound of hissing, and a faint amber perfume washes into the air' [Mantel 2009: 171]. It should be mentioned that Cromwell often remembers Liz, his daughters, their clothes, costumes, their belongings (toys and school things) and does it mostly in the moments when he is tired of all political events and intrigues, when he wants some moral reset and recovery.
One of the collisions on the basis of which the novels are structured is that of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell's dislike of Anne is practically total: it is obvious in the ways he sees her and her actions. He helps her to become queen because it is the king's wish, on the one hand, and because he hopes that when Anne bears a male heir it brings stability and prosperity, peace and calm to England on the other. But he sees also that the dominance of the Boleyn clan in the politics brings no good to the country, on the contrary they very quickly become an obstacle on the road of Britain to real, not Utopian, social, political and economical wealth. What is more, the Boleyns were in the vanguard of those who betrayed and defamed cardinal Wolsey the filial love and gratitude to whom are permanent in him; Cromwell is full of the feelings of revenge in this respect, especially after some of them and their minions played hideous and infamous mystery about Wolsey at Christmas. His hostility towards the Boleyns is evident in details. For instance, he does not like the French manner of Anne
to call him Cremuel; he sees a sort of caricature when Anne uses French words pretending that she forgets the English ones; he contrasts her love for bright dresses, jewelry and etc. to shy manner of clothing demonstrated by Jane Seymour. Anne's 'foreigness' (artificial in many ways) corresponds with the manners and fashion of clothes of the Ambassador of Emperor Charles V to England Eustache Chapuys. Cromwell and Chapuys are on strange terms taking into account that this ambassador intrigues in favour of Katherine of Aragon, the aunt of Charles V. By political reasons they should be rivals, and they are; but at the same time they are quite close friends and good London neighbours. The relations of Cromwell and Cha-puys once again show how advanced is the foreign policy of Cromwell which is aimed at tolerance and peace of which England is in great need by his understanding.
We have lots of evidences in the novels that Cromwell does see the core of the ambassador's policy and behaviour and what is more he uses their confidential relations to influence Chapuys and via him to influence Spanish Emperor's policy towards England. Nevertheless, Cromwell notices eccentricity of Chapuys and teases him quite often. Chapuys's first appearance in ' WH' is depicted ironically not to say satirically: 'He stands poised on the threshold, so they may know him and admire: a little crooked man. In a doublet slashed and puffed, blue satin billowing through black; beneath it, his little black spindly legs' [Mantel 2009: 192]. When Hans Holbein is going to paint his portrait Eustache 'is wearing marten furs over silks. 'Dear God', Johane says behind her hand, 'he looks like a dancing monkey [Mantel 2009: 526]. And when the house of Chapuys burnt down and all his clothes too, Cromwell helps Chapuys settling him in his own house and giving him his own clothes, he sets tailors to sew new clothes for Eustache at once ironically saying to him 'I don't know where we will replicate that violent flame-coloured silk you favour. But I'll put the word out in Venice' [Mantel 2012: 119].
The most striking episode of the eccentricity of Chapuys in clothes is the one in Stepney at Christmas when he is forced to meet Anne, 'concubina' as he and many European courts call Anne not accepting her as a legal queen: 'Today the ambassador is wearing a startling hat. More like the sort that George Boleyn sports, than a hat for a grave councilor' [Mantel 2012: 120]. That was a bad day for Chapuys, and at one moment Cromwell notices, 'Chapuys himself keeps a firm hold on his hat. Its tassels are damp and dropping, and the ambassador himself looks as if he might cry' [Mantel 2012: 123]. Thus, the detail of costume informs us about many things: the situation with the intrigues of the Spanish ambassador against Anne and in favour of Katherine, his position at the court of the monarch of the country
of his duties as an ambassador, about his ridiculous manner of clothing, his strangeness and eccentricity. His tears when he soon gets to know about the death of Katherine are more the tears of a political failure than of a sincere mourner.
There should be said that Cromwell and Chapuys are contrasted in their ways of clothing and in the ways it is depicted by the author: Cromwell, when or even if he thinks about his own clothes, is preoccupied with the comfort and not at all with design and attractiveness of it. More often his clothes are not described in details. One reason of it is that we see 'the reality' through his eyes, secondly he is not interested in fashions and the like, as we have already mentioned. In both novels there is only one detailed description of his clothes which he wears when he goes to the Commons in Westminster and to the court: 'At court and in the offices he dresses not a whit above his gentleman's station, in loose jacket of Lemster wool so fine they flow like water, in purples and indigos so near black that it looks as if the night has bled into them; his cap of black velvet sits on his black hair.' [Mantel 2009: 343]. No doubt, Hilary Mantel takes as the model here the portrait of Cromwell painted by Hans Holbein where Lord Chancellor, Earl of Essex is painted in the clothes which colours resemble the ones used by Mantel in her description, though in Holbein's picture the robe of Cromwell is trimmed with the fur of mink or sable. In the course of narration black, grey and red are the colours which are associated with the image of Cromwell. But when Cromwell is at home or with his children and relatives, when he is in his family milieu we do not notice these colour preferences. It is obvious that Mantel draws as contrasts two worlds in which Cromwell exists - private and public. Private one is always full of warmth, tenderness, sympathy - and of light and bright colours. It is already common idea of the criticism that Mantel gives Cromwell as an ambivalent and complex personage who despite his Machiavellian cunningness is an alive person and who is used to hide his personal feelings in public in order to have time to calculate what to do and how to find a way out of any difficult situation. Even in the famous moment when at knight tournament Henry fell down from the horse and lost his conscience so seriously that all present thought of his death, Cromwell being in horror inside keeps his composure (the king was the only defense for him - that'll be obvious when Cromwell in 1540 is accused of treason and beheaded with nobody to defend him in front of the king who, as it often happens with autocrat, lost his confidence in Cromwell).
Cromwell prefers to be dressed in 'dark fine wool' [Mantel 2009: 40]; this preference of mainly dark, black and grey, colours are explained by his wish to do his work with less publicity, and this policy makes him, the son of a blacksmith, real power broker of the time. Katherine of Aragon has any
right to say to her daughter Mary about him, 'Do you know who is this? This is Master Cromwell. Who now writes all the laws. <...> Until now Master Cromwell's talent was for money-lending, but now he finds he has a talent for legislation too - if you want a new law, just ask him' [Mantel 2009: 288]. In the beginning of this meeting with Katherine to ask her to give the divorce to Henry he, who always admired her firmness and determination in defense of her status and the Roman Church (as a guarantee of her queenship), looks around her figure and notices: 'The queen lean back, rigid inside her boned bodice, to whisper to her daughter. The ladies in Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks' ([Mantel 2009: 287]. This is one more example of symbolical use of costumes by Mantel; clothes add a lot to our understanding of a character and his/her behaviour, motives and etc.
To much extent Walter Scott taught readers of a historical novel to believe that a costume is among the things which help to 'see' the past, to imagine it. When we ask ourselves if in Hilary Mantel's novels costumes do the same the answer could not be that simple. It does not mean that we do not believe her picture of Henry VIII times. We believe, and very much. But 'material world' does not occupy in Mantel's reconstruction the place it occupies in the overwhelming majority of Scott's novels. What is Mantel puts in the foreground is political, social, moral and spiritual veracity. Costumes in the novels about Thomas Cromwell maintain material veracity in some general way without any definite specifications of the historical times. Thus, there are some remarks in the novels about such kind of male clothes as doublet which was very much in fashion in the Tudors age. Henry VIII liked this item of clothes because it was one of the first specimens of the clothes which fits tightly and emphasizes the harmony of body shapes. The history knows that Henry VIII, 'a permanent bridegroom', worried of his appearance a lot being quite corpulent. The history of costumes informs that doublet was not of the XVI century invention: it became a fashion as early as XIV century and was popular till the 1670s. In terms of clothes, arms and armors, cloaks and hackle Mantel does not use the chance to attribute to some definite historical period the knights tournament during which the king falls down the horse and almost kills himself and thereby creating strong political turbulence for several minutes. The description of the material aspects in this episode is minimal while the storm in the soul of Cromwell is depicted brilliantly, as well some psychological turmoil of others.
Mantel is not very much detailed in description of the clothes of Mark Smeaton ('a suspiciously well-dressed musician' ([Mantel 2012: xi] - as he called in the 'Cast of Characters' of the second novel, who is one the main accused persons in the case of Anne Boleyn's infidelity, though Cromwell
each time he sees this young man in Anne's chambers notices that Mark's clothes is becoming better, smarter and richer, and his manners become pert and cheeky. This situation makes Cromwell think of possibility to use Mark Smeaton in his intrigue against Anne and the whole clan of the Bolyens.
We see that costumes in Mantel's novels perform general anthropological role to characterize personages, to stress some peculiarities of his/her inner world, his/her mood and social background. Costumes quite often carry out symbolical and - because of that - many-leveled function. And much rarer, than traditionally is thought of costumes in a historical novel, they mark definite 'material world' (or the 'world of goods') of a concrete historical period. Costumes do not play prevailing role in Mantel's narrative; along with some other material realias they act as a kind of historical and cultural guideways which direct readers' imagination of the historical past which Mantel reconstructs. But it is more important for her to construct psychological, spiritual and emotional atmosphere of the past times, figuratively speaking to settle her readers inside the mind, system of values, priorities, world understanding of her protagonist - Thomas Cromwell. To much extent Mantel succeeds in it: readers take Cromwell for a hero who deserves their interest, sympathy and empathy, whose views worth thinking and analyzing as the ones which are the most relevant to the perspective of the history of England.
Literature
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КОСТЮМ И СОЗДАНИЕ ОБРАЗОВ В РОМАНАХ ХИЛАРИ МАНТЕЛ О ТОМАСЕ КРОМВЕЛЕ
Борис Михайлович Проскурнин
Доктор филологических наук, профессор, Заведующий кафедрой мировой литературы и культуры Пермский государственный национальный исследовательский университет 614990, Россия, г. Пермь, ул. Букирева, 15. [email protected]
Статья посвящена роли костюма в художественной системе исторических романов современной британской писательницы Хилари Мантел о Томасе Кромвеле, политическом деятеле времен правления Генриха VIII. В статье на многочисленных примерах из текстов двух романов Мантел демонстрируется мастерство писательницы в лаконичном, но емком, символичном и многоаспектном, использовании костюма как средства, помогающего автору не только охарактеризовать историческую эпоху, культурную и социальную принадлежность героя к определенному времени, но и погрузить читателя в образ мысли, в историко-культурно заостренное мировидение героя, выпукло и зримо изобразить его внутренний мир, систему ценностей и представлений. Доказывается, что костюм в художественном мире Мантел играет прежде всего яркую антропологическую роль, а уже во вторую очередь - роль «маркера» исторического прошлого. Особое внимание в статье делается на образе Томаса Кромвеля как протагонисте, герое, воплощающего новые социально-политические, нравственные, культурные тенденции; именно в этом ракурсе анализируется роль костюма в воспроизведении образа Кромвеля.
Ключевые слова: Хилари Мантел, Томас Кромвель, Генрих VIII, Анна Болейн, исторический роман, повествование, костюм, деталь.
