The Power Of The Unheard: Female Agency Through Silence And Subtext In Wolf Hall And Bring Up The Bodies

Abstract

This paper analyses Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies in the manner in which Hilary Mantel has constructed female power in a male-dominated society of the Tudors, where women are mostly silenced and relegated to the periphery. There is no direct reference to politics; rather, Mantel employs silence, gesture, and subtext as the means of resistance instead of portraying women as the victims of the political repression. This paper examines how characters like Katherine Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Mary Tudor can deal with agency in a world where they are not given a clear political voice, but one which suggests feminist historiography and discourse. It is established in this paper that silence and subtext can be thought of as the vital areas of power and this notion is pursued through a qualitative and interpretive study of the narrative strategies used by Mantel, and feminist theory applied to the context of said text. This strategy confirms the arguments raised around gender and power in historical fiction, as in this case with Mantel to devise a new version of the Tudor history.