So Cromwell Loves...

I don't know, but it seems to me that Cromwell was very much in love with his wife.

He gets involved with his wife's sister after his wife's death. She apparently reminds him of her dead sister, but it's not purely for that reason as he and his sister-in-law seem always to have really liked each other.

From what I can see, Mary Boleyn is simply throwing herself at Cromwell in desperation. She's trying to get a husband after her reputation has been sullied by sleeping with the king -- and who knows how many other men? It looked to me like Mary was really coming on to him.

I think he simply likes Jane Seymour as a person. She is sweet and unassuming, and he sees the qualities in her that other people apparently overlook because she's quiet and modest. He doesn't let the fact that she's quiet and modest get in the way of admiring her for her basic decency and lack of spite -- very different from all the other courtiers. He appreciates her, and evidently finds the contrast between her and the others quite refreshing.

As for the Anne Boleyn "fantasy" -- I can't really explain it. He certainly did not like her in real life, even though they were firm pro-Reformer allies at the beginning of her rise to power. I guess it wouldn't stop him from dreaming about the forbidden fruit that the king found so intoxicating. After all, the king didn't shy away from going on about it.





It Follows: 8.5
Whiplash: 9
'71: 8.5
Two Days, One Night: 9

It may be that Cromwell was truly fond of Jane Grey, but it must also be noted that she belongs to a powerful family. So Thomas Cromwell may just be thinking who he wants as allies in the future.

maggimae83

A main theme in Stanley Kubrick's work is the compounding of sex and power and the corruption by and of both that leads to catastrophe or failure. Political or military power is heady stuff and stupefyingly corrupting. I recognized this in the military, where the post I was stationed at was sometimes referred to as "Peyton Place" because there was so much hanky-panky going on. At a local talk given by a popular and populist state governor, some women showed up dressed to the 'nines' and flaunted provocative displays of their sexuality. Said governor later abandoned a run for a 2nd term after paying off a woman who threatened a sexual harassment suit. People working, even as peripheral staff, near seats of power and authority can get caught up in the atmosphere of power and become stimulated or exited. That one good reason why I like Wolf Hall so much. The makers, writers et al. do a super job of depicting that stimulation, excitement, and daring that the mere proximity to highly concentrated power induces.

Cromwell would have loved to make Jane Seymour his wife, but sadly the King got her first.

Anne Boleyn, by most accounts, was a sexy woman though not a great beauty. She probably represented an unattainable woman to Cromwell.

He would have succumbed to Mary Boleyn's advances, but they were interrupted by her "date."

As for his sister-in-law Joanne, they were friends with benefits. With so many beauties parading around him, I doubt Cromwell would have been interested in her for long even though he appreciated her and confided in her.

The only woman he wasn't shown to lust after was Jane Rochford. Although beautiful, Jane is scary.




transcendcinema.blogspot.com "Mind over matter; if you don't mind, it doesn't matter." Room

All he seems to do is speculate on what these women (except Johane his sister in law, whom he does bed) might be like or would respond to his advances if he made advances which he is too much aware of his position and how precarious it is to make. When he wants a woman he has one at an inn while he is on the way to somewhere.If he could be said to love anyone, it is his dead wife Liz in whom he is said in the book to be 'content'. He does seem to love and remember with regret her, and the young daughters who died within a short time of each other, as well as his son Gregory and his adopted Rafe Sadler and have affection to a lesser degree for the various stray people he adopts from time to time in the book. but remember Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies are historical fiction. The historical Cromwell loved and promoted the interests of his son Gregory, arranging for him to marry Elizabeth Seymour, the widowed younger sister of Queen Jane Seymour, thereby bringing Gregory into the family of Henry VIII.
As for Johane, (in this series), the attraction seems to have been her resemblance to Cromwell's wife Liz. whom he missed as a widower. In time, each of them feeling guilty (Johane was married to a man with whom Cromwell was friendly and whom he actually liked), they ended the secret liaison, and went on as before.
Again in this series and the historical fiction novel on which it is based, there was a woman named Anselma in, I think it was Bruges, Belgium where he spent time as a young man, whom he regretted from time to time not marrying.