Book Review
Title: The Mirror & the Light
Author: Hilary Mantel
Publisher: 4th Estate, London, 2020
Pages: 883
Price in India: 799
The first two volumes of Hilary
Mantel’s trilogy told us the story of Thomas Cromwell’s rise from a hamlet of
Putney to Henry VIII’s palace. The battered son of an uncultured blacksmith and
brewer rises to become the most powerful person in England after the king. The
first two volumes, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, described
the rise of this shrewd manipulator. The last one, The Mirror & the Light,
delineates the inevitable fall of the tragic hero.
Mantel’s undertaking
seems to be to show us that Cromwell was indeed a tragic hero rather than a
mere manipulator who ascended too high. She does that job eminently too. This last
volume of the trilogy is as gripping as the other two if not more endearing by
its slower pace and more poetic diction. Nearly hundred characters are brought
together in this massive book to tell us the story of a man who asserts
intimidatingly to his rivals who don’t always conceal their scorn for his lowly
origin, “I stand where the king has put me. I will read you any lesson and you
should learn.”
Cromwell knows his
position and its power. The opening line of the novel, “Once the queen’s head
is severed, he walks away,” sets the tone and the mood of the novel. The ‘he’
in the line is Cromwell who had just got Anne Boleyn, the second of Henry’s six
wives, executed. Many men whom Cromwell didn’t like because of their
association with the execution of his beloved Cardinal Wolsey have also been executed
on charges fabricated cleverly by Cromwell. The novel begins with Anne Boleyn’s
“small body” lying “belly down, hands outstretched, (swimming) in a pool of
crimson.” The sight gives Cromwell appetite for a second breakfast.
There is much blood in
the ensuing pages which tell the story of what happened in Henry VIII’s palace
from May 1536 to July 1540 – from the execution of Anne Boleyn to that of
Thomas Cromwell. There are celebrations too in between. As Christophe, Cromwell’s
servant, says, “With this king one needs a reversible garment. One never knows,
is it dying or dancing?” Death and dance parade on the stage according to Henry’s
whims.
The whims of certain
rulers are deadly. You should know how to deal with such rulers or else you may
end up on the scaffold. Anne didn’t know that, for example. “She took Henry for a man like other
men. Instead of what he is, and what all princes are: half god, half beast.” A
few pages later, Cromwell reflects again: “What are princes? They think on
murder all day long.” Mantel excels in laying bare the murderous narcissism of
rulers like Henry VIII. Even religious rulers are not much above that sort of
narcissism. In many places of the novel, Mantel draws our attention to the
lustfulness of the bishops and the cardinals. These bishops and cardinals have also
burnt too many persons at the stake in order to keep their perverse power
unquestioned. Mantel implies that some of them also revelled in inventing
stories about the men with whom Anne shared her body and in what all postures.
Cromwell knows how to
deal with such rulers, of course. When such a king asks, “Am I going bald,
Crumb?” our answer should be something like: “The shape of your Majesty’s head
would please any artist.”
With such knowledge and
perspicacity, Cromwell rises high. Too high. He thinks he knows everything that
is happening around him. He has spies to pass on information. But there is
something that he does not know. That lack is his tragic flaw. He does not know
that the halo around his head is beginning to shine louder than that around
Henry. “You have outgrown him,” one of his friends tells Cromwell towards the
end. “You have gone beyond what any servant or subject should be.”
Cromwell realises his
error, but it is too late. He realises that his beloved master Cardinal Wolsey “was
broken not for his failures, but for his successes; not for any error, but
for grievances stored up, about how great he had become.”
Narcissists are
essentially weak men who pretend to be strong. And weak men are far more dangerous than
strong ones though “the temptation to cut off your wife’s head does not arise
every year” even in a weak king with a strong armour on his chest.
The three volumes of
Mantel’s trilogy together form a colossal epic that serves as a classical monument
to the quintessential tragic hero who appears more like a villain.
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