55 pages • 1-hour read
The Other Boleyn Girl
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Chapters 6-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “Summer 1523”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, antigay bias, sexual content, child death, and pregnancy loss.
It is summer 1523. Cardinal Wolsey hosts May Day revels for the king. As the king toasts Mary as the Queen of May, she is embarrassed to be taking the queen’s place. Cardinal Wolsey, who has a great deal of power in the kingdom, breaks the betrothal between Anne and Henry Percy. When she tries to defy her family, Anne is sent in disgrace to Hever. Anne throws a tantrum in their room. As she and George physically restrain her, Mary reflects, “It felt as if we were fighting something worse than Anne, some demon that possessed her, that possessed all us Boleyns: ambition” (144). Her mother, warning Mary not to fight for Anne’s freedom, dictates a letter that Mary writes from Anne severing her promise to Henry Percy.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Winter 1523”
In the winter of 1523, Mary tells the king she is pregnant. She knows this pains the queen. Henry broods about not having a legitimate son.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Spring 1524”
It is spring 1524. George reluctantly marries Jane Parker, a vicious gossip whom all three siblings dislike. Anne returns to Hever, and Mary, sitting with the king during the celebrations, “wished with all my contrary heart that I was squire of Hever and not the pretend queen of a masquing court” carrying an illegitimate child (155-56).
Chapter 9 Summary: “Summer 1524”
It is summer 1524. Anne sits with Mary during her lying-in and mentions she has been reading Martin Luther. Despite all the wishes for a boy, Mary has a girl. She enjoys the time in seclusion with her baby, thinking, “There was a sense of this place being a refuge for us, a secret room where men and their plans and their treacheries would not come” (161). Mary wants to name her daughter Catherine.
Mary’s husband, William Carey, is rewarded with a knighthood and lands, but Mary can tell he is bitter at winning his advancement by being a cuckold. Mary’s family is considering setting her marriage with William aside so the king might acknowledge Mary’s son if she has one. Mary takes her baby to Hever for the summer and is glad to be away from court. Anne can’t believe Mary doesn’t pay attention to talk of politics or theology and chides her for being soft and loving. At the end of summer, Mary thinks, “like a peasant woman who has to leave her child and go back to the field, it was time for me to go back to my work” (170).
Chapter 10 Summary: “Winter 1524”
In winter 1524, the king welcomes Mary back, though she hears he spent the summer flirting with another Howard girl, Madge Shelton. Mary balks when her family talks about annulling her marriage; she swears she can’t take the place of the queen. When Mary’s father protests that trying to force the queen to retire will upset the treaty he is trying to broker with Spain, Uncle Howard declares that “[i]t is more important to get our girl into the king’s bed than to save the lives of Englishmen” (174).
Chapter 11 Summary: “Spring 1525”
In spring 1525, Henry rejoices and praises the queen when Charles of Spain, Katherine’s nephew, wins a victory in Pavia. Henry imagines ruling France, and the queen is in his favor again until Charles releases the French king, Francis. Mary becomes the king’s favorite once more and notices how everyone, even ambassadors, defer to her. When Mary becomes pregnant again, her father is awarded a viscountcy and George a knighthood. Mary spends the summer at Hever with Anne, and George comes to visit and escape his marriage. There is gossip that George likes boys, and Anne warns him, “Wenching is one thing but you can be hanged for this” (188).
Chapter 12 Summary: “Autumn 1525”
It is autumn 1525. Mary is pregnant. At a family conference, she is given a seat in a cushioned chair. Uncle Howard insists that the queen is going, and Mary will take her place. Mary refuses. She says to betray the queen is to overthrow the natural order of things. Her uncle responds that a new world order is coming: “Everything is changing, and here we are, at the very front of the change” (190).
Chapter 13 Summary: “Spring 1526”
In spring 1526, Mary is in pain as her pregnancy advances. She wishes she could live at Hever. Anne says Mary must play her part even if her heart is not in it. Uncle Howard instructs Anne to flirt with the king, and when Mary protests, Anne reminds her, “I was born to be your rival […] We’re sisters, aren’t we?” (196). Mary replies that she doesn’t think the king is “a man who will bring his woman much joy” (199). When the king invites Anne to his bed, George says the family is saving her for marriage. Mary gives birth to a boy, who will carry her husband’s last name.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Summer 1526”
It is summer 1526. Mary is sad after delivery and continues to bleed, but her uncle insists she must get back into Henry’s bed as soon as possible. The family still hopes the king will wed Mary and make her son legitimate and the heir to the throne. Anne flirts with the king while Mary sleeps with him. Henry frets that his marriage to Katherine was cursed, the evidence being how many children died or were miscarried. Mary relates this to her uncle in return for the promise that she might go to Hever and see her children.
Mary is hurt and angry over being a step for the family’s ambitions. She is grateful to return to Hever and see her children. George meditates that one day they might all have to swear fealty to her baby, Henry. Mary has to get reacquainted with Catherine, who doesn’t recognize her. As she cries when they return to court, George warns Mary that she cannot please herself. Mary retorts, “You show me a woman in the world who can please herself” (230). Mary returns to find Anne is the king’s new favorite. Mary accuses Anne of wanting everything that is Mary’s. Hurt and angry, Mary tells George she would be glad to see Anne die of her ambition. The Princess Mary comes to court, and she is only a tiny girl. Henry says he must get free of his marriage.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Autumn 1526”
In the autumn of 1526, the debate begins over how Henry might end his marriage to Katherine. Uncle Howard thinks Anne is muddling the picture and sends her to Hever. Mary is smug about being the favorite.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Winter 1526”
In winter 1526, Mary sees how the queen is abandoned at court. When Henry frets about an heir, Mary suggests that he could marry her, but he doesn’t acknowledge this idea.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Spring 1527”
Since Mary isn’t making progress with the king by the spring of 1527, Anne is brought back to court. Determined to make her own way, Anne makes every effort to fascinate the king. The family decides to put their support behind Anne. Mary is furious that “I had been put aside for my sister. My own family had decided that I was to be the whore and she was to be the wife” (258).
George reports that Charles of Spain has captured the Pope and can make him rule in Katherine’s favor in the question of Henry’s marriage. Mary, who is helping the queen sew a large altar cloth, feels that both she and the queen are becoming shadows at court while Anne takes center stage. George hints that he too resents having to put aside his wishes to serve his family’s ambitions. Her uncle makes Mary spy on the queen in return for permission to see her children at Hever. Anne thinks it will only take a season for the queen to be put aside, and then she can marry the king.
Chapters 6-17 Analysis
The narrative more sharply draws the differences between Mary and Anne in this section. What differentiates them most is ambition, which further develops the theme of The Price of Personal Ambition. Gregory portrays this as a destructive quality, suggested by the imagery of Anne driven by a demon after Cardinal Wolsey sets aside her union with Henry Percy. The demonic imagery will return in later chapters as Anne sets her goals even higher. Once again, Anne’s darkness is offset by images of summer, light, and fertility that are associated with Mary, especially when she is at Hever and after she gives birth. Mary’s softness, in contrast to Anne’s opposition, is part of her appeal to the king. Mary also displays her lack of ambition when she dissents from the family’s plans to replace Queen Katherine with Mary. She phrases this as a matter of personal loyalty; Mary has been conflicted with guilt about how her affair with the king must hurt Queen Katherine, who is more of a maternal figure to Mary than her mother is. But Mary has also allied her sympathies with the countryside, and she intuitively recognizes that life at court cannot offer her the nurturance or sustenance that she craves. She sees the jealousy and rivalries of court—qualities George’s disliked wife, Jane Parker, embodies—as poisonous to the freedom and affection she would rather enjoy. She also recognizes that the hardness and sacrifices of ambition, expressed by her Uncle Howard, are costs she is not willing to pay.
Some historical background explains certain plot points in this section. By English law at the time, only a legitimate child of a union could inherit property, especially estates. Henry’s first son, Henry Fitzroy, is a “bastard,” the legal term to describe a child who was born out of wedlock and thus illegitimate. Henry acknowledges his paternity of Fitzroy, but this is not a legal status, and Fitzroy is not in the line of succession. Mary’s children by the king have the last name Carey, her husband’s name; this is because William Carey assumes their care and paternity, and Henry need not take responsibility. The Catholic Church considered adultery a sin, so this was one way to hide the evidence. A man whose wife had affairs outside of marriage was called a cuckold, a term of mockery as men were supposed to have authority over their wives and children. William doesn’t feel that property is reward enough for being a known cuckold, so great is the insult.
Aristocratic women could and did inherit property, which is why Princess Mary, the only surviving child of Henry and Katherine, is in the line of succession. However, a son would be favored over a daughter, which is why George is the heir to Thomas Boleyn. George’s example further illustrates how marriages among powerful families were brokered for alliances and to secure wealth. George dislikes Jane Parker, but the family decided his marriage to her. Henry uses his marriage to Katherine of Aragon to assume an alliance with her nephew, Charles, who is the King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor, a powerful ruler in early modern Europe. Later, it is this very alliance—and, ironically, Charles’s allegiance to the Pope—that impedes Henry’s suit for an annulment.
Mary’s character arc in this section illustrates how painful women’s lack of personal power and agency was. Though still bleeding postpartum, she is expected to be attractive and sexually available to the king. She is separated from her children, and her uncle assumes the authority to broker her marriage. Equally painful is Mary’s humiliation at seeing Anne replace her in the king’s affection, illustrating the Support and Rivalry Among Women. This lack of power is not limited to daughters, however. George, too, is under the command of his family, at the expense of his personal feelings and affections. His dilemma, like Mary’s, further demonstrates The Cost of Conflicting Loyalties, a theme that rises in thematic importance as the narrative progresses.
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