Brian McKenzie

What struck me most in re-reading this fabulous novel (having first read it as an undergraduate English major in the mid 1980's) – or more accurately, what I'm more capable of putting into words – is that it is a veritable handbook for psychiatrists and psychotherapists on the subject of inappropriate emotional response. Literary conventions vary by era and culture, of course, but I have to think that even a contemporaneous Russian reader would have felt as exhausted by the wildly erratic mood swings of these characters as I was. I wonder, in reading some of the other reviews here, if this is why it is so difficult to get through for so many readers.

The novel falls squarely into the realm of melodrama, and you can hear the machinery creaking as you read along. The plot is deceptively simple: a father and his son compete for the love of a manipulative, deceptive prostitute, and drag everyone around them into the fight causing various degrees of collateral damage. When the father gets his head cracked, we are plunged into an episode of Law and Order and see both the (surprisingly modern) police investigation and the (surprisingly contemporary) trial. The brothers K, all types, represent various philosophical perspectives on what to do about the decaying and decadent Old Russia as represented by Fyodor Pavlovich, their father. So as a work of fiction it's not overly complicated or difficult. Money and wealth (Katerina), sexual mores (Grushenka), morality (Fr. Zosima) and social hierarchy (Snegirov) are the problems that New Russia must tackle. What is the way forward? Traditional Orthodox Christian monarchy? Socialist, atheist revolution?

What makes this novel so compelling (and so long) is the psychological portrait Dostoevsky paints of each character. Types though they are, he takes great pains to show us the history and motivations of each character in a way few modern novelists do anymore. Whether or not we like them is one thing; whether we understand them is another, and I think that is what was most important to Dostoevsky, and what makes this novel more than the sum of its parts.

The omniscient first-person narrator with the front-row seats to all the action, very subtly influences our perceptions. Fyodor Pavlovich, depicted as a drunken and depraved old man (well, in his 50's which, in 19th century Russia was old) gains a backstory at the hands of the prosecutor that, while not rehabilitative, depicts him as a rather pathetic figure. We can almost feel sorry for him, and whatever his sins, we can say he certainly didn't deserve to be murdered in cold blood for the sake of a man's twisted beliefs about morality. And then we can't fully condemn the murderer either because we know the deprived and horrific upbringing he endured. Every character receives this kind of detailed portrait. As a result, no one, with the possible exception of Alexei (Alyosha), emerges from this novel looking good, but they don't emerge looking fully bad either. What they are is human - broken, flawed, contradictory, confused, and even at times lost, but they are human. Dostoevsky's achievement, again, is not in the structure and style of the novel, but in his deep and moving insights into people. No matter how many times you read this book, read it again.

Thus ends the Shakespearean tragedy of Cromwell, the brilliant man hoist on his own Machiavellian petard. Unlike the first two novels, The Mirror and the Light shows us the Cromwell that history remembers: ruthless, violent, all-powerful, and, ultimately, undone by vindictive enemies and a paranoid king.

Mantel's achievement here (and across the trilogy) is monumental if for no other reason than she makes the reader sympathize with Cromwell. This is, of course, narrative sleight of hand as her limited third-person perspective is really just first-person in disguise: we only get to see and hear what Cromwell sees and hears, and we only get to understand events through his understanding of them. And while we know what is ultimately going to happen, we are still surprised when, seemingly out of the blue not long after being made Earl of Essex and Lord Chamberlain, Cromwell finds himself in the Tower on charges of treason and heresy.

Mantel plants the seeds early. In the moments after Anne Boleyn's execution at the beginning of the novel, Wriothesley, loyalties divided, tells Cromwell,

“People have been talking of the cardinal. They say, look at what Cromwell has wreaked, in two years, on Wolsey’s enemies. Thomas More is dead. Anne the queen is dead. They look at those who slighted him, in his lifetime – Brereton, Norris – though Norris was not the worst . . . They ask," Wriothesley says, “who was the greatest of the cardinal’s enemies? They answer, the king. So, they ask – when chance serves, what revenge will Thomas Cromwell seek on his sovereign, his prince?”

The answer comes during his interrogation:

“Let me remind you,” Riche says. “At the church of St Peter le Poor, near your own gate at Austin Friars, on or around …” Riche has lost the date, but no matter, “… you were heard to pronounce certain treasonable words: that you would maintain your own opinion in religion, that you would never allow the king to return to Rome, and – these are the words alleged – if he would turn, yet I would not turn; and I would take the field against him, my sword in my hand. And you accompanied these words with certain belligerent gestures – . . . You also stated,” Riche says, “that you would bring new doctrine into England, and that – and here I quote your own words – If I live one year or two, it shall not lie in the king’s power to resist.”

The cards thus stacked against him - by none less than Richard Riche, whose perjured testimony cost Thomas More his head - Cromwell understands that he has lost. But it's not due to any trumped-up charges of treason - no, he gets that all the crazy talk of aspiring to be king by marrying Mary, of sorcery, of conspiracy with the Emperor, and seeking to raise a "pauper army" is all just a smokescreen for the king's true grievance:

“The king hates a man who breaks his word. You said you would kill Reginald Pole.”

“Not a drop of his blood is shed,” Gardiner observes.

He thinks, now we come to it. This is why Henry faults me. And so he should. This is where I have failed.

This is life in Henry's capricious court. Henry, assessing Cromwell's almost superhuman accomplishments, finds him lacking because he failed to kill the pretender. Norfolk, resentful that a commoner should be ennobled, and Gardiner, vengeful at being replaced as Master Secretary and shipped off to France, conspired to light the fuse.

Mantel gives full rein to her imagination in this novel, the longest of the three (in fact, almost as long as the other two combined). Cromwell is given to increasing flights of memory of his childhood and his years of apprenticeship in Italy. He continues to be haunted by Wolsey, tormented by More and guilt ridden over his mysterious daughter, Jenneke. Her canvas is huge - the economics of the dissolution of the monasteries, the diplomatic intricacies of the marriage to Anne of Cleves, the religious crisis over the Pilgrimage of Grace - and reveals her thorough research and deep understanding of the period. Clearly she had great passion for the story, and saw in Cromwell some kind of archetype of hero/villains throughout modern history: his own great nephew Oliver Cromwell; Maximillian Robespierre; Otto von Bismarck; Vladimir Lenin; J. Edgar Hoover; Richard Nixon. Men who rose to great heights; who sought to reshape the world in their own image; who ultimately destroyed themselves.

Are we to draw lessons from Cromwell's story about the dangers of pride and self aggrandizement? If history is truly written by the victors, has his story been accurately told? Is Cromwell Macbeth or Lear? These are tough questions and I think Hilary Mantel wants us to see, in the mirror and the light, something of our own place and time. Mantel's Cromwell, really, is a projection of our own worst instincts and the embodiment of modern homo politicus; and perhaps what she wants us to understand that there will always be a Cromwell, the one with the dirty fingernails and bloody knife; the one who takes care of the jobs no one else can stomach; the one we ultimately can't keep around because he reminds us too much of our own base nature. Cromwell, hero or villain, is not so much a man as a matter of perspective.