“Too many years lost in history” Reclaiming historical women’s narrative through genre fiction in My Lady Jane and Six

Abstract

This bachelor thesis analyses the ways in which My Lady Jane (Cynthia Hand et al. 2016) and Six (Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss 2017) portray female figures from the Tudor era in a way that comments on the traditions of portrayal of female characters in fiction as well as on portrayal of historical women in scholarship. My Lady Jane does so by portraying the life of Lady Jane Grey as a Young Adult novel that foregrounds feminine adolescence as well as non-human lives as ignored but important elements of history. Six in turn contextualises the common knowledge history of Henry VIII wives as a tale of female submission to men and support between one another. As they do so, both texts show an alternative way in which the female historical experience can be portrayed.