![]() In fact, Fraser's generalizations produce new stereotypes of rather stupid, passive women, pawns in a fatal game governed by nature and politics. Fraser's interest is ``to discover the women behind the stereotypes'': Catherine of Aragon, whom Fraser says has been pigeonholed as the ``Betrayed Wife'' Anne Boleyn, as the ``Temptress'' Jane Seymour, as the ``Good'' Anne of Cleves, as the ``Ugly'' Catherine Howard, as the ``Wanton'' and Catherine Parr, as the ``Mother Figure.'' Fraser claims to destroy these stereotypes by finding in each woman intelligence, courage, passion-qualities that Weir offered convincing proof of-and by finding, behind the actions of each, political pressure to create an heir matched against the biological difficulty of doing so-for which Weir offered a compelling argument as well. In her preface, Fraser insists that, contrary to popular rumor, she does her own research-which here amounts to a rather superficial sifting through common primary sources to the neglect of social history, and even of Weir's study. ![]() This group biography pales, though, beside the richly informed and, however cautious, convincing (and almost identically titled) study of the same women by Alison Weir (p. ![]() ![]() Fraser (The Warrior Queens, 1989, etc.) brings her personable voice and vivid historical imagination to the six women who married Henry VIII. ![]()
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