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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