Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Wolf Hall, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power, Ambition, and Deception
Poor Leadership and Violence
Children and Human Connection
Dogmatism vs. Open-Mindedness
Myth and Storytelling
Summary
Analysis
The artist Hans Holbein completes his portrait of Cromwell, and Cromwell “feels shy of it.” The painting shows him holding a book that is supposed to be a Bible. However, while painting him, Hans found Cromwell’s Bible to be too plain. He found a fancy-looking book for him to pose with, which was a book about keeping financial accounts. Cromwell sees his painted hand and thinks that the “motion [Hans] has captured, that folding of the fingers, is as sure as that of a slaughterman’s when he picks up the killing knife.”
While Cromwell is supposed to be holding a Bible in the portrait, he is, in actuality, holding a book about financial accounting, which suggests (correctly) that he is a man of practicality who is primarily concerned with achieving his goals rather than sticking to morals or principles. Cromwell loathes the idea that he looks like a murderer, but he cannot help seeing that this is true. His hands seem to be coiled with power and violence, which shows that he can be a dangerous man when he puts his mind to it.
Themes
When the household sees the portrait, their reactions are varied. Alice says Hans has made Cromwell look “rather stout.” Helen Barre says his “features are true enough,” but that the expression on his face is unlike him. Rafe says Cromwell saves that expression for men. Chapuys comes in to look at it and says the painter has “missed the mark” because one always thinks of Cromwell “studying the faces of other people,” never alone. However, he says Hans has succeeded in making him look formidable, which is apt. Cromwell says he thinks that a “silly little boy” called Mark who once said he looks like a murderer was right about that, and Gregory, surprised, asks him if he didn’t know it until then.
Everyone seems to have a different reaction to the portrait, thinking that it doesn’t quite capture Cromwell’s essence. This shows that Cromwell contains multitudes and that his personality cannot be reduced to a single image—he means different things to different people. However, Cromwell seems disappointed that he does, after all, look like a murderer, just like Mark Smeaton said, and Gregory confirms that he always looks like that. Cromwell doesn’t think of himself as being a man capable of such violence, but as he gains power, he has becoming gradually more menacing—which was shown in the way he threatened Harry Percy that he would ruin him financially, and in how he threatened Katherine that she might be tried for treason. Cromwell does seem to have more of a violent streak than he likes to acknowledge, even though his violence is less obvious than the physical violence of his youth.
Themes
