Knowledge Bank

For centuries, Catherine Howard, Fifth Queen Consort of Tudor England, has appeared in historical scholarship, literature, stage productions, and audiovisual media with a single-faceted identity: victim or perpetrator, femme fatale or “whore,” innocent or guilty. From the religious concerns of her contemporaries and the rigid social hierarchies of the Victorians to the simultaneous sympathies and sexual exploitations of modern writers, Catherine's perpetual afterlives have remolded her agency—and more broadly, women's place in history—to appease the cultural palate of the day, each unveiling not her person but the evolving moral standards and popular opinions of a period which was equal parts fascinating and impossible to comprehend.