When Women Ruled the World: The Glorious Sixteenth Century
Quilligan, Marueen
Early Modern Culture, No. 5 (2006)
Abstract
From approximately the middle of the 16th century to close to its end, France and England were ruled by two very powerful queens, Catherine de Médicis and Elizabeth I. During this time, Catherine’s daughter-in-law Mary Stuart, who had been briefly Queen of France, ruled as Queen of Scotland until deposed and then imprisoned for eighteen years by Elizabeth. She was beheaded by Elizabeth’s government in 1587, two years before the death of Catherine de Médicis.
We know a great deal about the relations between Elizabeth and Mary, first cousins once removed, and their long contestation for control over an island that they shared as legitimate anointed queens. We know far less about Elizabeth’s relations with Catherine, who was not only Mary’s powerful first mother-in-law, but also the potential mother-in-law of Elizabeth on two separate occasions. The story of Elizabeth and Mary is traditionally narrated as a personal rivalry between two very different women rather than a drama the two shared in which the political difficulties inherent in female rule are manifested, a drama in which these two contestants may have had more sympathy and understanding for each other than we have supposed. Elizabeth’s notorious reluctance to accede to pressure to execute Mary clearly owed much to the former’s sense of her shared female governorship with a “sister” queen.
Click here to read/download this article (HTML file)
Related posts:
- “Remembering Cynthia: The Legacy of Elizabeth I in the Poetry of Aemilia Lanyer and Diana Primrose”
- ‘Effeminate Dayes’
- The Rhetoric of Mortality: Elizabeth I’s Use of Death
- The End Is Not Yet: Monarchy, Choice, and the Problematic Binaries of Representation
- Authorized Discourse at the Kenilworth Entertainments