There is something I have wondered since I was a little kid.
Queen Elizabeth I of England ruled from 1558 to 1603. She was an intelligent, wise and capable ruler. She had a great impact on the time period she was ruler–so much so that we even call that time the Elizabethan Era to this day. She had the power, it would seem, to do just about whatever she wanted. So what did she ever do for women and women’s rights?
Please keep in mind that I don’t mean this as a criticism of Queen Elizabeth. Actually I have wondered this about many female rulers of the distant past. But that would make too vague a question. So I will just focus on Elizabeth.
Well she refused to get married for one thing. This would have diluted her own power and authority. Deliberately choosing to remain single was a pretty feminist thing to do back then. By doing so, I think she provided a prototype for a powerful female head of state who was NOT dependent on a man.
Sadly, this has been true of many women who have attained political power – what did Margaret Thatcher do for women’s rights? It seems that women who’ve worked so hard to gain power often don’t feel like giving anyone else a hand-up, or perhaps they fear that their position is precarious enough without trying to advance some kind of radical agenda.
It might seem that way, but it wasn’t the case. The image of an absolute monarch capriciously making rules for the people to follow, such as forcing everyone to wear a green hat on a Tuesday or handing out the best jobs to the sisters is fictional.
No monarch at that time or since had the right to do whatever they wanted. Elizabeth I was under constant pressure from political advisors and potential rivals to her position, in fact her life was frequently under threat, not unlike the president of a Central American country in the 1970s. Diogenes the Cynic is right that refusing to marry was pretty radical in itself.
I’m sure these two suggestions are sound for many cases where female leaders have done little to promote feminism while in power.
Margaret Thatcher is an excellent example to support the first premise, and not the second. Also, it was often assumed at the time that her gender had a destabilising mental/emotional effect on the socially conservative men in her government, and that that might have been diluted if she appointed other women to high office, so she practically never did.
I was pretty young when she first became PM, but still found it frustrating how gullible women were; voting for her party in the mistaken belief that it might earn them something in return. Nevertheless, some people will tell you that the simple fact of her being a female PM enabled women to be taken more seriously than they had before. Not a universally held opinion that one.
Well, according to the historian Antonia Fraser - not much.
In her book, The Warrior Queens p. 209-210, Fraser states:
"The fact was that the ‘dread Virago’ herself had never made any effort to improve the general appraisal of woman’s worth; for cogent reasons, that was the very last of her intentions…
It was customary for her to deride her own sex along sterotyped lines, out of policy. For example, women were popularly supposed to be chatterboxes: when the Queen was congratulated on knowing six languages, she remarked wryly that it was ‘no marvel to teach a woman to talk; it were harder to teach her to hold her tongue’."
Apparently the point was for the Queen to illustrate that she was no mere common woman. By dismissing her aptitude in languages as women’s chatter, she is actually highlighting her uniqueness: how many contemporary females shared her ability at languages?
Fraser goes on to say that “The differentness of the Queen from all other female subjects was the cornerstone of her self-presentation… Firstly, she worked upon her female nature to provide a delicate, exquisite image of the lady who needed to be protected - and the goddess who had to be adored. Secondly, she presented herself as a ‘prince’.”
It seems that Elizabeth strove to walk the fine line of a “man’s heart in a woman’s body.” To identify with her female subjects would only have weakened her power considering the generally low opinion at the time of a woman’s capabilities.
Perhaps her biggest contribution was having existed after she had done so.
She certainly didn’t raise women’s status during her own reign, but her reign did make it easier for women like Catherine the Great. It did inspire some Englightenment thinkers after her time. And she continues to inspire women today.
Keep in mind that she was the product of her capricious father, her disapproving older sister, and her time. Her entire reign was one where she never felt secure in her own power (for good reasons, between Henry VIII and Elizabeth there is her brother Edward, the short lived Queen Jane - her cousin, and her sister Queen Mary - and for much of her reign the threat of Mary, Queen of Scots - who was apparently a flake, but was a candidate for the Catholics) - until she was into her fifties she managed to play a delaying marriage game to keep her throne. She was adept at court politics.
Anyone with any interest in the subject of Elizabeth should immediately rent * Elizabeth R *, the BBC series starring a perfect Glenda Jackson. It is now on DVD, with terrific commentary from various historians and an interview with Jackson.
And just as good, even better in some ways, is the BBC’s * Six Wives of Henry VIII *, starring Keith Mitchell.
I’ve seen both series in their at least a dozen times since they were first shown in the early 70’s.
That’s Keith Michell if you happen to be searching for him (pronounced like the French for Michael). In fact while I’m at it here’s the IMDb ref, and here’s Elizabeth R.
I don’t think the rights of women, or the “rights” of any individual or group, were on anybody’s agenda in the Sixteenth Century. Neither Elizabeth nor any of her supporters or critics would have thought in terms of her advancing women’s rights, or failing to do so. Had a modern time-traveller raised the issue, the question would simply not have been understood.
But once she was in the position, she excelled (inasmuch as she performed no worse than a male monarch would have). Is it possible that she proved to the men of the time the surprising fact that women were actually capable of making decisions and acting on them?
But Mary was married, so I suspect that most of her subjects would have regarded Philip and Mary as their co-rulers rather than Mary as a single head of state.
As others have noted, Elizabeth characterized herself as the Great Exception, the one woman who was allowed to hold power over men, and she didn’t do a whole lot to improve the status of ordinary women in her own time. On the other hand, she and her propagandists did have an interest in establishing that there were other successful female rulers in history. For instance, in Book III of The Faerie Queene, Spenser goes into a long summary of ancient British history which places considerable emphasis on the contributions of women – Boadicea, Cordelia of King Lear fame, etc. – and other contemporary works reflect similar concerns. So one could argue that Elizabeth consciously promoted the cause of women rulers in general, although her program didn’t extend to women’s rights in the private sphere.
I think UDS hit the nail on the head. The concept of feminism simply didn’t exist in Tudor England. One might as well ask why Elizabeth didn’t do more to further environmental protection. A woman’s loyalty was supposed to be to her family and her religion, not her gender. Moreover, most women’s lived were defined by marriage and children–things with which Elizabeth had no experience.
Antonia Fraser has written two great books on women in 16th/17th century England: The Wives of Henry VIII, which deals specifically with noblewomen, and The Weaker Vessel, which takes a broader look at women in general. They’re both fascinating and I highly recommend them.
Even if the concepts and schools of thought that we consider ‘feminism’ didnt exist, (and its probably anachronistic to use that term here) couldnt we look to see if Elizabeth did something for women that elevated their status? The premise that she knew what it was like being down a rung on the ladder because she was a woman seems fairly valid. Im curious if any legislation was enacted during her time that might have done anything for women? The only way to know is to go and look… but alas I do not have any English law books around :(.
Yes, UDS is right about the idea of ‘women’s rights’ being an anachronism.
There are, however, a couple of further points to note. The assumption so far seems to be that Elizabeth I (whether deliberately or not) challenged notions of patriarchy simply by being a success. Well, that rather depends on how far one regards her as having been a success. Many historians would now argue that her reputation at the time was not as high as her later reputation would suggest. One of the most influential academic books on her in recent years has been the collection of essays edited by Julia Walker, Dissing Elizabeth: negative representations of Gloriana (Duke University Press, 1998).
The contemporary measures of a successful monarch were (1) whether they died in their bed and (2) whether they left an heir and/or an undisputed succession. On (1), Elizabeth was clearly a success, surviving against what were arguably greater than usual threats. On (2), she was, at best, only a partial success. By refusing to marry, she ensured that throughout her reign her subjects continued to worry about the disorder which might well have followed her death. However much some historians might regard her failure to clarify the succession as skillful statescraft rather than indecision, her contemporaries did not think so. This contributed towards the general sense of crisis and failure during her final years.
Of course, her posthumous reputation was to be very different and her stock began to rise almost as soon as she was dead. Later generations undoubtedly did look back on her reign as an outstanding success. That however highlights another feature about early-modern attitudes towards women. Contemporaries were only too willing to argue that women were as capable of the same virtues as men. A woman could be just as intelligent, wise, brave and heroic as any man. No, the argument was that women’s vices tended to outweigh their virtues. It wasn’t much use if a woman was intelligent, wise, brave and heroic, if she was also frivilous, flighty and promiscuous. This allowed for the possibility that, in rare cases, a woman could master her limitations so that their virtues dominated. It was just that this was thought to be far less likely than was the case with a man. Elizabeth could be explained away as such an exception. As those of royal birth were thought to be better rulers anyway, she was also assumed to have started with advantages not shared by other women.
The case of Victoria is also worth considering. Her contemporaries were fully aware that her example might be thought to have changed the argument about the political role of women, but there is little evidence that, in practice, this made much difference. Here there is a parallel with Thatcher. The argument ‘We have a woman Prime Minister now’ wasn’t much use against entrenched misogyny in Britain in the 1980s. Opportunities for women widened for much more fundamental reasons than that.
I think that’s also due to the contrast with the Stuarts. Part of the reason that history records her as such a “good” ruler is because the Stuarts have the reputation of being “bad” rulers.
