Abstract
Good queens and bad queens constitute one of the most prominent binaries of the fairy tale genre, a contrast that is also familiar in characterizations of actual queens: Bloody Mary, Wicked Catherine de Médicis, Good Queen Bess. The mutual reinforcement of these moralistic stereotypes in literary and historical representations has contributed to their tenacity, even when fiction and fact both reveal a more complex spectrum of queenly behavior.
“The king was on very intimate terms with a fairy, and he went to see her in order to express the uneasiness he felt concerning his daughters. … Id like you to make three distaffs out of glass for my daughters. And Id like you to make each one so artfully that it will break as soon as the daughter to whom it belongs does anything against her honor.”
—Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier, “The Discreet Princess; or The Adventures of Finette”
“The lightness of women cannot bend the honour of men.”
—Francois I’s letter consoling Henry VIII about Katherine Howard’s alleged infidelity
“After saying this, he ordered [the queen] to be thrown into the very same fire she had built for Talia.”
—Basile, “Sun, Moon, and Talia”
“Burn the whore! … Burn her, burn her, she is not worthy to live, kill her, drown her!”
—bystanders in Edinburgh when Mary, Queen of Scots was taken prisoner in 1567
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Notes
Ctd. in Leonie Frieda, Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 240.
Max Lüthi, The Fairy Tale as Art Form and Portrait of Man, trans. Jon Erickson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, 4–5.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 38.
Thomas Becon, Prayers and Other Pieces of Thomas Becon (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968), 227–28.
John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (New York: Da Capo Press, 1972), 14. For Elizabeth’s response to Knox,
see Anne McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth 1558–1585 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For another view on the connection between the female body and female power,
see Susan Dunn-Hensley, “Whore Queens: The Sexualized Female Body of the State,” in “High and Mighty Queens’ of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations,” eds. Carole Levin, Debra Barrett-Graves, and Jo Carney (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 101–16.
John Aylmer, An Harborowe for Faithfull and Trewe Subjectes, against the Late Blowne Blaste, concerning the Government of Women (London: Printed byJohn Day, 1559).
Although most contemporary scholars maintain that Anne was innocent of the charges against her, the notable exception is G. W. Bernard, who has written extensively on the subject. See Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). For a discussion of the flaws in Bernard’s argument, see Retha Warnicke, Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners, chapter 2 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Louis Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 13.
Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of A King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 68–69.
Sara Mendelson, “Popular Perceptions of Elizabeth,” in Elizabeth: Always Her Own Free Woman, eds. Carole Levin, D. Barrett-Graves, and Jo Carney (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 192–214.
Paul E. J. Hammer, “Sex and the Virgin Queen: Aristocratic Concupiscence and the Court of Elizabeth I,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 31 no.1 (Spring 2000), 77–97.
There are numerous books on Mary Stuart, but among the most useful are Jayne Elizabeth Lewis, Mary, Queen of Scots: Romance and Nation (New York: Routledge, 1998);
Kristen Post Walton, Catholic Queen, Protestant Patriarchy: Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Politics of Gender and Religion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007);
Jenny Wormald, Mary, Queen of Scots: Pride, Passion, and a Kingdom Lost (London: Tauris Parke, 2001). Antonia Fraser’s biography, somewhat dated and romanticized, is still helpful. Mary, Scots (New York: Delacorte Press. 1969).
Knecht, R. J., Catherine de’ Medici (New York: Longman, 1998), 235. For an overview of the literary and political construction of Catherine as “wicked queen,” see Elaine Kruse, “The Woman in Black: The Image of Catherine de Medici from Marlowe to Queen Margot,” in “High and Mighty Queens,” 223–37.
Eliane Viennot, Marguerite de Valois: “La Reine Margot” (Paris: Editions Perrin, 2005);
Cathleen M. Bauschatz, “Plaisir et proffict’ in the Reading and Writing of Marguerite de Valois,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 7, no.1 (Spring 1988), 27–48;
Patricia Cholakian, “Marguerite de Valois and the Problematics of Self-Representation,” in Renaissance Women Writers, French Texts/American Contexts, eds. Anne Larsen and Colette Winn (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 67–81.
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© 2012 Jo Eldridge Carney
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Carney, J.E. (2012). The Queen’s Body: Promiscuity at Court. In: Fairy Tale Queens. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137269690_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137269690_7
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