Queen Elizabeth I and her androgynous public persona.

Abstract

Queen Elizabeth I of England (c. 1533-1603) has attracted many historians. She was the last Tudor to carry on Henry VIII's bloodline and rule England. She has often been condemned for her actions as queen, such as remaining unmarried and having horrific mood swings. Elizabethan writers Sir Francis Bacon and William Camden portrayed Elizabeth as a successful monarch, despite what had been categorized as her flaws. Some three hundred years later, Elizabethan scholars painted Elizabeth as an unstable monarch, blaming it on the fact that she was a woman. However, more recently, Carole Levin has offered Elizabethan historiography a new view-that Elizabeth was both a king and queen, for she could not deny her biological sex, but needed to act male in order to survive. Therefore, Levin portrays Elizabeth as having two body politics, one female and one male. Elizabeth invents the female body politic, for she did not buy into the patriarchal hierarchy. Instead, she created a body politic that would not make her forget her gender, but allowed her to use her femininity in government affairs. But what can't be ignored is Elizabeth's acknowledgment of both her femininity and royalty, which had been defined as masculine or primarily a male role. As Levin points out, she did utilize both traits; however, it is the objective of this work to argue that Elizabeth combined them into one and created an androgynous persona. Elizabeth herself made efforts to demonstrate her femininity and royalty through her writings, speeches, and daily actions. Her writings, speeches, and erratic behavior indicate a continual use of her femaleness, or acting how the males around her expected, as well as an emphasis on her royal heritage show her as an androgynous monarch. Thus, the sources for this study will be defined in two categories: first, those that show Elizabeth was acting feminine, or passive and polite, and second those that show Elizabeth employing royal traits-traits commonly defined as active and demanding. Elizabeth's androgynous persona set her apart from all traditional stereotypes of monarchy, and consequently redefined the role of a queen-a queen could now rely on herself to make decisions, instead of ha':.!-l}g to do as the male councilors ordered.