Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation

by Susan Frye

Elizabeth I is perhaps the most visible woman in early modern Europe, yet little attention has been paid to what she said about the difficulties of constructing her power in a patriarchal society. This revisionist study examines her struggle for authority through the representation of her female body. Based on a variety of extant historical and literary materials, Frye's interpretation focuses on three representational crises spaced fifteen years the London coronation of 1559, the Kenilworth entertainments of 1575, and the publication of The Faerie Queene in 1590. In ways which varied with social class and historical circumstance, the London merchants, the members of the Protestant faction, courtly artists, and artful courtiers all sought to stabilize their own gendered identities by constructing the queen within the "natural" definitions of the feminine as passive and weak. Elizabeth fought back, acting as a discursive agent by crossing, and thus disrupting, these
definitions. She and those closely identified with her interests evolved a number of strategies through which to express her political control in terms of the ownership of her body, including her elaborate iconography and a mythic biography upon which most accounts of Elizabeth's life have been based. The more authoritative her image became, the more vigorously it was contested in a process which this study examines and consciously perpetuates.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1993

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The debate over who was responsible for Elizabeth's image(s) as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, continues. Frye takes one of the more subtle views and examines the way the very contestation of images created the representations we still hold today.

Taking an overtly feminist stance, Frye especially explores the role of gender and Elizabeth's own agency, and the way she both worked within contemporary gender roles while simultaneously problematising them.

This is especially good on the 1590s, the difficult last decade of Elizabeth's reign, when she turned 60 and yet still appeared in her portraits as the immortal beauty. Frye's readings take in literary representations (e.g. The Faerie Queene) as well as painted images.

This is imaginative as well as rigorous, suggestive and provocative, and well-worth reading for anyone working in this field.

[Candy Wood]

For readers of Shakespeare's plays, this book is a reminder of the importance of acting and performance in the politics of Queen Elizabeth's court throughout her reign. Susan Frye focuses on three events--the aldermen's pageant welcoming the new queen to London in 1559, the entertainments at Robert Dudley's Kenilworth in 1575, and the publication of the first three books of Spenser's Faerie Queene in 1590 (as well as other events of the 1590s)--to show how Elizabeth increasingly gained control over the ways she was represented. Building on the work of many other scholars and carefully examining contemporary texts (so that notes and bibliography occupy a quarter of this book's pages), Frye establishes Elizabeth's resistance to the court's prevailing masculine discourse of domination and even rape. The reproduction of black and white images in the paperback edition could be clearer, but that is a minor flaw in an otherwise informative book.

[Joy Sterrantino · Rating 3 out of 5]

A must read for anyone interested in Queen Elizabeth I's reign and the complex relationships she had with the court, other countries, and her own people as a female monarch.