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- Title
'Womanhood and weakness': Elizabeth I, James I and propaganda strategy.
- Authors
Shorland, Sophie
- Abstract
Exploring popular early modern associations between 'womanhood and weakness', this article explores Elizabeth's engagement with gender as a propaganda strategy, using her speeches as examples of public engagement that stretch well beyond their original audience. Rather than framing womanhood and weakness as an issue to be overcome, in adopting a discourse‐based propaganda strategy, Elizabeth used gender to her own advantage in three ways. Firstly, she used the female subject position to claim humility while deliberately controlling public discussion of certain issues, particularly the fraught subject of succession. Secondly, this subject position of humility enabled Elizabeth to frame herself as God's instrument, performing His desires rather than her own. Such authority is much more difficult to question than any earthly ruler's commands. Third and finally, Elizabeth used the posture of 'womanhood and weakness' to excuse an unpopularly defensive foreign policy, in contrast to the aggressive policy a man in her position must apparently have undertaken. This in turn created a propaganda problem for her successor James I, who largely continued Elizabeth's foreign policies and so did not fulfil this phantom version of a male leader created by the Queen's propaganda.
- Subjects
WEAKNESS in literature; POLITICAL participation; HUMILITY; JAMES I, King of England, 1566-1625; ELIZABETH I, Queen of England, 1533-1603
- Publication
Renaissance Studies, 2020, Vol 34, Issue 2, p260
- ISSN
0269-1213
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/rest.12582