Lewalski 1993

Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Writing Women in Jacobean England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.

balkanization of women's writing

"yet these texts urgently need to be read with the full scholarly apparatus of textual analysis, historical synthesis, and literary interpretation in play, wince they come before us bare and unaccommodated, without the accretion of scholarship and critical opinion through the ages that so largely determines how we understand and value literary works." (1-2)

Jacobean court seen as hostile to women; yet we first hear Englishwomen's voices in large numbers during this period -- "breakthrough to female authorship" (3)

why?:

• "larger space for cultural activity was opened to aristocratic women when Queen Elizabeth's death removed her from the scene as an overwhelming cultural presence while leaving in place a powerful female example" (7)
• "evidence of some counterweight to patriarchy provided by female communities -- mothers and daughters, extended kinship networks, close female friends, the female entourage of Queen Anne" (8)
• patriarchal ideology shot through with "conflicting demands and loyalties" for women -- husband, father, king; conflicts "force choices and thereby foster the growth of self-consciousness" (8)

"I have more interest in resistance than subjugation, more interest in attending carefully to what these women manage to express than in reading through them (again)t he all-too-true story of what the culture managed to repress. although these women writers were subsequently ignored or suppressed, I take it that their literary gestures of resistance matter, and that those gestures (often subtly coded) have resulted in fascinating texts." (11)

Enacting Opposition: Queen Anne and the Subversions of Masquing

"Even as Prince Henry's oppositional court became a locus for reformist Protestant ideology and hopes, so the Queen's presence and court provided a locus, unstable but yet influential, of female resistance to Jacobean patriarchy." (18)

early patronage of Jonson and Inigo Jones; helped develop court masque (28)

earliest Jacobean masques are developed and "authored" in some part by Anne

• "We need not suppose contestation and subversion to be fully conscious on the Queen's or the authors' parts, or to be in the service of a consistent political agenda -- save that of enhancing the Queen's status. They are produced by the need to please multiple audiences -- King, Queen, male courtiers, court ladies -- and from the complexities of shared authorial responsibility with the Queen-patron. The effect was to subvert the representation of James as exclusive locus of power and virtue by means of texts and symbolic actions which exalted the power and virtue of the Queen and her ladies -- and, by extension, of women generally." (29)
• the court ladies' "very presence as performers makes the female body the locus of action and meaning -- in striking contrast to the public theater, where boy actors took the women's parts" (30)

Masque of Blackness, Masque of Beautie

Queen consistently invites Spanish and Venetian ambassadors, passing over French -- infuriates French ambassador and king; evidence of her Catholic / Spanish sympathies (33)

Masque of Queenes -- historical women who ruled kingdoms in their own right (37)

after 1613, Anne produced no more Christmastide court masques; Prince Henry takes charge and male dancers take center stage, with ladies "relegated to the minor roles of dancing partners" (41)

"Queen Anne's patronage and sponsorship were largely responsible for the emergence and development of that new form, the Jacobean masque, especially in its first decade; and her 'authorial' presence exercised a powerful and often subversive influence on masques and entertainments until her death." (43)

Scripting a Heroine's Role: Princess Elizabeth and the Politics of Romance

"She could not be a victorious Britomart or Pamela, but played out a narrative of struggle and final defeat. Nevertheless, by taking over and rescripting available romance roles, she located in them some space for self-definition and oppositional political action, becoming a potent symbol of resistance to Jacobean patriarchy." (45)

symbol of Protestant resistance, inspiring numerous poems, etc.

"Until her marriage she seems to have been an actor in scenes scripted by others, but showing signs of an emerging self-awareness. After it she took on deliberatively the role of warrior queen in support of the elector's claims and the cause of international Protestantism, and became for much longer the galvanizing spirit for Protestant opposition in England to James's pacific politics." (47)

her wedding to Frederick "portended a militant, pan-Protestant alliance to curb Hapsburg power and secure the Reformation" (51)

comparisons to Queen Elizabeth -- against the image of a "vacillating male King," the comparison "represents women as the true, militant defenders of English Protestant values in the decadent Jacobean world." (64)

Writing Resistance in Letters: Arbella Stuart

James claims she's eaten of the forbidden tree (87) -- c.f. with Aemilia Lanyer, apology for Eve

"Her resistance did not bring the crown within her grasp, or even permit her to realize her simplest dreams of marriage, liberty, and choice of life. Like most other Jacobean women and men, she found that the external circumstances of her life were firmly controlled by arbitrary royal and patriarchal power. But her self-presentation in her many letters registers inner resistance to and open defiance of that power. Her empowerment came from a sense of self-worth derived from lineage, education for rule, and classical learning; it manifested itself in an irrepressible wit, a keen sense of irony, and the skillful exercise of the rhetoric of disguise. Arbella Stuart's notorious rebellion offered the example of yet another royal lady challenging James's patriarchal and absolutist claims." (92)