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‘Womanhood and weakness’: Elizabeth I, James I and propaganda strategy
Author(s) -
Shorland Sophie
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
renaissance studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1477-4658
pISSN - 0269-1213
DOI - 10.1111/rest.12582
Subject(s) - humility , framing (construction) , subject (documents) , ruler , weakness , sociology , foreign policy , law , political science , history , politics , medicine , anatomy , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , library science , computer science
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.