Performance, politics, and queenship: rhetorical strategies of Tudor mothers, daughters, and sisters

Abstract

This project explores how four Tudor queens utilized performance and written rhetoric to gain and maintain power, as well as how their efforts influenced their daughters and kingdoms. Chapter One centers around Catherine of Aragon and her performance as queen in comparison to Vives's prescriptive Education of a Christian Woman. Although Vives's text was meant to be an instructional manual for women (specifically noble women), Aragon's performance as queen, due to the social and political aspects of this role, often went against what Vives wrote. This resulted in a performative negotiation between how a noble woman and a queen consort should conduct herself within the socio-political sphere. In Chapter Two, I outline how Katherine Parr utilized her published works to gain and maintain her influence within the court and with the current reigning monarch. Psalms and Prayers aided in establishing Parr's positionality as a legitimate queen and capable partner to Henry during the beginning years of their marriage and her regency. Her later work, Lamentation of a Sinner, sought to maintain the influence that she had gained within a court that she no longer had a strong position over, during her step-son's reign. Chapter Three compares the rhetorical strategies of Mary I and Elizabeth I, as reflected in state papers and personal accounts, to read their queenly performances as potentially complementary, rather than competitive, and to explore how both women learned from their predecessors. This chapter discusses specific instances where Mary and Elizabeth pull on specific examples set by Aragon and Parr that help them to maintain and grow the influence that they each believe to be their divine right. From a historical perspective, each of the Henrician queens have received an increase in attention throughout the last twenty years. Scholars such as Micheline White, Christy Beemer, Rebecca Quoss-Moore, and Janel Muller have worked in recent years to increase our collective knowledge of how rhetoric was utilized by early modern queens, as well as how this usage influenced other writers and women of this period. Aragon and Parr were, as this thesis argues, incredibly influential for how Mary and Elizabeth crafted their queenly identities. Although both women certainly sought to establish governmental contiguity by invoking the image of their father, they more subtly and, I would argue even more effectively, were able to maintain their positionality and power through utilizing the rhetorical strategies of Aragon and Parr. The queenly education provided by their predecessors ensured that both Mary and Elizabeth would learn how to rule effectively in a male-dominated society.