68 Babel Volume XXI
The Virgin Queen: An Examination of Elizabeth I’s Maidenhood as a Means to Power Caroline Jones Queen Elizabeth I’s reign lasted from 1558 to her death in 1603 and was largely considered to be one of the greatest in English history. She led England into prosperity despite contentions over her claim to power and ability to rule as a queen without a king. Her expertise in writing, oration, and maintaining her public image allowed her to use the parts of her reign that were most criticised to her advantage, especially in relation to her decision never to marry. She manipulated her self-presentation to allow herself to keep all of her sovereignty as a monarch and present herself as a dichotomy of the characteristically feminine devotion to her subjects and the masculine-coded capability to rule them, both of which strengthened the power she already held. Had Queen Elizabeth I married, whether an English noble or a foreign one, she would have inevitably lost much of her power and become the subservient party in the marriage. In her book, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power, Carole Levin cites one of Elizabeth’s reasons for not marrying to be that, “she...did not want to give up her control as monarch, as she surely would if she was married.”1 Levin references Elizabeth’s elder half-sister and predecessor, Mary Tudor, and her marriage to Philip II of Spain. Although Philip was Spanish and rarely in England, he, being male, possessed far greater power than Mary, despite her English birth and bloodline. Mary
