Biography

Aidan Norrie is a Chancellor’s International Scholar in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick. Aidan is the editor, with Marina Gerzic, of From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past(Routledge, 2019), and, with Lisa Hopkins, of Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe(Amsterdam University Press, 2019). Aidan’s research focuses on the posthumous legacy of Elizabeth I, and in addition to their forthcoming monograph,Elizabeth I and the Old Testament: Biblical Analogies and Providential Rule(Arc Humanities Press), they have written multiple essays on cinematic and televisual depictions of Elizabeth.

Abstract

Elizabeth I is one of England’s most famous monarchs. This fame (or notoriety) is largely the result of her depiction as the Virgin Queen—after all, she is considered unusual for neither marrying nor having children. Few monarchs are so inseparably intertwined with their gender, or more accurately, the heteronormative and patriarchal view of their gender. For her part, Elizabeth was an expert in the performative aspect of gender, playing up her femininity when it suited her, while also not being afraid to assert her masculine side when the need arose. As such, I suggest that throughout the entirety of her reign, Elizabeth asserted her gender identity in ways that today could be described as genderfluid. Using genderfluidity as a lens through which to view Elizabeth, we can better understand why she was able to publically call herself both king and queen, prince and sovereign, which was central not only to her own conception of her role as sovereign, but also to how her subjects viewed her. No other English monarch has blurred the arbitrary gender binary like Elizabeth did; no other female monarch publically declared that they had ‘the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too’. By analysing Elizabeth’s reign through the lens of genderfluidity, the truly genderless exercise of sovereignty in early modern England is made clear, and scholars can stop using Elizabeth’s gender as a way to demonstrate her apparent alterity.