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Queen Elizabeth Patriarchy Essay

Decent Essays

There are many women over the ages that would be called feminist. Those would be the women (and even men) that stood up and face the oppressors of women’s rights head on, but the backed justice to have an open dialogue has only been around for about a hundred years. Before that time you were likely to be imprisoned or killed. To get around this patriarchy, women like Queen Elizabeth and Elizabeth Cary, borrowed the old poetic device of allegory. The argument I’m going to present is that these women, through their allegories, helped paved the way for women’s rights and political power. Born in 1533, Elizabeth I came into the world with a promise and blessings. Shakespeare would later put prophetic words into her grandfather’s mouth saying, “This royal infant—heaven still move about her— / though in her cradle, yet now promises. / Upon this land a thousand …show more content…

You have a woman, a queen, a ruler of British Empire, and surrounding her were aristocrats, priests, judges, and generals, all who were men. There were some that loved her, and treasured her, but there were plenty that loathed the idea of taking commands from a woman. When she wrote the poem, The Doubt of Future Foes, it is clear that Mary, “The daughter of debate” (Elizabeth I, 134), her half-sister, was the main focus, but I also feel it was written to others within her count that whispered tales of uprising. I have two areas of support. The first was that she, Elizabeth, made the poem public for all to see. If it was just for her half-sister, why not just give it to just her. No, I feel she was making a political statement here. She was showing her authority, and perhaps knowledge of ill-plots that surrounds her. The second comes from one line in the poem. “To pull their tops who seek such change” (Elizabeth I, 134). The word “Tops” heavily suggests that there was more than one person in her mind when she wrote

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