Eng 117 - Blog 7

As I will be in Ireland this weekend, I thought I should get this blog out of the way before hand. :)

I just read the Elizabeth Southwell writing. It is funny that the writing is called "A True Relation of What Succeeded at the Sickness and Death of Queen Elizabeth". This is funny because the whole thing is based on superstition. 

According to Southwell's writing, Elizabeth died of one of two reasons. Elizabeth was completely healthy until she received the necklace that was said to kept another woman alive for 120 years. I am pretty doubtful that a woman in the early 1600's lived to 120 years, but I guess they believed it. So this health charm, made Elizabeth sick, according to this essay.

This essay also mentions a voodoo doll type item. Elizabeth's ladies found a queen of hearts card under Elizabeth's chair with a nail going through the forehead of it. Southwell probably believed that this was a cause of Elizabeth's illness, as well as I am sure a lot of other people did too at the time. 

I looked briefly online at the sources of her death, and I guess we do not really know exactly. It was probably just simply old age, since she was 70 years old. But people will believe what they want to believe, as well as what others believe in their time. And since I cannot prove otherwise, I guess I should not rule these theories out. 

This will stand in time as possible reasons: unlucky charm necklaces and voodoo dolls.

Eng 117 - Blog 6

I am looking at the Giacometti Elizabeth play and one thing I find funny so far, is Elizabeth's view of Leicester. I am only a 1/3 of the way through this play, so her feelings about him might be different in the parts I haven't read yet, but so far they are not positive.

I have gotten so used to seeing Leicester as the man she loves. She never looked at him in negative in our readings so far, but here, her love interest has been moved to Essex, and she speaks of Leicester as a traitor. 

This happens in the play when she gets a letter from him, where he speaks like a king. She is offended that he thinks he is so "high up the ladder", or in her terms, "eyes upwards towards the clouds." 

That is not really significant, but I thought it sounds a little funny and out of place from what we've read and seen of their relationship. But this play is quite different in its depiction of Elizabeth from most works we've looked at so far, and this is just a simple example of that.

Eng 117 - Blog 5

After reading Elizabeth's speech to the troops, the poem by Thomas Deloney and some of the Author's intro about this event, I feel like some things do not match up again.

Just like when we talked about how Elizabeth is always portrayed in one of two very different ways, great Queen, or beautiful romantic woman, I am seeing the same thing here.

In the intro, it is explained that this act of joining the troops was great for Elizabeth's career. People saw her as a mighty warrior. The people of England imagined what she must have looked like with armor on. The speech she gave was very strong and warrior-like. She told her men she is willing to die just like they are for her country. This is the tough warrior Queen Elizabeth.

But Thomas Deloney sees and portrays her very differently in his poem. What I got out of the poem, was that she showed up to the battle field, but not to fight. She is there to encourage her men by being beautiful and important. She does not eat like the troops do, but instead her usual royal dinner in safety; she is there with her lords and ladies, all wearing diamonds. 

At the end, the poem says "passed away", which to us sounds like death, but I think it just means that she left. 

Anyway, again, we have these discrepancies. I guess they are not really discrepancies, just different ways of viewing the same event, but with Elizabeth, the pattern continues of not being able to show both roles in literature, but always either one or the other.

Eng 117 - Blog 4

Young Elizabeth in Peril.

This was a very interesting essay to read. The author first explained Elizabeth's real history, and then compared it to how it is shown in the media, both of her time and today. 

It is interesting that the author points out how Elizabeth is never portrayed as both a great queen and an emotional person with a love life. She is always depicted as one or the other. The authors of her day, the ones who wrote about her either in her life-time or just after she died, showed her as the great queen. Since the advent of film, directors have chosen Elizabeth as a great character for love stories. In these movies, she is shown as weak and blinded by love.

The one that is perhaps the most ridiculous, is the 1953 Young Bess movie. This one is probably the most historically incorrect. It tells of a time in history when Elizabeth is 13 years old. The movie shows her as a young adult instead, in love with her stepmothers husband. 

It is pretty ridiculous how Hollywood twists history to make their good story. But this essay doesn't cover a book like The Virgin's Lover, which did exactly the same thing. Gregory goes far enough to describe the sex scenes between Elizabeth and Sir Robert, when we do not know if that ever actually happened. 

In our day and age, stories and love and sex are what sell. It's a good thing Elizabeth isn't alive today to see it, because I don't think she would approve of this image of her!

Eng 117 - Blog 3

I found the first poem interesting. It is Elizabeth reflecting on when she was young and how she would turn away suitors. 

She says that when she was young, she had so many suitors and she turned them all away. She had told them to go look somewhere else. So cupid came, and he told her that since she is so unresponsive (a synonym to coy on the Apple dictionary), he ripped out her feathers, her beauty, and she now never has to turn her suitors away. Now she regrets that she turned them all away.

They reason I found this interesting is for how she viewed herself as turning suitors away, but as we talked about in class, it seems like she never actually turned anyone away. She kept each suitor close. Close enough to hold on to their strings, but far enough that she never promised marriage.

Maybe she meant that she turned them away in the simple sense of never marrying them. Maybe she wrote this poem because she felt like she missed good chances. Maybe she wrote it to make it look like she turned them away, and not look like she took advantage of them. Or maybe she really felt exactly what she said, although its hard to believe that she didn't know what she was doing when she was playing her games on these men... she knew.

Eng 117 - Blog 2

Today I will write about Amy in The Virgin's Lover.

I just feel terrible for her position. In class we talked about her and some people mentioned they were annoyed at her character because she will not do anything to defend her situation, but I just feel bad for her. 

She is a woman who lived at a time where she could not have done anything. She was at her husbands bid. That is just how it was. She could not choose to go visit him at court unless he summoned her. She could not go against his orders. It was just not done. I think Gregory's Amy was already too bold for her time to say all the things she had said to Robert. She yelled at him, she spoke ill of the queen, and she told him of her true religion. Robert was shocked when she said these things because it was not a normal thing for a woman to say. 

Amy was also blinded with her love for him. I think we've seen our friends do stupid things and done them ourselves because we could not control our logic over our emotions. This woman is in love with Robert stronger than any other love described in this book. She even starts to go crazy in the end, when after Robert tells her he wants a divorce to marry the Queen, she tells William Hyde that Robert is a great husband and everything is hunky-dory. She is physically ill from her mental ache, and its been proven that great stress can make a person physically ill. 

Basically, I feel sorry for her. I honestly don't think there is anything she could have done to make her situation good. Robert was unstoppable in his quest for the top, and upon getting up there, she had no way to bring him back down. The only thing she could have done to make her life better was a divorce and settlement so that she could live in peace from his mistreatment and one day get over him. But she could not do that, of course, because of her religion and her pride. 

Over and Out

117 – Post 1

Q: What is up with Sir Roberts ego!?

I am just halfway through the book, and the character that provokes my thoughts is Robert. His inability to choose one woman is fascinating, (in a he’s kind of a pig kind of way.)

Robert had married Amy for love. He loved her when he was 16. Now it is 10 years later, and it is obvious he does not love her anymore. He is falling in love with Elizabeth, with at first just being a strong infatuation, but it now seems like he is really in love with her. He knows he will not have her as his wife, so he holds on to her, but will not let go of his wife either.

With Amy, it seems to me that he just cannot let go of the attention he gets from her. I know divorce was not an easy thing to do back then like today, but I think he likes women being completely devoted to him. I think he takes pleasure in knowing that she would do anything for him, so he keeps her by a thin thread so that she keeps attached, without him putting in much effort, and does not make the moves to leave him.

Oh Robert, silly Robert. He knows too, that he is creating so many enemies, but he does not care, because his ego is bigger than his fear of enemies.