Margaret of Anjou

Women frequently did exert and hold power in some type of fashion during the early modern period, even if not always occupying high positions of authority, because the public and private sphere, in reality, have never been and still are not distinctly separate from one another. However, it is, in some ways, easier to access narratives of power and gender through the few women who served as rulers simply because they lived majorly within the public eye. One such woman was Margaret of Anjou, the Queen Consort of England during the mid-fifteenth century. After her marriage to King Henry VI of England in 1445, she started to use her position for her own aims, acting as patron to Queen’s College in 1448 and actively participating in governmental matters, even monitoring and soliciting taxes, possibly in favor of her allies at court. Her agency was bolstered coincidentally by an illness (or the insanity) of her husband and the birth of her son. Her son, as an heir to throne, enabled her to have a stronger stake in it, while her husband’s absence gave her a freedom to pursue political objectives on his behalf but of her own choosing, including a strong support of the Lancaster side in the Wars of Roses. She was a strategist and played a leadership role in the conflict, executing policies that disfavored the Yorkists, garnering Scottish friendship, and attempting to bring French forces into the mix on the side of the Lancaster.

Thus, she was a strong female figure, one who acted as a diplomat and a political leader even within foreign courts, playing a large governance role during a time of war in order to protect her own political allegiances and impetuses connected to the Lancastrian party. However, women, in such a role, often received critiques of their power through connections of sexuality and their gender. For instance, Margaret of Anjou, in regards to her only son and heir to the throne, was accused of birthing an illegitimate child. Although obviously connected to a means through which her rivals could denounce her child’s claim and thus, in some ways, her own claim to rule, the suggestion of an affair on her part relates to an overall trend that women in power were often criticized through sexuality and due to a sense of gender transgression. In turn, the accusations align with the instability of England at the time. However, Margaret of Anjou appeared to promote a confident image of herself during the instability, and some of her letters survive, of which seem to be mostly to men in positions of authority, that attest to her agency as a woman.

Sources:

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/medbritishqueens/p/margaret_anjou.htm

http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/margaretanjou.htm

Link to see the letters: Letters of Queen Margaret of Anjou and Bishop Beckington and others. Edited by Cecil Monro. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DyxTAAAAcAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=margaret+of+anjou&ots=gziHb0FdTP&sig=OQLH4ds91vleCc6LoQ_iUugbbZM#v=onepage&q=margaret%20of%20anjou&f=false

 Image: http://lauramckeever.hubpages.com/hub/Margaret-of-Anjou-Queen-Consort-of-Henry-VI