"Prudence even beyond other women" : the rhetorical maneuvers of Elizabeth I

Elizabeth Tudor (1533-1603) did not set out to better the status of women; as queen, she wanted to neither overturn nor disrupt the very system that authorized her position. Though later generations have anachronistically read her as a type of protofeminist, she saw herself as trying, within necessary constraints, to fulfill simultaneously her roles as both woman and ruler, which meant fitting into the expectations of her society in order to rule and function. However, her society found the very nature of female rule problematic and contradictory to its vision of the "natural order." To accomplish this task, Elizabeth used her extensive Humanist training in rhetoric to turn the stations of woman into a series of socially acceptable metaphors. I argue that rather than wishing to step outside of her gender Elizabeth actually immersed herself in the language of gender the better to subvert expectations and create space for her to rule.