Anna Whitelock. The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court. New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2013.
Before encountering Anna Whitelock's The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court, few readers would have known anything about the private life of the English monarch. Those who wished to know might have unearthed numerous primary and secondary sources speculating on the Queen's private life, but none that covered the topic in as much detail, totality, or integrity as Whitelock achieves in The Queen's Bed. This book offers readers an impressive analysis of why Elizabeth's private life is important from a historical standpoint, showing how her private life offers clues to the queen's character and to the historical and political context in which she lived. Moreover, Whitelock shows how the private life of the queen became the source of scandal and rumor linked to overarching attempts to dethrone her; attempts related to domestic squabbles, wars of religious ideology, and power struggles throughout Western Europe.
Summary
Whitelock begins the narrative with a striking anecdote in the prologue, detailing the cause for rumors of a teen pregnancy ending in infanticide. Yet Whitelock avoids sensationalizing the facts, instead presenting them as pieces in a larger puzzle to Elizabeth's character as a leader and particularly as a woman in a position of power in a patriarchal society. Whitelock reminds her readers throughout the book that the queen was self-conscious of her power, and particularly of the central importance of her body to the "body politic."
Early chapters of the book address foundational elements. For example, Whitelock uses the prologue to show why the book is important in the first place: the private world of the queen is not just about sordid details and gossip but about politics. The private life of the queen mad a strong bearing on national security, the public trust in their leader, and perceptions of the queen by her political enemies domestically and abroad. The prologue, entitled "Shameful Scandals" also discusses in depth the importance of rumors related to the queen's private life. For Elizabeth, rumors related to her sexuality and her sexual relationships started at a young age. As soon as she reached puberty, Elizabeth began flirting and likely having sex with her stepfather, Thomas Seymour. This opening anecdote sets the tone for the remainder of the historiography, for not only does the reader learn more about Elizabeth's predilections toward sexual freedom, independence, and self-determination, but also about the ways she could not use her queenly powers to subvert gender roles and norms in medieval England.
The first chapters of the book discuss practical issues like those of the queen's beds, for she had more than one of course. Her beds were more than the place in which she laid down to rest each evening; her beds had a unique political importance assigned to no other bed in the realm. Most of them spoke to the tremendous wealth and power that had been and was still being amassed by the budding empire during the early days of globalization and world trade. For example, the Queen would sleep on exotic silks, gold tassels, and hand painted fabrics from far-off realms like India. In this sense, the Queen's bed testified to the power of Britain as well as to her personal power.
Also symbolic about the Queen's bed was what it meant for the division and compartmentalization of her life. The Queen presented her regal face to the public in her daily political and social affairs. When she retired to her bedchambers in the evening, she would strip off some of the veneers of her public life and then she could become more honest and more real yet no less a Queen. She also enjoyed little privacy but seemed not to care; she had attendants with her in her bedchambers every evening, even some that would stay by her all night to counsel her if she could not sleep or had bad dreams.
The meat of Whitelock's text draws bridges between the queen's bedchambers and her political life; between her private body and the body politic. There are chapters focusing on the Queen's personality and also on her strongest political enemies and the numerous assassination attempts upon the Queen. A large portion of The Queen's Bed is about the royal chambermaids and female bed companions that served unique roles in the queen's personal cabinet. The role of the bed companions was all-encompassing: they would provide her with advice about personal relationships and comportment, even helping the queen make decisions about...
The bed companions also helped the queen maintain her reputation in spite of the rumors related to her sexuality, by testifying to her chastity, the most important element of the Queen's honor and respectability. After all, "for an unmarried woman, chastity was everything ... the equivalent of all virtue," (5). The fact that the Queen remained unmarried her whole life may have been one of the biggest scandals of all and source of many rumors.
Whitelock addresses the difficult subject of the natural aging process and how her physical appearance impacted the queen and perceptions of the queen. When she was young, the Queen was strikingly attractive and Whitelock asserts Elizabeth must have been aware of the power she had over men. When she came of age, years before she took the throne, Elizabeth was described as "simple yet striking" with her "fair skin, reddish-gold hair ... and piercing coal-black eyes," (1). She ascended to the throne at 25 years of age, and records show the queen did not age gracefully. She suffered from premature hair loss and her skin began to look old rapidly. With the help of her chambermaids, Elizabeth managed to preserve an image of herself as youthful and fair, by ensuring that all portraits portrayed her as such. Maintaining tight control over her image was integral to her political relations campaign and fulfilled the need to show that she was somehow superhuman. On the contrary, an aging queen undermined faith in her overall health, which is why Whitelock makes a point of lingering on these details of the Queen's personal life.
The Queen's Bed also delivers, as promised, an account of who the Queen flirted with, who she may have bedded, and who wished to bed her and marry her as well. Ultimately, Whitelock proves her hypothesis that Queen Elizabeth had always been firmly in control of her sexuality, and used this level of personal control as an adjunct to her political power.
Critique/Evaluation
The Queen's Bed is a fairly lengthy tome weighing in at just shy of 500 pages, testifying to the bulk of evidence related to the centrality of the queen's personal and sexual life. Moreover, The Queen's Bed links the matter of royal sexuality with issues related to gender and politics. The result is a book that offers historians much better insight into the character of its leaders and the contextual variables that influenced those leaders' behaviors and decisions.
Whitelock, a historian and director of the Centre for Public History, Heritage and Engagement with the Past at the University of London, specializes in the history of the English monarchy focusing on the Tudor era and the important intersections between political power, religion, and gender. Therefore, The Queen's Bed tucks in neatly into the author's corner of expertise. One of the primary strengths of The Queen's Bed is the author's ability to draw attention to these nodes of intersection without straying from the solidly historiographical approach. In other words, the author addresses gender issues without making The Queen's Bed a book about gender. The book fits squarely into the history category. Having said that, The Queen's Bed could have benefitted from further in-depth discussions about the views on homosexuality prevalent in Elizabeth's day. The author talks about the political and social benefits from having female bedmates, but does not offer Elizabeth the benefit of enjoying sexual relations with her chambermaids. Regardless, Whitelock does stress the importance of trust in the relationships the Queen has with her chambermaids. The chambermaids possess a great deal of power over the queen in that they are privy to information that is known by no other person in the realm; trust was of the essence.
Another strength of The Queen's Bed is the author's linking sexuality, gender, and politics. Elizabeth was the progeny of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, one of the most infamous unions in British history and perhaps world history. As Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth was declared an "illegitimate child," and as such, it is remarkable in its own way that she ascended legitimately to the throne of the highest position of power in the realm. Moreover, Whitelock makes a point to mention the symbolic importance of her status. Elizabeth symbolized the shift toward a Protestant England and the break with the Roman Catholic Church. This break had a strong bearing on England's relationship with its Catholic neighbors, France and Spain, and the balance of power in Western Europe. Whitelock makes good use of the ample primary source documents in…
