Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship (33 page)

40. Sara Mendelson, “Stuart Women’s Diaries and Occasional Memoirs,” in 
Women in English Society 1500–1800,
 ed. Mary Prior 
(
New York: Methuen, 1985), 196.

41. Qtd. in Crawford, 96 and n131.

42. Countess of Bridgewater, “Meditations,” qtd. in Mendelson and Crawford, 152.

43. See Tucker, chapter 4, “It’s a Girl!” for a fascinating discussion of gender preference in early modern births. As Tucker points out, “The early modern preference for boys was so acute that the birth of a girl was often synonymous with infertility,” 80. Tucker also points out that “Despite the unrelenting cultural preference for boys and the potential threats and criticisms directed at those who do not produce them, mothers in d’Aulnoy’s tales often wish for girls and make efforts to ensure that they conceive them,” 85.

44. Robert Lindsay, 
History and Chronicles of Scotland,
 ed. A. Mackay (Scottish Text Society, 1904), vol. 1, 406.

45. 
State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler,
 ed. A. Clifford (Edinburgh, 1809), 88.

46. Sadler, 253.

47. 
L & P,
 vol. 7, April 12, 1534. Item 469.

48. 
CSP Venice,
 vol. 6, pt. 2, May 13, 1557. Item 884. See also Anna Riehl’s discussion of royal aversion to physical defects in 
The Face
of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I
 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 24–25, 31–32.

49. 
Letters of Henrietta Maria,
 ed. M. A. E. Green (London: 1857), 17–18.

50. 
Ambassades de Messieurs de Noailles en Angleterre,
 ed. R. Aubert de Vertot d’Aubeuf, 5 vols. Leyden, 1763, vol. iv, 26.

51. 
CSP Foreign Mary,
 June 6, 1555. Item 383. Claire Jowitt discusses how clergyman John Ponet’s invective against the Marian regime, 
A Short Treatise of Politike Power,
 reflects an awareness of Mary’s phantom pregnancies, the rumors of themonstrous or molar birth, and the substitution plot. According to Jowitt, “It seems that whereas Knox’s description of Mary’s sinfulness had been a non-physical reflection of her inward sinfulness (her Catholicism), in Ponet’s descriptions this sinfulness is made manifest by the body of the misconceived child.” “‘Monsters and Straunge Births’: The Politics of Richard Eden. A Response to Andrew Hadfield,” 
Connotations
 6, no.1 (1996/97), 51–64.

52. Sander, 132.

53. Cholakian, 240.

54. King, 59–63.

55. Paster, 166–214; also Audrey Eccles, 
Obstetrics and Gynecology in Tudor and Stuart England.
 Kent, OH: (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1982).

56. Nicholas Culpepper, 
A Directory for Midwives, or a Guide for Women in Their Conception, Bearing, and Suckling of Their Children
 (London: 1666–1667).

57. Sharp, 75.

58. Sadler, 
The Sick Woman’s Private Looking-Glasse
 , 12.

59. The notion that it was necessary for a woman to experience sexual pleasure during intercourse in order to conceive had a detrimental impact on rape cases; if women became pregnant as a result of the rape, it was difficult for them to prove that it was not consensual. See Crawford, 82.

60. Paster, 166–68.

61. Sharp, 85.

62. Qtd. in Paster,171.

63. Sharp, 85.

64. Sharp provides a detailed account of the various types of moles; she also points out that “there are many other things bred in the womb sometimes besides these Moles” including a child who turned to stone. Such monstrosities, she points out, are not uncommon: “As for Monsters of all sorts to be formed in the womb all nations can bring some examples: Worms, Toades, Mice, Serpents,” 86–87.

65. Fissell, 65.

66. Sharp, 85.

67. Maurizio Calbi. 
Approximate Bodies: Gender and Power in Early Modern Drama and Anatomy
 (New York: Routledge, 2005), 187.

68. See Fred Taussig, “The History of Mole Pregnancy.” 
Medical Library and Historical Journal
 5, no. 4 (December 1907), 25–59.

69. See A. Altieri, et. al., “Gestational Trophoblatic Disease: Epidemiology, Clinical Manifestations, and Diagnosis,” 
Lancet Oncology
 4, no. 11 (2003), 670.

70. Calbi, 182.

71. 
CSP Spain,
 vol.13, July 29, 1554. Item 442.

72. In Foxe, “Prayers Made for Queen Mary’s Child,” vol. 6, 583.

73. 
CSP Spain,
 vol.13, August 12, 1554. Item 442.

74. 
CSP Spain,
 vol.11, November 17, 1553.

75. 
CSP Spain,
 vol. 4, pt. 2, September 10, 1533. Item 1124.

76. 
Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII: Selections of Despatches Written by the Venetian Ambassador Sebastian Giustiniani,
 ed. Rawdon Brown (London, 1854), 179–182.

77. Sir John Dewhurst, “The Alleged Miscarriages of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn,”
Medical History
 28, no. 1 (1984), 49–56.

78. Eric Ives, Retha Warnicke, and David Starkey among others agree that Anne had three pregnancies: Eric Ives, 
The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn,
 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004); David Starkey, 
Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII
 (New York: Harper Collins, 2003); Retha Warnicke, 
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn
 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

79. Warnicke, 
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn,
 191.

80. Sander, 132.

81. Retha Warnicke, 
Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners
 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 33.

82. Ibid., 34.

83. 
CSP Spain,
 vol, 5, pt. 2, February 17, 1536. Item 21. Warnicke and Ives disagree about the dating of this dispatch: Warnicke, 196–200 and Ives, 410, n. 27. A second translation of this letter by Pascual de Gayangos describes the miscarried child not as “male” but as “nude.” However, this is most likely a mistranslation. In the preface to his two-volume biography of Anne Boleyn, Paul Friedmann offers a useful history of the Chapuys correspondence and the challenges its texts and transcriptions present to scholars. Friedmann claims that the Gayangos translation in general is rife with inaccuracies: 
Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History 1527–1536
,2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1886–1884), xi. I am grateful to Amanda Wunder, Jodi Bilinkoff, and Tom Mayer for their assistance on the discrepancy between these two translations.

84. 
CSP Spain,
 vol. 10, January 29, 1536. Item 13.

85. Charles Wriothesley, 
A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors from A.D. 1485 to 1559,
 ed., Camden Society (London: 1874), 33.

86. 
L & P,
 vol.10, March 22, 1536. Item 528.

87. Cressy, 26. 

4 Men, Women, and Beasts: Elizabeth I and Beastly Bridegrooms

1. Peter Singer, “Heavy Petting,” 
Nerve.com
, March 1, 2001.

2. See the cluster of essays, “Theories and Methodologies: Animal Studies,” 
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
124, no. 2 (2009): 472–575. See also the work of Erica Fudge, especially
Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern
England
 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006) and 
Perceiving
Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture
 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

3. For a useful overview of the many responses to Singer’s review, see Sarah Boxer, “Think Tank: Yes, But Did Anyone Ask the Animals’ Opinion?” 
New York Times,
 June 9, 2001. Many of the reactions misunderstand Singer’s argument; charges of “animal cruelty” are particularly ironic given that much of Singer’s career has been devoted to the ethical treatment of animals.

4. The influence of Ovid’s 
Metamorphoses
 on the animal-bridegroom tale type is an important but separate line of inquiry. The beastly transformations in Ovid largely comprise gods exercising their power over mortals within a different hierarchal construct rather than contact between humans and animals. See Page DuBois, 
Centaurs and
Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being
 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). Several contemporary authors have also explored the animal-human romantic or sexual relationship in fairy tales, most notably Angela Carter in her short story collection, 
The Bloody Chamber
 (New York: Penguin, 1979).

5. See Maria Tatar for a discussion of tales about women who are transformed into beasts. In many of these tales, the transformation serves to protect the women from predatory men. 
The Classic Fairy Tales
(New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1999), 30–32.

6. Jack Zipes,
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition,
 51. See also Tatar, “Beauties and Beasts: From Love At First Sight,” 
Off With Their Heads: Fairy
Tales and the Culture of Childhood
 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 140–62.

7. Susan Bordo,
The Male Body: A New Look At Men in Public and Private
(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000), 244.

8. Giovanni Straparola, “The Pig Prince,” in Zipes, 55–56.

9. See Anne Duggan, “Nature and Culture in the Fairy Tale of MarieCatherine d’Aulnoy,” 
Marvels & Tales
 15, no. 2, (2001): 149–67. See also Lewis C. Seifert, “Animal-Human Hybridity in d’Aulnoy’s ‘Babiole’ and ‘Prince Wild Boar,’ ” 
Marvels & Tales
 25, no. 2 (2011): 244–60. In his discussion of d’Aulnoy’s treatment of the issue of animal-human hybridity, Seifert distinguishes “The Wild Boar” from her other tales in exploring “what might be gained from a hybrid subjectivity in which human reason is conjoined with animal instinct and human vice is counterbalanced by animal virtue.”

10. Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, “The Wild Boar,” in Zipes, 57–81.

11. See Bruno Bettleheim, 
The Uses of Enchantment
 (New York: Knopf 1976), 288; Marina Warner, 
From the Beast to the Blond: On Fairy Tales
and Their Tellers
 (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996) 
,
 chapter 7, “Reluctant Brides,” 273–97, and Tatar, 
Off With Their Heads
, 141. See also Lewis Seifert, “Pig or Prince? Murat, d’Aulnoy, and the Limits of ‘Civilized’ Masculinity,” in 
High Anxiety: Masculinity in
Crisis in Early Modern France
, ed. Kathleen Perry Long (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2002), 183–209. In the animal-bridegroom tales that feature an animal or animalhybrid prince, women are expected to sacrifice themselves cheerfully to a bestial mate, but in d’Aulnoy’s “Babiole,” discussed in the previous chapter, the bestial heroine’s love for the human prince is scorned and laughable.

12. Tatar, 141; Warner, 278.

13. Suzanne Magnanini, 98.

14. See Zipes, “The Taming of Shrews” in 
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition:
“The taming of a proud princess or aristocratic woman who thinks that she is too good to marry any man, especially one who is beneath her in social rank, became an important didactic motif in the medieval and literary tradition,” 668.

15. Zipes,
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition,
 96–99.

16. Derek Brewer claims that “The Frog Prince” has been known in the British Isles from the sixteenth century. 
Symbolic Stories: Traditional
Narratives of Family Drama in English Literature
 (Cambridge, England: Rowman & Littlefield:, 1980), 37.

17. For an account of the Grimm Brothers’ series of revisions of this tale, see Maria Tatar, 
The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales,
 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 7–8. Tatar argues, “The Grimms’ transformation of a tale replete with sexual innuendo into a prim and proper nursery story with a dutiful daughter is almost as striking as the folkloric metamorphosis of frog into prince.” Brewer also insists, “It is plain in the earlier versions that they have sexual intercourse” but even in later versions “the story is obviously about love and especially sex. The relationship with the frog symbolizes the fear of sex, slimy, monstrous, nasty,” 38.

18. Jack Zipes, “What Makes a Repulsive Frog So Appealing: Memetics and Fairy Tales,” 
Journal of Folklore Research
 45, no. 2, (2008), 112.

19. See Elizabeth W. Harries, “The Violence of the Lambs,” 
Marvels &
Tales
 19, no. 1 (2005), 54–66 for a discussion of the sacrificial act of violence in fairy tales. Harries’s article focuses on d’Aulnoy’s “The White Cat,” in which a female cat’s return to animal form depends on the male, but she notes the violent action in “The Frog Prince” and comments that “the petulant princess, acting in a fit of pique (or perhaps sexual angst)” throws the frog against the wall. Harries adds that the “princess is of course a spoiled brat” Again, the princess’ behavior is seen as more blameworthy than the unreasonable demands of father and frog suitor.

20. Bettleheim, 288.

21. James McGlathery, 
Fairy Tale Romance: The Grimms, Basile, and Perrault
 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1991), 64.

22. Tatar,
Off With Their Heads,
 154–55.

23. See Gail de Vos, “The Frog King or Iron Henry,” in 
New Tales for
Old: Folktales as Literary Fictions for Young Adults
 (Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1999), 771–808 for an overview of the Brothers Grimm revisions, critical interpretations, and popular adaptations of this tale.

24. See A. O. Lovejoy, 
The Great Chain of Being: The History of an Idea
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936) and E. M. W. Tillyard’s
The Elizabethan World Picture
 (New York: Macmillan, 1943).

25. For a discussion of Lovejoy’s impact see Timothy Bahti, “Literary Criticism and the History of Ideas,” 
Cambridge History of Literary
Criticism,
 vol. ix, eds. Chista Knellwolf and Christopher Norris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 31–42.

26. Tillyard, 7.

27. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfeld, 
Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism
 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 5.