Queens, by definition, embody a historical contradiction between
femininity and power. Queen Victoria, whose strength and longevity
defined an age, possessed immense cultural as well as political
power, even becoming a writer herself.
This cultural sovereignty, argues Gail Turley Houston, in the
hands of a female monarch troubled writers, especially men, who
worked during a reign that viewed women as domestic angels. By
exploring a wide range of representations of the queen by
significant Victorian writers, Houston points out the complexity of
Victorian constructions of gender, representation, authority, and
identity. She works to demystify such canonized authors as Charles
Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Margaret Oliphant by
examining the ways they encounter Victoria in their writings. The
queen's feminine power seems to be at odds with the masculine
profession of author, which was also coming to be viewed as a
significant representative of the culture.
Part of the recent movement by feminist scholars to recuperate
and analyze Queen Victoria's important meanings in
nineteenth-century British culture, Royalties dissects the anomaly
of the queen and her effect on dominant cultural attitudes about
gender.
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