Recommended Doctor/Elizabeth I meta

[neadods]

Over on DW, Legionseagle gives a whole new non-romantic perspective on the relationship between the Doctor and Elizabeth I.

Comments

[hildy.livejournal.com]

Whovian Feminism reviews Day of the Doctor with a strong focus on the portrayal of Elizabeth I.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

What I like about Legionseagle is that she goes through the historical reason why Elizabeth would be both interested in the Doctor and furious that he left without it actually being about her wanting him romantically. And finding that reason helps a lot with what Whovian feminism accurately says about Moffat turning strong women in history into merely the love interest.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

My patience with the Whovian feminism analysis dissolved just about here:

Elizabeth I was sexually abused as a young girl by her guardians, Thomas Seymour and Catherine Parr, and quite likely raped by Thomas Seymour.

Anyone who makes categorical statements on a matter about which there is for a whole load of absolutely obvious reasons one hell of a lot of doubt and conflicting opinions and then bases their argument on them is building on sand. Especially if one starts dragging Catherine Parr into them, together with a whole lot of cod-psychology which doesn't seem to be borne out by later history eg Elizabeth's relationship with the Earl of Leicester (which was just as potentially dangerous and considered just as shocking in history as anything which in the Who timeline she was getting up to with the Doctor).

So far as one can tell about the relationship with Thomas Seymour, Elizabeth was a passionate teenage girl with one heck of a crush and he was an ambitious, charismatic, unscrupulous bloke who wasn't nearly as bright as he thought he was. Since the bulk of Elizabeth's career consisted of her getting involved with ambitious, charismatic, unscrupulous blokes who weren't nearly as bright as they thought they were, and wriggling out with charm and grace at the last possible moment of advantage to her it's at least as possible to see him as "useful early practice run" as "something terrible in the woodshed".


ETA Also, she was physically examined before at least one of her later proposed marriages and was physically a virgin then, fwiw, so while I agree Thomas Seymour could have raped her by some means not involving direct penetration it does knock the "likely" out of it.

ETFA Also, anyone who characterises Elizabeth I's line "I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a King of England too" as "internalised misogyny" needs to be sent off on a course of formal rhetoric. The technique of getting the obvious weak point which everyone in the audience is uncomfortably aware of out in the open first, before getting onto the meet of the speech is absolutely sodding classic:

"If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour." (aka "Any idiot can see we are outnumbered ten to one, the question is how to make those odds look heroic not doomed")

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering." (aka "Everyone's going around saying 'we're all doomed' - might as well make the most of it)

"Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my
cause, and be silent, that you may hear: believe me
for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that
you may believe: censure me in your wisdom, and
awake your senses, that you may the better judge. 1550
If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of
Caesar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love to Caesar
was no less than his. If then that friend demand
why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer:
—Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved 1555
Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and
die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live
all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him;
as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was
valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I 1560
slew him." (Aka Yes, I do have blood on my hands, literally, but here's why there was no other choice.)

ETEFA Oh, and big-style way to miss the point, here (about Kate Stewart) "Someone will have to explain to me sometime how you’re supposed to negotiate if you don’t know whose interests you’re negotiating for."

Even-handedly. Because you don't know which deal you'll end up with.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

You'll note that the only part I said I agreed with was that Moffat does like to get famous women in history laid by the Doctor, which I had missed and he does. The history part, on the other hand... And the Doctor outright says that the reason he's doing it is to make sure the deal is both done and fair.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Having read through the entire Whovian Feminism post - it's a site I hadn't read before - I'll grant that they've brought up things that I hadn't thought of before, like Moffat making a lot of strong smart women in history the love interest.

But I don't agree with other things, like how the Doctor's decision to spare Gallifrey retcons the Doctors... mostly because Nine was already retconned from having "killed" the time lords and "destroyed" Gallifrey when the entire planet and race pop back in for a visit at the End of Time. All of a sudden, the planet wasn't missing, nor even frozen, it had just been locked away in a parallel universe to fight it out with the daleks.

And while consigning your home and species to "hell" (as Ten put it) isn't pretty, I argue that there's still a significant difference between destroying something and locking it away, which we watch Ten do for a second time.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen any episode with Mata Hari in it, so I'll have to pass on how it's handled, but the complaint "They made Margarathe Zelle into a mere sex object" does strike me as a trifle odd, given the historical treatment of Mata Hari (who I've always assumed was made into a scapegoat because she was considered to be sexually compromised; the "invisible ink" that was used as evidence was apparently a contraceptive douche fluid, for example) and Mme de Pompadour was Louis XV's mistress, historically.

In fact, the thing that struck me about the Pompadour episode was that she was portrayed as being more fascinated by him than he was with her; the Doctor does go in for bedpost notching, in Ten's incarnation.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I think the author was confusing Mata Hari, who I don't remember being in Who, with Nefertiti, who was and who wandered off to have a fling with Rupert Graves... as many would, given the option.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Well, they were only four or five thousand years apart, one was African and the other Dutch, one was a Queen and the other was an exotic dancer and (arguably) spy. Very similar, really, if you assume that the key thing was that they were women. But Nefertiti does a lot more in that episode than end up with Rupert Graves; she and Amy at one point are in charge of the control room.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

IIRC, Nefertiti was in command of more than that at one point. Moffat may find new love interests for them, but he never takes their power or confidence. Nefertiti's attitude all along was "basically, I rule.•

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

And that's why I fall out with formulations such as "reduces them to the love interest" used in things like that Whovian article. First, it assumes that love is inherently reductive, thus setting the scene for people to consider Pride and Prejudice an inherently lesser work than, say, The Old Man and the Sea, but it also leads to people overlooking what else the "love interest" does in the rest of the plot.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I see what you're saying, but I also get an itch because there's that dismissive attitude in society as a whole that a woman may have nigh unlimited power, but she's somehow not "complete" without romantic love. Which is why I glommed so hard onto your alternate theory of Elizabeth I, because if there was ever a woman in history who was going to look at what both love and marriage did to her mother, stepmothers, sister, cousin, etc., and say "No way in hell am I doing that" it was her.