#author:thay

[thevalkirias]

The Crown and the Solitary Queen Elizabeth

Netflix’s The Crown was advertised as the most expensive show ever developed by the streaming service. Though tells the story of real people, it’s easy to understand why the expenses were so elevated: the show enchants us with the grandiose beauty of its sceneries, the strictness of the costumes and the impeccable characterization, all in order to transport us to a time of political and social turbulence in an Empire that had just gone through an arduous world war and, moreover, was facing other kinds of agitation, including the ascension of a young woman, Queen Elizabeth, to the throne.

 Warning: this article contains spoilers!

It takes no time at all for the plot to be set in motion, and in the very first episode we are invited to the wedding of the then-Princess Elizabeth (Claire Foy) to Philip of Greece and Denmark (Matt Smith), in 1947. We know from History classes that royal houses were famous for arranging marriages according to what was most convenient, but here, between Elizabeth and Philip, all was done in agreement and for love. Philip, upon marrying Elizabeth, has to let go of all of his titles and of his position as a Navy officer. More than that, he has to accept that he would always be hierarchically below his wife. At first it doesn’t seem like an obstacle for the relationship, but as the episodes pass we begin to realize that it bothers the prince consort that he always has to stand in the background -- and it’s practically impossible not to remember Queen Victoria and her own prince consort, Albert.

Marriage is only the first stage in the Princess’s changing life. As the health of her father, King George VI (Jared Harris), decreases, it becomes just a matter of time before she has to replace him on the throne. Though Elizabeth was the first daughter, she didn’t grow up with the intention of carrying the Crown, since it was her father’s older brother, Edward VIII (Alex Jennings), who was King when she was a child. Edward abdicated from the throne so he could live with the woman he loved, who was divorced and, according to the strict rules of the Anglican Church, could never marry a royal. When Edward abdicated, his younger brother ascended to the throne, and Elizabeth, then a ten-year-old, became next in the line of succession.

With the intention of initiating his daughter in her duties, King George VI decides to send her and Philip on a long journey through the British territories. The King had been diagnosed with cancer and saw his days coming to an end, but he needed to make sure Elizabeth was aware of everything that was happening in the kingdom. The Princess embarks on a long journey that would keep her away from her home and her children, young Prince Charles and Princess Anne, while the King tries to reestablish himself. Unfortunately the worst happens and George VI passes away while Elizabeth is far from home, so she has to return to England in a hurry in order to take her rightful place.

And while you mourn your father, you must also mourn someone else. Elizabeth Mountbatten. For she has now been replaced by another person, Elizabeth Regina. The two Elizabeths will frequently be in conflict with one another. The fact is, the crown must win. Must always win.

At the age of 25, Elizabeth is now Queen Elizabeth II of England and feels from the start the weight and the burden that it is to carry the crown. This interlude in her life as a monarch is portrayed in a delicate and poetic manner, and we can see that she had very little time to take in the loss of her father and her ascension to the throne. In an instant Elizabeth and Philip were enjoying the hospitality in Kenya, but in the very next moment the Princess was made Queen. Though she had been educated on the British laws and constitution her whole life, Elizabeth felt that she had little aptitude or preparation to take on the role. The Queen needed to deal with men who were much older and much more experienced than she was, men who in many cases treated her in a condescending way just because she was a young woman; in other words, nothing new under the sun. In the vast array of powerful men and politicians that she had to deal with was included the then-prime minister Winston Churchill, beautifully portrayed by John Litgow.

The Crown puts a strong focus on the duality existing between career politicians and the monarchy, and frequently highlights the importance each of them had in leading what once was the British Empire. At that moment Winston Churchill was already an old man, approaching his eighties, and he had been responsible for leading England in the fight against nazism; Elizabeth, on the other hand, was still young and in need of more experience in order to deal with the duties that came with her position. Churchill was an experienced man when it came to the public life; he knew how to handle people according to his needs and made his position count through the use of both his intelligence and his sarcasm. If at first he sees Elizabeth as a raw and insecure woman, by the end of the first season he comes to see her as the strong and resolute Queen that we now know.

It’s a fact that being in a position of power demands more from women than it does from men. When it comes to men, mistakes are always forgiven, forgotten or ignored, but for women they are pretty much a proclamation of perpetual failure. If this happens in our daily lives, or even in Hollywood, what could we expect from an ancient institution such as the British monarchy? That’s the reason why Elizabeth was always attentive to her duties and did what she could in order to be the best possible queen to her people. That becomes evident in a very symbolic moment when she requests private lessons with a tutor. Because she was raised to be beautiful, modest and preoccupied with the affairs of the private home, Elizabeth felt that there was a large gap in her education: like every girl coming from a royal house, Elizabeth learned embroidery and how to play the piano, to be beautiful and quiet, but she never got more comprehensive or even basic lessons, the education that everyone should have access to; fearing that she would not be sufficiently intelligent to deal with her ministers and other politicians she would eventually meet, Elizabeth tries to educate herself by her own means.

Never let them see that carrying the crown is often a burden.

In her first years as Queen -- The Crown’s first season covers the first ten years of her reign -- everyone seems to believe they can manipulate Elizabeth in whatever way suits them best. Taking into account Elizabeth’s relative naivety and inexperience, everyone around her -- from the Prime Minister to her uncle and former king Edward to her grandmother, Queen Mary (Eileen Atkins) -- believes they know what’s best for her. Elizabeth, however, shows a unique ability for diplomacy, and manages to navigate the personal interests which are disguised as advice and, more than that, gets everyone to believe that she is accepting them. The Queen may be young and inexperienced, but she has the strength and fiber which are necessary if one wants to join the gallery of great British queens -- which is, as we know now, a fait accompli.

At the same time she has to deal with her royal duties, Elizabeth also needs to manage her husband. After giving up his titles and position in the Royal Navy, Philip seems to resent his wife. Though the prince consort had faced the situation in the best possible way in the beginning of the relationship, everything changed when Elizabeth decided to keep her family name, Windsor, instead of taking Philip’s last name, Mountbatten, as the name of the royal house she would preside.

Philip accuses her of taking his career, his house and his name from him, but he knew from the start that his duty as prince consort would be exactly that: to stand by her side and support her. This particular scene put a scornful smile on my face, since once a woman gets married, whatever her status, whatever society she belongs to, that is exactly what is expected from her: to give up her career for her new family, to abandon her house and name and take her husband’s. Philip doesn’t face this the way one would expect; his ambitions and sexism seem to be greater than his duty as prince consort and this brings turmoil to the marriage. On the show, Philip is portrayed as a bon vivant who goes to gentlemen’s clubs and comes home late and completely wasted. It’s hard to feel sympathy towards the prince consort when he seems to completely forget about his duties and focuses on nourishing misplaced grievances instead.

Another situation that demands caution from Elizabeth is the relationship between her sister, Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby), and Captain Peter Townsend (Ben Miles), a former equerry to King George VI. Like Edward, Margaret falls in love with a commoner and meets resistance from her family. Townsend did not come from a noble family, but he was also married and a father of two. The relationship between the Princess and the equerry began when he was still married and working at the Buckingham Palace, but it became public when Townsend got divorced.The hindrance faced by the couple was the same the former King had gone through: in order to marry a divorced man, Princess Margaret, who didn’t get support from the Parliament, would have to give up her title and privileges. More than that, Elizabeth, being both Queen and head not only of the monarchy but also of the Anglican Church, was divided between doing what was best for her family and what was best for the Crown.

 It wasn’t the first time -- and certainly won’t be the last -- that Elizabeth needed to ponder over her duty as Queen and put the many women existing in her her on a scale. We find her questioning her position in the world on several occasions, as she tries to balance the roles she has to fulfill. The issue regarding how she should reconcile the woman she was with the mother, the sister, the wife, and the Queen was very present in the first years of her reign, and it made Elizabeth wonder how to proceed on many occasions. In addition to all of her doubts and to having to deal with a predominantly male world, Elizabeth has to endure judgement from anyone who believes to be better than her at doing her job.

I am aware that I am surrounded by people who feel that they could do the job better. But, for better or worse, the crown has landed on my head.

The Crown manages to navigate different plots, showing us a little of the Palace’s routine, filled with many rules, the work of the Prime Minister and a bit of the characters’ private lives. We can see the first traces of the media’s obsession with the royals’ private lives -- there is, for instance, a car chase in which journalists and photographers harass Princess Margaret and Captain Townsend. For me at least it was impossible not to connect the scene with the death of the Princess of Wales, Diana, in 1997, after a car chase in Paris. The fact is that the royals have a mystique that fascinates people -- a fascination that even the show points to -- and everyone keeps watching them, waiting for the next steps of people who, once the robe, scepter and crown are removed, are as human as any of us.

The truth is that carrying the Crown is a solitary role. Elizabeth has advisors and relatives she can count on, but the burden will always rest on her shoulders and the final decision will always be hers. The Netflix show did a great job in displaying the difficult part of being a monarch and how exhausting it can be to face obligations and conflicts. There  is certainly glamour in balls, jewelry and dresses, but they are all presented simply as palliatives for one of the most difficult roles to fulfill.

Forget Elizabeth Windsor. Now you are Elizabeth Regina.

 About the author:

THAY

Tomb explorer, shadow assassin, pirate captain and sailor soldier. Hunts demons in her free time, wears a Gryffindor scarf and is an occasional getaway driver. Addicted to Supernatural and to buying books as if there was no tomorrow.

This piece was originally published in Portuguese on November 11, 2016 on Valkirias. Translated by Fernanda.

#the crown #claire foy #matt smith #netflix #feminism #category:tv #author:thay #translator:fernanda

[thevalkirias]

The Handmaid’s Tale and the fear that lives within all of us

The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, had always been on my “must read” list. Years went by without any movement on my part to change its status from “must read” to “read” on my shelf, and it was only now, with the news of its adaptation – released in April by Hulu and starred by Elisabeth Moss –, that I took the dust away from my copy and started reading. I knew the story was intense and filled with metaphors, but little did I know that I was about to be punched in the stomach every time I flipped a page.

As it happens in some of the best sellers from recent times – The Hunger Games and Divergent, only to name a few – The Handmaid’s Tale is also a dystopia, but different from what we see on Katiniss’ and Tris’ sagas, here there’s no chosen one that will save human kind from its annihilation. In this future, the United States as we know it no longer exists and is dominated by an extremely religious and patriarchal society that, through a military coup, has taken the power and controls every individual and the entirety of Gilead’s Republic with an iron fist. It’s not really clear how the coup took place, but the fight for power ended up causing environmental catastrophe and, moreover, totalitarianism and religious fundamentalism get mixed, shaping a new and rigid social system that is nothing but terrifying – especially to its women.

It is in this context that we meet Offred, a woman that had her whole life taken away from her and is now a Handmaid in the new regime. Through her experiences, we slowly discover that human fertility has decreased to low levels; hence, all fertile women (even the ones that already had children) are obligated to corroborate with this system. These women are trained which has the sole purpose of getting them pregnant and have them deliver and breastfeed their babies until it’s time to give the children away to the Commanders and their wives. Forget about free will or autonomy: each and every Handmaid is tied to this system and will be a part of it until the end. Offred’s name, by the way, means “Of Fred”; the name is given to each Handmaid due to the Commander to which she is destined, contributing to the erasure of the woman’s life: even her own name is taken away from her in order to magnify her status as an object

“I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.”

Offred narrates her experiences in this new society while she remembers moments of her life from before the coup, before Gilead’s Republic. Women in this new world are sorted out and categorized, and the image of the Handmaid is the most emblematic, important and discriminated against. Since human fertility is no longer the same, the Handmaids – always dressed in long, red gowns, almost like nuns, covering their faces with wide white hats – are necessary to assure not only the maintenance of the regime, but also life as a whole.

The Handmaids’ lives are closely watched by the Commanders and their wives, who crave the babies the Handmaids may come to carry; they are watched by the Aunts, women responsible for educating the Handmaids, teaching them to be submissive and helpful, focusing only in getting pregnant and in not showing any sign of threat to the sterile wives; and by the Marthas, women that can no longer have children and have to dedicate themselves to the chores that have to be taken care of at the homes of Gilead’s great leaders. There are also those women that are discarded by society, sent away, and those who live in the margins of society, on brothels, attended by the same leaders that despise them.

“It's strange to remember how we used to think, as if everything were available to us, as if there were no contingencies, no boundaries; as if we were free to shape and reshape forever the ever—expanding perimeters of our lives. I was like that too, I did that too.”

It is when Offred is arriving at the house of a new Commander that the story becomes stronger and gets even more terrifying. Trying to find other people that may take part on the resistance or that may have news about family and loved ones lost during the coup, Offred discovers that the secrets and dynamics of this new world are even worse than she could have imagined. Any deviance from the path set by Gilead’s leaders is punished with death, there’s no more individuality, nor the right to one’s own body. Atwood, using her made-up plot, shows us how the rights earned after much struggle can be extinguished through the use of violence and how religion can be used, wrongly, to justify the privileges of a few and the ruin of many. The women of this new world cannot read, write or talk without consent; they lost the right to work and study. One of the first maneuvers of this new regime, by the way, was to take away all forms of autonomy from every woman, giving all of their money to the men in their families and making them depend on the men, with no way out.

With a live that is purely based on repression, the Handmaid must also submit to a surreal ritual in which she has to have sex with the Commander she is assigned to, under the supervision of the Wife. Offred tries to keep her dignity, trying hard not to let go go of her personality, remembering facts related to her old life, to her companion, mother and daughter, but it is hard to maintain your sanity in a world where everybody is watching you. The Handmaid’s Tale is a very disturbing story that, even 30 years after its first publication, in 1985, keeps echoing the fear that lives within women all over the world. With world leaders that are more and more deplorable and carry bizarre ideals, it is not hard to imagine a world in which all of our rights would be taken away, in which our autonomy would be usurped.

“These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.”

The Handmaid’s Tale is disturbing and it is not an easy read: Margaret Atwood’s role as a writer is to provoke us, to make us think about a world that might seem to belong to a dystopian universe, but is always there, lurking, in our own world. Women experience oppression, are silenced, persecuted, harassed, raped and killed every day – and that’s not only the plot of a dystopia. Atwood had the courage of writing write about painful themes back in 1985, themes that, unfortunately, remain very real and terrifying. If women left their houses to add their strength to the Women’s March, it’s not by chance: we all know how much we need to stick together and make our rights worth.

Atwood’s book carries strong criticism towards patriarchy and, according to the writer, there’s nothing in its plot that women does not know – that is why the whole plot is so terrifying and distressing, so real in its barbarity and in showing the fear that live within all of us. If we need feminism, if it gives us strength, it is because we need to make sure that a future like the one in Gilead never becomes a possibility.

About the author:

THAY

Tomb explorer, shadow assassin, pirate captain and sailor soldier. Hunts demons in her free time, wears a Gryffindor scarf and is an occasional getaway driver. Addicted to Supernatural and to buying books as if there was no tomorrow.

This piece was originally published in Portuguese on February 13, 2017 on Valkirias as "O Conto da Aia e o medo que mora em todas nós". Translated by Anna Viduani.

#the handmaid's tale #margaret atwood #feminism #category:literature #author:thay #translator:anna viduani