Sample Solution

s a whole) were forced by political and familial circumstances into life-styles over which they exerted no control.’

Indeed, resistance against an established system was neither easy, nor advisable for a respectable reputation in a turbulent court scene. This was not merely a sociological construct – the Puritan teachings of the Church was the religious backing necessary for the demeaning of women . As John Knox, the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland claimed, ‘for the man is to heade the woman […] as Christ is the heade of the churche, so is man of the woman’. This biblically established hierarchy epitomises the renaissance attitude to a woman’s social positioning.
The main methods of resistance in Elizabeth’s early epigrams are literary modes of ambivalence. This derives from the general inability of the young monarch to decipher who exactly this epigram may reach. Written in confinement whilst being held at Woodstock Castle, I shall show how Elizabeth retains pride and resistance through ambiguous language in an attempt to cloak her vulnerability. The epigram explores the negotiation between the line of pride and protection. Enough public confidence and enough silent complicity. It is a line Elizabeth fantastically captures in a simple epigram, ‘Written with a Diamond’ (1554-1555):