Book Review: The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power

The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power Second edition, by Carole Levin. 2014. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Pp xx + 264. Includes 12 illustrations and index. $27.50 paperback. ISBN 978-0-2240-1 In the twenty years separating the initial publication of Carole Levin's The Heart and Stomach of a King in 1994 from the second edition under review here, Queen Elizabeth I has been, according to Wikipedia, the subject of two Hollywood films (Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), both starring Cate Blanchett), two BBC miniseries (The Virgin Queen (2005) with Anne-Marie Duff and Elizabeth I (2005) with Helen Mirren), and has appeared in smaller roles in several films, television shows, works of fiction, and video games; she even has a Twitter hashtag (#queenelizabethI). For an English monarch who has been dead for more than 400 years, Elizabeth I (1533-1603; reigned 1558-1603) continues to hold a powerful sway over both the popular and the academic imagination in the 21st century. For Levin, the key to Elizabeth's fascination lies in the two terms she highlights in her subtitle: sex and power. Elizabeth I successfully ruled England for 45 years as an unmarried woman, something unparalleled by any other female ruler of the period but also a source of cultural anxiety: Elizabeth along with her sister Queen Mary I (reigned 1553-1558) were the first women to be crowned Queen of England since the Norman Conquest in 1066. Elizabeth I remains a significant figure for us today not only as a resource for popular culture but also because, as Levin notes, despite our many differences from sixteenth-century England, women in positions of power still face difficulties that do not trouble their male counterparts. Levin points to Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the United States, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Angela Merkel in Germany, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia as examples of contemporary women in power behind whom "we perhaps can see the shadow of a long-dead queen" (xvi). Levin's work is not a biography in the traditional sense. In her Preface to the Second Edition, Levin prefers the term "cultural biography" for her project. Inspired by the "poetics of culture" model offered by Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning, Levin's Heart and Stomach of a King goes beyond the facts of Elizabeth's life to consider "how Elizabeth represented herself and how people in turn responded to her as an unmarried woman in power" (xiii), looking not only at conventional historical sources but also at how Elizabeth was constructed socially in gossip, in rumors, in slander, and even in dreams. Levin begins with a brief Introduction outlining Elizabeth's life prior to assuming the throne in 1558 as well as some of the basic challenges Elizabeth faced as a woman in a position of power. Some of Levin's central questions include "how did [Elizabeth] transcend her gender and her unmarried, childless state, and in what ways was she trapped by it? What strategies did she use that were successful and which ones failed? What were the different ways in which her people responded to her? How did the image of the queen change in the reign of her successor, James I?" (4). The remaining chapters proceed in approximate chronological order and skilfully weave together the biographical and cultural elements of this cultural biography. Chapter 2, "Elizabeth as Sacred Monarch" focuses on Elizabeth's engagement with religion. As monarch, Elizabeth gained authority over the English church, but Parliament in 1559 was reluctant to grant her the title "Supreme Head" of the Church, the title held by her brother, Edward VI, and her father, Henry VIII. As the Archbishop of York explained, "Her highness, beyinge a woman by birthe and nature, is not qualyfied by God's worde to feed the flock of Chryst, it appeareth most playnley.... Therefor she cannot be supreme head of Christ's militant churche" (14). …