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"With A Woman's Bitterness": Early Propaganda Against Female Rulers In Medieval Chronicles In The Twelfth And Fifteenth Centuries, Elizabeth Anne Wiedenheft

Honors Program Theses

In reading the descriptions of the Empress Matilda and Queen Margaret of Anjou by their contemporaries, it is clear that their male counterparts were threatened by their attempts to participate in the politics and governance of England. It is also clear that male rulers believed that these two women's use of power was a usurpation of the traditional gender hierarchy. Therefore, male chroniclers, living contemporaneously with either the Empress Matilda of Queen Margaret, created descriptions of them that reflected the propaganda promulgated against them during their lifetimes. This propaganda imposed a strict dichotomization of gender roles in order to prevent …