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ToolsJowitt, Claire (2016) East versus West:Seraglio Queens, Politics, and Sexuality in Thomas Heywood’s Fair Maid of the West, Parts I and II. In: Roxolana in European Literature, History and Culture. Taylor and Francis, pp. 57-70. ISBN 9780754667612
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There are marked contrasts between the representation of Bess between Parts I and II of Thomas Heywood’s Fair Maid of the West, or A Girl worth Gold. The difference (indeed transformation) between her in two parts is a useful barometer of the modifications to ideological formulations of queenship.2 This chapter explores the reasons behind, and implications of, these changes, particularly in terms of of The Fair Maid of the West, " Cahiers Elisabethains 54 (1998): 75-87; Claire Jowitt, the ways anxieties about female rule are displaced in both plays onto despotic “Ottoman” characters, Mullisheg, the King of Fez in Part I, and in Part II, this unease is also focused on his tyrannous and lascivious wife, Tota. In Part I Bess is both honorable and militaristically impressive, but nevertheless sexual anxieties concerning female rule are focused on Mullisheg’s eroticized court: the King of Fez’s “cutting honour” functions as a displaced fear concerning the castrating potential of queenship as it is capable of rendering Englishmen impotent.3 In Part II Bess has “dwindled to a wife” as she becomes a consort-style Queen lacking agency, even as another powerful and ambitious female figure, Tota, appears dangerously dominant in the North African kingdom.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Publisher Copyright: © 2010 The editor and contributors. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | arts and humanities(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Medieval History Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Medieval and Early Modern Research Group |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Sep 2025 14:30 |
| Last Modified: | 05 Oct 2025 06:30 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100530 |
| DOI: | 10.4324/9781315607054-9 |
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