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'I Shall Endeavor for Her Aims': Women’s Alliances and Relational Figurations of Freedom
'I Shall Endeavor for Her Aims': Women’s Alliances and Relational Figurations of Freedom
- Source :
- Humanities, Vol 7, Iss 4, p 117 (2018)
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- MDPI AG, 2018.
-
Abstract
- In oppressive cultures that marginalize various identity positions, a woman might find it difficult to imagine herself as autonomous or capable of self-definition. Forging alliances with other women offers opportunities for self-discovery, transformation, and autonomous agency. Considering Queen Elizabeth’s correspondence with Safiye Sultana and Phillip Massinger’s The Renegado, this essay argues that tropes of seeing, achieved either through material images or through vivid discursive descriptions, foster imaginative renderings of the possibilities of self-expression and agency. Both cases, one diplomatic and the other dramatic, demonstrate successful—even though temporary and politically motivated—alliances mediated through both patriarchal constraints and material markers of identity. Drawing on these epistolary and dramatic texts, this essay explores tropes of imaginative seeing, the materiality of identity, and physical spaces that enact women’s alliances invested in questions of women’s freedom across tributaries both political and dramatic.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20760787
- Volume :
- 7
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- Directory of Open Access Journals
- Journal :
- Humanities
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- edsdoj.79431d8ac9134bd8aeff01ef9e774594
- Document Type :
- article
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3390/h7040117