Reviews for Sovereign ladies

The average rating for Sovereign ladies based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-13 00:00:00 April Russie Waller's Sovereign Ladies, which discusses the six 'official' Queens Regnant of England then Great Britain, was a bit of a mix bag for me. Some chapters were stronger than others with regards to information and depth- for example, Victoria's 120+ pages are more than both Mary II and Anne's combined 90ish, and as a result contain more information and analysis of personalities, events, and politics. Having said that, the book is written clearly and concisely, and Sovereign Ladies does benefit from a strong introduction and conclusion. I would recommend this book as an introduction to the six queens, their periods in history and the events of their reigns. It isn't detailed enough to be the last word on any of its subjects, but is clear enough to be a good jumping off point. The queens discussed in Sovereign Ladies are Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne of Great Britain, Victoria, and the current queen Elizabeth II. Published in 2006, it doesn't include anything after this date (2012 jubilee, Prince William's wedding, etc.). Lady Jane Grey is looked at during the section about Mary I.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-12-31 00:00:00 Shawn Bay This is a study of how being a woman affected the six women who ruled England ostensibly on their own- Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. It chronicles both the negative effects- how unwilling many people were to accept a female sovreign, how concepts of what women should be and do worked against them, how merely having a female body affected things- marriages, pregnancies, children, and the positive effects- how many of these women used the concepts of femininity in place during their time to manipulate those around them and keep themselves secure when many a man might have found it hard to talk themselves out of trouble, and especially many discussions about how female archetypes- the goddess, the mother figure, the Virgin Mary (of course), the grandmother- kept them enshrined. Waller goes so far as to imply that it is Victoria and Elizabeth II's reigns that are largely responsible for keeping the British monarchy in place, and this may not have been possible had they not been women. I really enjoyed reading the struggles, triumphs and utter failures of these six women and their families with female active agency and power, and I thought she made some largely ignored points about the psychology that ran beneath all of these reigns. Waller is extremely sympathetic to all six of these ladies. This was my only major problem with the book- I felt that she was on a mission to exonerate all six of them from all or most of any wrongdoings they may have committed during their lives by gaining sympathy for their plight as a female sovereign in a man's world. I found it particularly pronounced in Mary I's section and Elizabeth II's. In the first, she tried to exonerate 'Bloody' Mary of all responsibility for the destruction of churches and burnings of heretics that went on during her reign, which seemed wildly ridiculous to me. Elizabeth II's section largely read like royal propaganda. She makes sure to say that Elizabeth has deficiencies as a mother and that she's overly indulgent of her family due to not giving them enough of her time- but as a sovereign she appears to worship her as perfection. I just wish that the tone hadn't been quite so determinedly one-sided in examples, because it cast doubt on the rest of the chapters, which I found very well informed, balanced as impartial as a feminist lens reading is going to get- I particularly liked the chapters on Mary II and Victoria. All in all, highly recommended- but not as a history- as a psychological study of women wielding power in a world where the system is built to tell them to do no such thing. There is also a worthwhile B-plot study of the transition from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy to the "democratic" symbolic monarchy of today.