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‘A MONSTER IN NATURE’ Imaginations of Female Sovereignty and the Case of Catherine the Great

Tijdschriftbijdrage - Tijdschriftartikel

This article analyzes the representation of Catherine II of Russia from the late eighteenth century to the present day as an illustration of the longue durée irreconcilability of women and political power in European culture. Transnational, multilingual, across theological doctrine and passed down from Ancien Régime to political modernity anomalies attributed to the female ruler fill an encyclopedia of monstrosities. Even a cursory study of the language and images of politics from a gender perspective yields a consistent vocabulary associating female rule with an unnaturalness that hovers between the exceptional and the freakish. While it is beyond the scope of this essay to compile the bestiary of female power, it addresses a sample of imaginary figurations to indicate some remarkable consistencies. The abnormality of female sovereignty is not the prerogative from ‘dark times’. It reaches back to ancient history and runs across aesthetic categories, from religious dogma and enlightenment thought into vanguard critics of modernity, popular culture and contemporary documentary. This analysis focusses on the figure of Catherine the Great. The Russian empress fell prone to projections of sexual abnormality during her life-time already and her legacy as a historical ruler, writer and intellectual was overruled by images of monstrosity beyond compare. The case of Catherine II shows, however, that the monster was not, in Jeffrey Cohen’s definition, a ‘harbringer of category crisis’ (1996, 6) but a consistent element in the gender discourse of political rule.
Tijdschrift: Literatuurwetenschap en uitgeverijonderzoek
ISSN: 2294-1193
Volume: 11
Pagina's: 39 - 52
Jaar van publicatie:2019
Toegankelijkheid:Closed