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Epilogue

Anonymity and “Reasonable Libertie”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2022

Christina Luckyj
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
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Summary

The Epilogue considers anonymous pamphlets printed in the later part of King James’s reign that deploy the female voice as a form of political critique: Ester Hath Hang’d Haman, Hic Mulier, Haec Vir, and Muld Sacke. Of the cross-dressing pamphlets, Haec Vir in particular recruits the female voice for its association with militant Elizabethan values and the freedom of the subject, while the pseudonymous author Esther Sowernam ventriloquizes Esther, the biblical heroine who confronts the king. The female voice occupied a unique position in the seventeenth-century political landscape, allowing women writers to critique abuses of male power without compromising their position as dutiful subjects. Unlike the freedoms achieved by male citizens at the expense of women later in the seventeenth century, the “reasonable libertie” sought by men and women in early Stuart England authorized the voice of the wife/subject as a powerful political tool.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Epilogue
  • Christina Luckyj, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
  • Book: Liberty and the Politics of the Female Voice in Early Stuart England
  • Online publication: 24 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108954525.009
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  • Epilogue
  • Christina Luckyj, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
  • Book: Liberty and the Politics of the Female Voice in Early Stuart England
  • Online publication: 24 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108954525.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Epilogue
  • Christina Luckyj, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
  • Book: Liberty and the Politics of the Female Voice in Early Stuart England
  • Online publication: 24 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108954525.009
Available formats
×