Abstract Submission: Early Modern Literary Studies, Christopher Marlowe at 450 Title: “Marlowe’s Edward II: The Abjection of Isabella” Author: Dan Mills, Clayton State University Date Submitted: November 1, 2013 Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II has justifiably attracted gender-oriented scholarly attention because of its conspicuously homosocial relationship between Gaveston and King Edward. Edward dotes on Gaveston throughout the play, and this obsession arguably leads to his downfall, and coupled with Edward’s attraction to Gaveston is Edward’s oftentimes explicit rejection of Queen Isabella. Medieval women’s primary purpose was that of child-bearer, and this would have been especially true for royalty, as there was always an anxiety over the production of a male heir. Such a purely procreative female function represents what Julia Kristeva would call a “maternal body.” In The Powers of Horror, Kristeva develops a notion of abjection that states that subjective and group identity are constituted by rejecting any presence that threatens one’s own personal borders, with the main threat stemming from dependence on the maternal body. King Edward and his son both strenuously reject the maternal body in Isabella. But when King Edward says to Isabella, “Fawn not on me, French strumpet; get thee gone,” (4.145) he is not merely freeing up his sexuality to more openly pursue some form of consummation with Gaveston. He is in fact widening the gap between the (to him) repressive presence of women and the repressive presence of the maternal Law under which he feels subservient. This is the same maternal Law that placed him in the position of King, a position he was not qualified for, according to Holinshed’s Chronicles of England. Prince Edward only fully attains power when he sends his mother to the Tower in the closing lines of the play. Although he initially expresses pity for his mother, his final speech undermines any notions of his sympathy: “Could I have ruled thee then, as I do now, / Thou hadst not hatched this monstrous treachery” (25.96-7). Through the rejection/abjection of Isabella, the King and Prince implicitly reject matrilineal integrity. Subversive implications of the rejection of a Queen in a play produced during the reign of Elizabeth go deeper than merely calling into question Elizabeth’s right to rule as the single, “virgin” queen. They directly indict societal stipulations that women must stay subservient to men, and that men must not engage in unnatural sexual acts. In Marlowe’s depiction of the homosocial bond between Edward and Gaveston (who never physically “consummate” this attraction) Marlowe unsexes both King Edward and Queen Isabella and as such posits that only an unsexed or asexual ruler can effectively rule. By viewing Edward II through the perspective of Lacanian readings of Freud’s Oedipal complex and Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection, this essay will demonstrate Marlowe’s acute sensitivity towards both his own “latent homosexuality” (which, according to Foucault, was itself a kind of asexuality in this period) as well as the often hypocritical “virginal” asexuality of Queen Elizabeth. In Edward II,