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Exploring the Limitations and Alternatives to Gender Fluidity in Queen Christina

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2023, 36(1), pp.61-86
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
  • Received : March 11, 2023
  • Accepted : April 6, 2023
  • Published : April 30, 2023

Soim Kim 1

1건국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Pam Gems’s Queen Christina aims to demystify the film version of ‘Queen Christina’ directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Intentionally Gems transforms Christina from an “intellectual beauty” whom Greta Garbo incarnated elegantly in the film to a bewildered, hysterical and misogynistic anti-hero. Being raised as a prince but expected to court a man and give birth, which she has abhorred, Christina in the play gets lost in every sense. Almost every scene ends with fiasco in which Christina fails to integrate her conflicting gender identities and maintain meaningful relationships with both men and women. The adjective that most frequently used to describe Christina is “hysterical.” For the purpose of examining the play’s perspective on gender issues, this paper explores the factors which contribute to Christina’s degeneration. It concludes that all of the contributing factors are based on patriarchal values that dichotomized men and women and perpetrated the ideology of male superiority. The male powerbrokers in the patriarchal court impose different gender identities to Christina for their own gains. As a major factor the Lutheran Court of Sweden and the Vatican to which Christina later settled regard childbirth as a sacred obligation of all women. The Sweden Court almost enforces Christina to produce an heir. She is the detrimental outcome of patriarchy. This paper suggests that Christina’s own intellect and intelligence, can offer a silver lining out of her presumed doom. Christina’s intelligence that the play only lightly touches upon, being the common ground of two genders, can neutralize the enforced segregation and becomes a potential cure for her despondent lot.

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