ABSTRACT
Although Joan is burned at the stake at the end of Henry VI, Part I, the subversive forces she embodies survive in Part II in the persons of unruly women and rebellious commoners. Unlike Part I, where much of the action takes place on French soil, Part II is set entirely in England, an England descending rapidly into the chaos of civil war; and the domestic dissension already represented in Part I becomes the focus of the action. These two early plays are united, however, in their representation of women as a principal cause of England’s problems. Foretold at the very end of Part I and announced in the opening scene of Part II, Margaret’s marriage to Henry VI brings the subversive forces embodied by the French women in Part I to the heart of the English court. The French women who threaten to subvert the English historical project in Part I are unmarried; in Part II, the dangers they embody quite literally come home to England in the form of ambitious wives, married to the men who govern the land. These women threaten both the authority of their husbands and the stability of the kingdom. Margaret openly defies her husband, engages in an adulterous love affair with an ambitious courtier, and takes a leading role in dangerous court intrigues. Eleanor Cobham, wife of Gloucester, the upright Lord Protector, defies his wishes, scheming to put him on the throne so she herself can become queen. Fundamental to the play’s brutal representation of political disorder, then, is its emphasis on the gender disorder at the heart of the English state and the English family.
