The influential women of Liberal monarchygender and politics in the Spanish and British royal courts, c. 1830-1860
ISSN: 1469-9524, 1470-1847
Year of publication: 2021
Volume: 27
Issue: 1
Pages: 79-96
Type: Article
More publications in: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies
Abstract
This article shows how women, thanks to their courtly positions, could continue exerting some political power in the time of their exclusion of formal politics resulting from the Liberal, constitutional system. Their close and intimate contact with a queen regnant as Isabel II provided them a decisive role in this tug-of-war between political pressure groups and alliances. Likewise, we employ a comparative perspective with a contemporary ruling woman as Queen Victoria, the epitome of idealized transition to a parliamentary monarchy and a specific courtly system. Among their extensive staff, our attention will focus on the two principal figures: the Camarera Mayor – equivalent to the Mistress of the Robe – and the Damas de la Reina – who held positions and had duties similar to those of the Ladies of the Bedchamber–. By studying an extensive archival and press documentation, we defend the importance of the court as an informal and alternative place of participation of these women in politics.
Bibliographic References
- Akkerman, N., and B. Houben, eds. 2014. The Politics of Female Households. Ladies-in-waiting across Early Modern Europe. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
- Benson, A., and V. Esher. 1901. The Letters of Queen Victoria: A Selection from Her Majesty’s Correspondence, 1837-1861. Vol. I. London: John Murray.
- Bogdanor, V. 1995. The Monarchy and the Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Burdiel, I. 1998. “Isabel II: un perfil inacabado.” Ayer 29: 187–216.
- Burdiel, I. 2004. “The Queen, the Woman and the Middle Class: The Symbolic Failure of Isabel II of Spain.” Social History 29 (3): 301–319. doi:10.1080/0307102042000257601
- Burdiel, I. 2010. Isabel II. Una biografía (1830-1904). Madrid: Taurus.
- Burdiel, I. 2012. “El descenso de los reyes y la nación moral. A propósito de Los Borbones en pelota.” In Los Borbones en pelota, edited by SEM, 7–74. Zaragoza: IFC.
- Cannadine, D. 2004. “From Biography to History: Writing the Modern British Monarchy.” Historical Research 77 (197): 289–312. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2004.00211.x
- Cannon, J. 1987. The Modern Monarchy: A Study in Adaptation. Reading: University of Reading.
- Cruz, J. 1996. Gentlemen, Bourgeois, and Revolutionaries: Political Change and Cultural Persistence among the Spanish Dominant Groups, 1750-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Cruz, J. 2000. “The Moderate Ascendancy, 1843-1868.” In Spanish History since 1808, edited by J. Á. Junco and A. Shubert, 33–47. London: Arnold.
- Fernández de Córdova, F. 1886. Mis memorias íntimas. Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra.
- Fiorentino, C. 2008. La corte dei Savoia (1849-1900). Bolonia: Il Mulino.
- García–Monerris, E., and C. García–Monerris. 2015. Las cosas del rey. Historia política de una desavenencia (1808-1874). Madrid: Akal.
- Gutiérrez, R., and A. Mira. 2014. “Ser reinas en la España constitucional. Isabel II y María Victoria de Saboya.” Historia y Política 39: 139–166.
- Jennings, I. 1936. Cabinet Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Kiernan, V. 1966. The Revolution of 1854 in Spanish History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Kirsch, M. 1999. Monarch und Parlament im 19. Jahrhundert: Der monarchische Konstitutionalismus als europäischer Verfassungstyp-Frankreich im Vergleich. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht.
- Langewiesche, D. 2013. Die Monarchie im Jahrhundert Europas. Selbstbehauptung durch Wandel im 19. Jahrhundert. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
- Mansel, P. 1988. The Court of France, 1789-1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Marcuello, J. I. 1998. “La Corona y la desnaturalización del parlamentarismo isabelino.” Ayer 29: 15–36.
- Margadant, J. B. 1999. “Gender, Vice and the Political Imaginary in Postrevolutionary France: Reinterpreting the Failure of the July Monarchy, 1830-1848.” American Historical Review 104 (5): 1461–1496. doi:10.2307/2649346
- Mauduit, X. 2016. Le Ministère du faste. La Maison de l’empereur Napoléon III. Paris: Fayard.
- Millán, J., and M. C. Romeo. 2013. “Modelos de monarquía en el proceso de afirmación nacional de España, 1808-1923.” Diacronie 16: 35–56.
- Moral, A. 2005. ¡El enemigo en Palacio! Afrancesados, liberales y carlistas en la Real Casa y Patrimonio (1814-1843). Alcalá de Henares: UAH.
- Palafox, M. D. L. D. 1842. Documentos para entender mejor la renuncia de la Camarera Mayor de Palacio. Madrid: Aguado.
- Pando, M. 1865. Vida política escrita por él mismo. Madrid: Eusebio Aguado.
- Pro, J. 1987. “La práctica política de los Gobiernos antiparlamentarios del final de la Década Moderada (1851-1854).” Revista de las Cortes Generales 12: 7–57.
- Pro, J. 2007. “Poder político y poder económico en el Madrid de los moderados (1844-1854).” Ayer 66: 27–55.
- Reynolds, K. D. 1998. Aristocratic Woman and Political Society in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Röhl, J. 1996. The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- San Narciso, D., M. Barral, and C. Armenteros, eds. 2021. Monarchy and Liberalism in Spain. The Building of the Nation-State, 1780-1931. London: Routledge.
- Sánchez, R., and D. San Narciso, eds. 2018. La cuestión de Palacio. Corte y cortesanos en la España contemporánea. Granada: Comares.
- Schulte, R. 2002. “The Queen: A Middle-Class Tragedy: The Writing of History and the Creation of Myths in Nineteenth-Century France and Germany.” Gender and History 14 (2): 266–293. doi:10.1111/1468-0424.00266.
- Sellin, V. 2018. Violence and Legitimacy. European Monarchy in the Age of Revolutions. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
- Spall, R. F. 1987. “The Bedchamber Crisis and the Hastings Scandal: Morals, Politics and the Press at the Beginning of Victoria’s Reign.” Canadian Journal of History XXII: 19–39. doi:10.3138/cjh.22.1.19.
- Stockmar, B. 1873. Memoirs of Baron Stockmar. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
- Urbano, P. 2013. “Nos bastidores da Corte. O Rei e a Casa Real na crise da Monarquia 1889-1908.” PhD diss., Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
- Vega, J. M. 1910. Memorias. Madrid: Hijos de Hernández.
- Vial, C.-É. 2016. Les derniers feux de la monarchie. La cour au siècle des révolutions. Paris: Perrin.
- Walthall, A., ed. 2008. Servants of the Dynasty. Palace Women in World History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Ward, Y. 2002. “Queen Victoria and Queen Dona Maria II de Gloria of Portugal: Marriage, Motherhood, and Sovereignty in the Lives of Young Queens Regnant (1828-1853).” Lilith 11: 117–130.
- Wienfort, M. 1993. Monarchie in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Deutschland und England von 1640 bis 1848. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht.