The basic thesis of this particular paper - on the women of Henry VI and Richard III - is that the women of Shakespeare's tetralogy are the source and reason for the presence of the corrupt monarch Richard III - the Scourge of God and the bane of the kingdom.
Richard, in an attempt to retaliate against maternal cursing, truncates the maternal bonds in which he himself cannot participate: “Hath he set bounds between their love and me?” asks Elizabeth, “I am their mother; who shall bar me from them?” (R3 4.1.20-21). The Duchess of York also pleads for proper maternal rights: “I am their father’s mother: I will see them” (R3 4.1.22). Richard, however, is unmoved, and instead subjects himself to the maternal cursing of Elizabeth and the Duchess, which resonates with Margaret’s later hell-hound imagery:
Elizabeth: Death and destruction dogs thee at thy heels;
Thy mother’s name is ominous to children.
…
And make me die the thrall of Margaret’s curse:
Nor mother, wife, nor England’s counted Queen.
…
Duchess: O ill-dispersing wind of misery!
O my accursed womb, the bed of death! (R3 4.1.39-40, 45-46, 52-53)
Both women recognize the distortion of motherhood in the time and space of Richard III. Elizabeth’s exclamation that “Thy mother’s name is ominous to children” refers specifically to herself – Dorset’s mother – but also to maternity in general; transgressive femininity twists and degrades motherhood, both on a basic level in that sexually transgressive women lead to illegitimate children, but also on a more complex level. Transgression becomes embodied in the distorted state of both nation and king; Richard’s nation has become as corrupted as the mind and body of the man who has come to rule it: “The tyrannous and bloody act is done; / The most arch deed of piteous massacre / That ever yet this land was guilty of” (R3 4.3.1-3). The women have the power to engender; Richard – like his demonic mother Margaret – only to destroy, a benefit for England, even if a punishment for him. Richard’s power may destroy kings and kingdoms, but it will not be passed to future generations, guaranteeing that, with his death, England will be liberated from his threat by the far more masculine and heroic Richmond.
Even the women’s amphibolic language ultimately fails, opening space in the realm of politics for Richmond’s entrance. Margaret’s words that “fill the world” are her weapons, but even these deteriorate at the end of Richard III, just as she lost her son at the end of 3 Henry VI. Although many of her curses are fulfilled – “Margaret, now they heavy curse / Is lighted on poor Hastings’ wretched head” (R3 3.5.92-93) and “Now Margaret’s curse is fall’n upon our heads” from Grey (R3 3.4.15) – Margaret cannot prophecy or participate in the restoration of England by virtue of her alien and transgressive nature. “These English woes shall make me smile in France” (R3 4.4.115), she says, having returned, it seems, for the sole purpose of engendering hatred and murder. However, with the departure of this most-reviled “ruthless Queen,” Richard, as Margaret’s embodied curse, loses control and the play leaves behind female cursing in favor of the masculine space of Bosworth field. With the absence of transgressive femininity, the masculine principles upon which the nation should be founded are able to assert themselves once more, allowing Richmond to engage with and defeat Richard in a masculine contest of arms.
It is, finally, Richmond’s pure masculinity that brings a close to the tetralogy, not only fulfilling the Tudor myth of accession, but also destroying Richard and deflating the power of transgressive womanhood. With Richmond’s defeat of Richard, Margaret disappears back to the alien space of her home nation, Elizabeth’s angst dissolves into her daughter’s marriage to Richmond, and the Duchess of York loses her final child and the target of her anger. This fulfillment of the Tudor myth[1] finalizes the scourging of the nation and enables a generative move forward. Richmond “steps into a prepared role: Margaret, the incarnation of the wrong sort of vengeance, disappears, leaving the place vacant for the minister of God’s justice. Yet he must fight a battle, and go through all the military and political preparations” (Hammond 111). These preparations are the motions of masculine agency, the reenactment of Talbot’s lost heroism and the rejection of corrupt femininity in favor of true womanhood, controlled and nurtured by male power within the boundaries of appropriate marriage. Richmond proves his own worth by his recognition of his own power, his lauding of divinity, his appropriate relationship to women, and his military prowess: “God, and our good cause, fight upon our side; / The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls, / Like high-rear’d bulwarks, stand before our faces” (R3 5.3.241-243). With the blessing of the “wronged souls” murdered by Richard and the sanction of god, Richmond “enters the play as the synthesis that has been called for, and as the agent of divine justice” (French 71), scorching away the fog of female amphibology and restoring the sanctity of King, country, and masculinity.
[1] From Edward hall, particularly, Tillyard gleaned what has ever since been contentiously debated as ‘the Tudor myth’: this was the belief that, in the marriage of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York and their accession to the throne after Bosworth, the union of the houses of Lancaster and York bore witness to God’s providential pattern in history’s finally redeeming the land from the curse brought about by the usurpation, deposition and murder of Richard II. (Knowles 43)