1. Recapturing the voices of Queen’s: Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins’ War series by Helena Carry
Research Proposal
Introduction:
The main aim of this paper is to assess
whether or not feminism is represented in
Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins War (The
Lady of the Rivers, The White
Queen, The Red Queen, The Kingmakers
Daughter, The White Princess) series of
novels, and if so, what aspects of
feminism can be found within them. While
there has been research done into the
historical aspect of Gregory’s
novels, Gregory herself has co-written an
historical guide to the first three novels
with the publication of The Women of the
Cousins War, very little has been done
with regards to feminism and its place, if
any, within the novels. The reasons
behind this research project stem mainly
from a personal interest in the history of
royal families. After watching a television
adaption of one of the novels, this
influenced the research of the characters
being portrayed as well as Philippa
Gregory. By doing this research questions
began arising as to why the women
portrayed had very rarely ever been
brought to the fore, unlike their male
counterparts, with Gregory’s body of work
being the exception.
Research Questions:
The area of research is whether feminism is
represented in Philippa Gregory’s The
Cousins War series of novels. In order to be
able to answer this question, It will first be
necessary to answer general questions
around the topic. These general questions
are:
What is feminism?
What are the characteristics of feminism?
Who are the women in the novel?
What is the historical context of the
novel?
After answering the above questions the
dissertation will then focus on specific
questions with regards to the title of the
project. These questions will be:
What characteristics of feminism, if
any, can be found within the novels?
How are these characteristics
represented?
If these novels represent feminism, do
they give any insight into women in a
historical sense, i.e. what do they say
about women and feminism in history?
Methods:
The research method that will be used in
this project will be qualitative and due to
this, the project will be using a wide
variety of evidence to come to a
conclusion on this research topic. Due to
this topic being based on literary theory
and novels, this method of research will
be used to focus in on the area of study.
While examining the history behind the
women within the novels, it became
more interesting as to why these
women were relatively unknown, which
ultimately has led to this research topic.
By examining the sources accurately, i.e.
checking whether they are biased,
factual or mistaken; a conclusion will be
reached regarding my analysis.