Treason and Masculinity in Medieval England: Gender, Law and Political Culture by Amanda E. McVitty (review)

In Treason and Masculinity, Amanda McVitty explores shifting notions of treason, and its cultural, social, and political implications, viewed through a gender lens. She traces changing understandings of treason from 1384 (an occasion of trial by combat) to 1424 (the execution of Sir John Mortimer). McVitty determines that treason exists on a continuum and shifts across this period in response to discourses of true and false manhood, chivalric values, and the need for kings to align their manly bodies with the social body and the body politic. In this context, the separation of the crown from Richard II and the attaching of it to the Lancastrian kings 'continued to be re-enacted through the rhetoric of treason proceedings' (p. 209). These discourses of treason turned on questions of male honour and homosocial loyalties.

Central to McVitty's argument is the perception of the body politic as male. By adopting the lens of gender to examine treason trials, the nature of the body politic as male by default is highlighted. The male body becomes 'the discursive, conceptual and material nexus of conflicts over royal legitimacy, sovereign authority and loyal political subjecthood' (p. 207). Her argument is well structured, built upon several case studies of treason trials. She concludes that women were not perceived as having the political agency to commit treason, because they could not be identified with the male body politic.

McVitty untangles complex and complicated interconnections of word, action, and symbol. Through the lens of gender, she observes the ways that gendered processes produce privileges, opportunities, and roles from which women are excluded, and also underpin and reinforce power hierarchies between men. Chapter 1 focuses on the final years of Richard II's reign, and the interplay of perceptions of power, manhood, and the legal construction of treason as the material and affective division of the body politic. She looks specifically at trial by combat, and the actions leading up to and following the Merciless Parliament of 1388. Chapter 2 further unpacks ideas of masculine loyalty, homosocial bonds, and true and false speech. It undertakes a close analysis of the trials of the Earl of Arundel, the Duke of Gloucester, the Earl of Warwick, and Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray, exploring the interaction of the personal and the public. Chapter 3 deals the deposition of Richard II, and the usurpation of the throne by Henry IV. It explores new definitions of treason, which present Richard II as inverting social and political order, and Henry as a 'true' man. McVitty understands the use of English by Henry as drawing associations between language, law, and national identity, and so identifying him as the saviour of the English nation. A close reading of the Epiphany Rising explores the role of the commons and the assertion of Henry as the king and sole authority. The role of Constance Despenser (and other women) is examined, with McVitty concluding that women were capable of 'domestic treason' but were not understood as having sufficient political agency to engage in treason against the king. Chapter 4 looks at the period 1400–1405 and the range of people accused of treason during this period, in response to Henry's vulnerability as king. This particularly interesting chapter analyses the intersection of gender and speech, the power of words, and words as deeds. Loyalty, the use of the vernacular, and gendered political identity are all understood as interacting to change the nature of treason. The stories of Maude de Vere and Geoffrey Story are examined closely. Chapter 5 introduces Lollardy and notions of heresy. A further shift in the definition of treason results in the middling urban classes becoming traitors through bill casting, and the copying and disseminating of Lollard texts. McVitty looks closely here at the trials of Benedict Wolman, Thomas Lucas, and John Wyghtlok. Chapter 6 returns to...