For most subjects in Tudor England, personal belief was largely just that: personal. In addressing the religious tensions of Edwardian and Marian England, primarily Protestant reforms under Edward VI and the subsequent return to Catholicism under Mary I, Dunn notes the reality in Elizabeth Tilney’s family’s approach to religion they “certainly weren’t reformists, weren’t anything much else either: just were were what ’d always been, doing pretty much as ’d always done, if – admittedly – a little more cautiously” (25). While the plot is dominated more by interpersonal relationships between the characters than by any twists and turns of actions and events, Dunn’s novel is nevertheless engaging and provides a unique viewpoint to mid-Tudor England. Dunn also implicitly engages with historians’ largest quandary: source bias. As seen through the eyes of the “catch-all Catholic girl” (5) Elizabeth Tilney, the woman who had “come to supervise in her detention” (11), Dunn’s work simultaneously approaches the question of confessional divide in mid-Tudor England and provides a more human view of the imprisonment and execution of England’s ‘Nine Day Queen’. So begins Suzannah Dunn’s The Lady of Misrule, a novel of Lady Jane Grey’s last days in the Tower of London before her execution in February 1554. “A good Catholic girl was what they’d said they needed” (page 5). She can be found on Twitter Posted by gabbystorey 13th Dec 2021 11th Dec 2021 Posted in Scholar Introduction Leave a comment on Scholar Introduction: Victoria Rasbridge Featured Book Review: The Lady of Misrule by Suzannah Dunn Victoria also acts as an ambassador and student representative for the London Arts and Humanities Partnership and works as a mentor to both masters and PhD students at UCL. Victoria works as the joint-lead Postgraduate Teaching Assistant in the Spanish department at UCL where she is also the co-convenor of both the Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies seminars and the Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies seminar series. Her other interests include early modern history, cultural production, and performance and she has recently published on the ‘Performance of Power’.
Her doctoral thesis explores the representation of queenship in the Spanish comedia and aims to develop a new intersectional framework through which the character of the queen, and the multiplicity of her identity, can be better understood.
Her research focuses primarily on the theatre of the Spanish Golden Age, and she has a particular interest in questions of gender and identity. Hesse prize by the Association of Hispanic Classical Theater. In addition to her AHRC studentship, Victoria is an ARTES-CEEH scholar and has been awarded the Everett W. Having completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Oxford, Victoria is currently pursuing a PhD in Spanish at University College London (UCL), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK.
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