No, Netflix's ‘The Crown’ isn’t about feminism. It doesn’t have to be.
Spoilers ahead!
The Crown is not about an early feminist icon. Despite what you may have read about the Netflix original, Queen Elizabeth II's character is more motivated to follow rules enforced by men than advocate for herself or women’s rights.
Others, Mashable included, have suggested that because Elizabeth takes her role seriously and consequently sidesteps her husband's wishes, The Crown is a proto-feminist tale. But, in the show's first season, she does these things reluctantly, as if her hands are tied. She would rather have been a dutiful wife and mother as her husband continues his naval career, than head of state.
As a viewer, you get the feeling that if Queen Elizabeth II wasn't sitting on the throne at the age of 25 following her father’s fatal bout of cancer, she wouldn’t challenge the men around her, be they lawmakers, bishops or her husband, Prince Philip. She appears to feel worthy of power only because of her birthright.
And that’s OK.
Elizabeth doesn’t need to be a feminist icon for the character to come alive. The Crown is a captivating tale of a woman struggling to be two people at once, a wife and a queen, losing herself and loved ones in the process.
Love, cherish and obey
During her wedding ceremony, Winston Churchill, who served as Elizabeth’s first prime minister, gossips about her chosen vows as she promises to love, cherish and obey her groom.
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“Obey?” Churchill’s wife, Clementine, whispers with a raised eyebrow.
“She insisted, it was discussed,” Churchill bristles.
Pledging to obey one’s husband isn't in line with advocating for gender equality. Similarly, when Churchill sternly lobbies that she and her children take her maiden name of Windsor, Elizabeth fights to keep her married name at Philip's request. She eventually acquiesces to the government’s mandate, though. While some have pointed to tough choices like this that upset her husband as a sign of feminist strength, she is simply defying one man in her life to follow the will of others; it's no win for feminism.
“She was a very reluctant figurehead, and head of family. To me that doesn't seem to be a massive feminist icon,” Claire Foy, who plays Elizabeth, told Marie Claire when asked if the queen was a "before-her-time feminist."
To be fair, Foy also points out she supposes Elizabeth was a "protofeminist in a way," but she is reluctant to characterize her as such because it waters down her inner conflict.
Just being a female head of state doesn’t automatically make you a feminist. Look at Elizabeth’s great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, who is the second longest-serving monarch in the UK's history after Elizabeth II. In 1870 she wrote, “Were woman to unsex themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection."
Buckling to pressure
More often than not, Elizabeth bows to the pressure placed on her by men in her life. For example, when she wants to promote the private secretary she had while she was a princess, to her private secretary as queen, she doesn't do so because a man tells her not to -- in this case her retiring secretary who is something of a puppet master.
When she wants to keep a promise to her sister to let her marry the man she loves even though he is divorced — forbidden in the Church of England — she doesn’t do so because cabinet and a gaggle of male bishops tell her not to. She does privately condemn cabinet for its hypocrisy since some members are divorced, but that’s where her fight dies.
There’s a moment where she almost gets the gumption to fire Churchill. In episode 4, he is more interested in limiting Philip's flying lessons than recognizing the "Great Smog" of 1952 as a public health problem, even as hospitals burst at the seams. When Elizabeth finds out, she summons the courage to ask Churchill to step down. But as the smog lifts, Churchill is able to manipulate the media in his favor, and she gives up.
Addled by how politically limited her position really is, she goes to her grandmother for advice and gets an unexpected answer: do nothing.
"To do nothing is the hardest job of all, and it will take every ounce of energy that you have," her grandmother tells her.
Elizabeth, the figurehead
That lesson drives Elizabeth more than any feminist ideals. Later on in the season, Elizabeth does scold Churchill for disguising his strokes as the flu, but the rebuke isn't for Elizabeth, the individual. She does it because Elizabeth the queen, the figurehead, the monarch she has given up so much of herself to be, has been disrespected.
Others have pointed to her hiring a private tutor — who encouraged her to give Churchill the "dressing down" — as the mark of a feminist. Perhaps, but if she weren't queen, the show makes it seem as if she would have been satisfied with her limited childhood education. She wants the tutor so she can intelligently converse with heads of state. That's an admirable motivation, but not a flash of feminism.
There have been moments in the real Queen Elizabeth’s later years that imply feminist values (the first season of The Crown on Netflix only covers her 20s). For example, in 1998 Queen Elizabeth took a Saudi Arabian crown prince for a spin in her Land Rover — a move that’s been described as a subtle stab at a country that bans women from driving. In 2013 she signed into law a rule that would give women the same right to the throne as their younger brothers. But those are glimpses we haven’t seen in the show, which highlights her dedication to tradition over individuality or equal rights.
In real life, Queen Elizabeth is beloved by many and some have characterized her approach to feminism as quiet advocacy. Perhaps that silence allows people to project the qualities they'd like to see on their royal figurehead. But wearing the crown takes away your voice. It's hard to imagine a feminist icon without one.
Topics Netflix
Brittany Levine Beckman was Mashable's managing editor. She enjoys crafting feature ideas, learning new things, and party parrots. Before working at Mashable, she covered community news at the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register. That's how she met a zonkey and the tallest man in the world.
