ENDURING PATTERNS: SEX, GENDER AND FEMALE BONDS IN LIZ LOCHHEAD’S MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF

Abstract

Liz Lochhead’s “Introduction” to her play Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off establishes a commonality in the lived experience of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor and, indeed, the lived experience of contemporary women, by situating feminist issues of sex and gender, and their relationship with politics, at the heart of the play. Through these issues, Lochhead identifies an obvious potential basis for female solidarity and bonding which the historical events behind the play’s plot do not reflect in terms of actual, realised female bonds. Therefore, relying on the insights of Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Mary Hawkesworth and bell hooks, this paper aims to explore the manner in which the play Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off demonstrates and explains the lack of female bonds under patriarchal influences, even in cases in which factors such as class and race are not established as points of division, by regarding sex as an ideal construct which shapes the materialisation of the body, and gender as a culturally-conditioned performance.