My Just Desire : The Life of Bess Raleigh, Wife to Sir Walter

Rating:
Summary: One of England's great matriarchs
Review: Anna Beer's biography of Bess Ralegh follows a current trend amongst English literary historians who are intent on re-examining the supporting cast of English Tudor and Stuart history. In the same vein as Weir, Gristwood and Somerset, she has produced an in depth look at a single aristocratic female set against a common backdrop, in this case, Elizabethan England.
Opening with her own fictionalised account of Bess early morning as Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, we find our subject, Bess Throckmorton, five months pregnant which leads to a brief discourse on the sexual politics that pervaded much of Elizabethan politics. In chronological manner, Beer gives an early account of Bess life, of her Throckmorton relatives who constantly interfered in matters political meaning they often got send to Court, of her mother Anna and her presentation to the Court in 1584. Beer also weaves in an account of the major events of the time featuring Mary, Queen of Scots, Essex, Dudley et al before focusing on Bess' education which was "neither democratizing nor meritocratic". In parallel runs the biography of her future husband, Walter Ralegh and the sexual scandals that seem to have been rife at Court.
(...)
Beer, in a simple and entertaining style, has created a story of a woman who was, at first, infatuated with a charming adventurer, then married to one of the most powerful men in England, risking her Queen's fury, then a stoical and steadfast wife displaying brilliant political and legal acumen to keep the Ralegh and Throckmorton family afloat during years of political upheaval and royal dynastical change. Ever-loyal to her increasingly disillusioned husband and afterwards the consummate matriarch it lends credence to the statement that behind every great man there stands a greater woman.
Well worth reading.