SALVE DEUS REX JUDAEORUM

In Aemilia Lanyer’s piece entitled Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Layner describes feminism by using the Bible as her base point. She describes how women should be more demanding towards a man and not except that everything is to blame because of their sex even though Eve is the one gave Adam the apple in Genesis.

The text first gives a small biography of Layner. She was a daughter to a family of court musicians and at one point she was the mistress to Lord Hunsdon, Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Chamberlain. She became pregnant from him and was forced to marry into a different family of musicians. Her fortunes declined after her pregnancy so she came to reside into some well established families were was taught poetry and piety.

Layner’s poem was published in 1611 and it had extreme feminist views for its time. The first part of the poem, To the Doubtful Reader, was actually placed at the end of the volume but in this text it was placed at the beginning. Its use it to tell the reader that the

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The next part, To the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, is somewhat a plea to Queen Elizabeth not to look down upon her for writing this poem. The first example comes from the Passion of Christ. She later explains that men were the ones the killed Christ, not women. It’s like she takes all the feminism ideals that she presents further and totally bashes it with this text.

The next example comes from the Genesis story on how Eve went to the tree and took the apple because she was tricked by the devil as a serpent. She states that the banishment from Eden was not just Eve’s fault but that most of the blame was laid upon Adam because he knowing ignored God’s command to not eat from the tree.

In To the Virtuous Reader, Layner expresses all of her ideals on men and woman. Pilate ignores her request and puts to death the Son of God and the savior of the people. Also, Jesus appeared to a woman when her first resurrected. The words that she used and how she explains herself makes her seem that she is apologizing for further content and blames it on her “weak distempered brain. She further claims that men are evil and disposed and that they forget that they were born of women, nourished by women, and that if there were no women they would cease to exist. She starts off saying that all women should know that they should not be blamed for everything even though some

women claim that they should be. All that Eve did was provide for her husband, she took the apple, she did not defy God by eating it.

Approximate Word count = 696
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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