Fiche oral - power

Power

I’m going to present you the notion of power and to illustrate it I would like to talk about the political power in England. So first what power means? We can define it as the ability or capacity to do something, to oblige someone, which make the owner stronger than everyone else without. There are different sorts of power: political, social, financial, cultural... It’s a synonym of authority and superiority. To study the notion of political power we will be interested in three documents: an audio guide describing two portraits, an extract of an Indian novel and a TV serie. The question raised by the three documents is ‘’to what extend political power is a burden for the monarch?’’

A destiny out of the ordinary

This first document is an audio where a man is describing two portraits of two female British Monarchs: Queen Elizabeth Ist and Queen Victoria, who had the longest reign of the British dynasty.

First of all the narrator talks about Queen Elizabeth Ist : she was crowned at the age of 30 and was nicknamed ‘’the Virgin Queen’’ as she never get married or have children. She lived in the 16th Century, a prosperous time for England: the Elizabethan Age and the beginning of North America’s colonization (the State of Virginia was named in her honour). Moreover under her reign the British Army had a great victory in 1588 against the Spanish Armada and defeated it : we can see this episode painted on the background of the queen’s portrait. On the other hand, Queen Victoria lived during the 19th Century at the beginning of the colonization of India. She was crowned at 22 years old and had nine children before Prince Albert, her husband, died.

The document continues by describing the two portraits and the different representation of power and monarchy they give. Both of the queens are represented with powerful symbols: a crown, an orb, a majestic dress… But we can point out some differences: Queen Elizabeth Ist is all dressed in black and gold and embodies beauty and authority. She seems untouchable and powerful. Queen Victoria is dressed with ermine fur and a red coat. Beside her we can see the St Edward’s crown in front of a window with a view on London. This portrait is more realist and simple than the first one and the queen seems more natural. We can see here a real evolution of the representation of power: the closer in time, the less complex the portrait looks. Nevertheless these two portraits give an impression of straightness to the spectator who can easily understand the inconvenience of the crown’s weight.

Duty and Friendship

This second document is taken from Shrabani Basu’s novel: Victoria and Abdul, the True Story of the Queen’s closest Confidant (2010) which tells the story of Abdul Karim a simple Indian servant who became the dearest friend of Queen Victoria. The author describes his life since he entered the court during the queen’s Golden Jubilee and after the queen’s death: alone and defenceless, surrounding by a Household who hates him, he finally had to go back to India.

Abdul Karim’s story is quite tragic: after having climbed all the social ladders he lost everything. But Queen Victoria’s one was even more: her only true friendship was criticized by her whole

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