The Discoverie of Guiana by Walter Ralegh. A Necessary Failure: Ralegh and the Redefining of the Poetic Hero

            Ralegh generates this interest in his endeavor by portraying himself as the national hero and transforming Guiana into the “helpless damsel” from Renaissance romanticism. From the onset of his journey, Ralegh establishes Guiana as a pristine, virginal land where “…the plains adjoining without bush or stubble, all fair green grass; the deer crossing in every path; and every stone that we stooped to take up promised either gold or silver by its complexion” (Ralegh 91). He also transposes Elizabeth’s persona as the Virgin Queen onto the land: Guiana  as a “country that hath yet her maidenhead” mirrors Elizabeth’s call for her men to protect her against any “that should invade the borders of my realm” (Wills 83). In incorporating Elizabeth’s persona of the meek woman into his self-fashioning as the poetic explorer, he substantiates his failure to conquer any lands. Just as the the Renaissance hero would not force himself onto the womanly object of his affections, Ralegh must not force himself on the untainted lands of Guiana. Instead, he employs his persona as a “national hero” to justify why the land must remain untainted by his penetration into the lands – because the symbol of their country, their matriarch, is a great virgin ruler.  As such, only a virgin leader, like Elizabeth, is appropriate to rule such pristine lands.

While Ralegh depicts Guiana as the lady in his national quest, he also establishes his villain as the Spaniards; however, they are less a traditional physical threat to our hero and more an economic threat to the nation as a whole. The physical presence of Spaniards in South America is peripheral compared to the hazards presented to the British crown through their mercantile activity. This weakness of the Spanish inhabitants is due to the fact that they “are therein so dispersed as they are nowhere strong;” however, despite the decentralization of the settlers in South America, they possess the unifying “purpose to enter Guiana (the magazine of all rich metals)” and this intense drive to obtain gold is detrimental to the economy of England (Ralegh 47). Ralegh elucidates the “necessity of attempting Guiana in regard to our own safety,” as mercantilist theory states that the economy is a zero-sum gain: the economy cannot experience growth because a country can only gain wealth when another country loses wealth (Related Documents 138). If the Spanish “gold endangers us now” and they came into possession of even more South American gold and precious metals, the entire European economy would be tilted in favor of Spain with England struggling to achieve the same power wealth lends to a country (Ralegh 53). The threat that the Spaniards pose to the greatness of England leads Ralegh to create a necessity for English action and for Elizabeth to prove that she “is not only able to defend her own territories and her neighbors, but also to invade and conquer so great empires and so far removed” (Ralegh 112). This rallying cry for the Queen to be the instigator of action places much of the burden of responsibility on Elizabeth, thus letting Ralegh act as the identifier of the Spanish threat and the Queen as the extractor of said threat. The Queen, whose only source of information and connection to Guiana is through Ralegh, must rely on him in order to complete the task of claiming the land for her nation, thus ensuring the need for his counsel in her court.

        Most important to the success of the Renaissance hero are the tangible riches he returns with; yet because Ralegh redefines the Renaissance hero as a national entity his results must be on a national level as well. Hence, instead of returning with material goods, he starts the process of using soft power tactics in Guiana and South America to begin the process of British colonization. As Ralegh journeys through South America he makes it a habit of “[showing the natives] her Majesty’s picture” and, upon viewing the Queen, Ralegh claims that “they so admired and honored it , as it had been easy to have brought them idolatrous thereof” (Ralegh 50). In revealing how readily the natives accept Queen Elizabeth as a matriarch to be lauded and pleased to the point of worship, Ralegh depicts the natives as a peoples who it would be foolish not to conquer, given the ease with which they are willing to “follow to her obedience that to the Spaniards” (Ralegh 99).  Ralegh’s kindness to the natives is partly a ploy to ensure their loyalties against the Spaniards who have proved themselves to be cruel masters, and embrace the English, who promise to defend “the country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest” (Ralegh 49). In order to ensure an allegiance between the native tribes and the British crown, Ralegh also makes it a point to confer with the leaders of the many tribes around Guiana. He propagates British wealth and further instills the greatness of the matriarch by giving them shillings with Elizabeth’s image stamped on them. This exchange of commodity – British wealth and protection for the native’s loyalty and information – falls in line with Ralegh’s plan to “act kindly to them now and return with claims of aiding them… I am assured that they will die, event to the last man, against the Spaniards in hopes of our return and succor” (Ralegh 98).

As Ralegh builds upon the necessity and trust between Englishman and native, he renders them open to weakness and open to British conquest. This is shown through the natives revealing to Ralegh their medicine for healing against their poisonous arrows (Ralegh 86). The enemy Spaniards who were subjected to the arrows’ poison had to try and develop their own cures against the poison, but Ralegh was able to secure the antidote and reduces one of the natives’ main defenses to an avoidable inconvenience. Even as Ralegh develops a respect and personal connection to the  natives in his journey, he never forgets his ultimate national goal through his building respect and personal knowledge of the native, stating that, should the natives not fall in line with the English empirical desires, “he hath neither shot nor iron weapon in all his empire, and therefore may easily be conquered through force” (Ralegh 112). Through the knowledge Ralegh gains of native defenses, the geography of the land, the desperation of the natives to rid themselves of the Spaniards and the locations of precious jewels in the land, Ralegh makes his knowledge and his respectability among the natives essential to England’s colonization of South America.

        Ralegh’s choice to portray himself as a national hero who courteously conquers the natives through slow manipulation of their affections and trust is only successful because he is under the control of a Queen whose persona relies on her meek womanhood. Had Ralegh been the subject of the Spanish monarch, or any other European prince, he would have been expected to destroy and take the lands quickly and ruthlessly; however, in appealing to the Queen’s persona, Ralegh also serves to appeal to his own interests of returning to the court life. A quick conquering in the name of the Queen would have resulted in bloodshed and resentment by the natives and, most importantly, it would not have given Ralegh a means with which to make himself essential and useful to the Queen. It is Ralegh who gained the trust of the natives, he who traversed the lands, and he who knows the manner in which to enter Guiana with the help of a native ruler who would provide assistance. Queen Elizabeth needs Ralegh in order to build her empire and ensure England’s safety from Spanish dominance as badly as Ralegh has needed Elizabeth’s favor in order to stay in her court and escape the isolation banishment provides. By redefining the the Renaissance hero as a national hero, Ralegh redefines his own worth to Elizabeth as more than a favorite of wit and fancy – he is the sower of the seeds of the British Empire.