LADY
MARY
WROTH'S
EMPOWERMENT
OF
FEMALE
AUTHORSHIP
AUniversity Thesis Presented to the Faculty
of
California State University, East Bay
In Partial Fulfillment
of
the Requirements for the Degree
Master in English
By
Teresa M. Brandt
June,
2006
Prepare for your exams
Study with the several resources on Docsity
Earn points to download
Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan
Guidelines and tips
Prepare for your exams
Study with the several resources on Docsity
Earn points to download
Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan
Community
Ask the community
Ask the community for help and clear up your study doubts
University Rankings
Discover the best universities in your country according to Docsity users
Free resources
Our save-the-student-ebooks!
Download our free guides on studying techniques, anxiety management strategies, and thesis advice from Docsity tutors
In Urania and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Wroth is concerned with fairness in society, but particularly with justice pertaining to the lives and social liberties ...
Typology: Summaries
2021/2022
1 / 82
This page cannot be seen from the preview
Don't miss anything!
Related documents
Partial preview of the text
Download LADY MARY WROTH'S EMPOWERMENT OF FEMALE ... and more Summaries Voice in PDF only on Docsity!
LADY MARY WROTH'S EMPOWERMENT OF FEMALE AUTHORSHIP
A University Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, East Bay
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master in English
By Teresa M. Brandt
June, 2006
LADY MARY WROTH'S EMPOWERMENT OF FEMALE AUTHORSHIP
By Teresa M. Brandt
Date:
11
I
Chapter I: Lady Mary Wroth's Empowerment of Female Authorship Through Her Sidnean Heritage Long before Lady Mary Wroth published The First Part of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, the pastoral tradition represented the literary symbol of justice and contentment, of righteousness within a perfect civilization. Since classical times, pastorals have offered a tangible expression of abstract virtues such as innocence, generosity, modesty, truth, and faith. When Lady Mary Wroth's uncle Philip Sidney wrote The Old Arcadia, he blended his prose with an acute understanding of the value of justice in remedying personal and public misfortunes. By writing The Old Arcadia, Sidney continued the classical tradition that the country life provides a defense against adversity and a relief from ill consequences. Almost the entire fifth book is concerned with the trial of the two princes, Musidorus and Pyrocles. Ironically, Sidney wrote this pastoral during a difficult period of his life while his extended family was experiencing misfortune and during a time when Sidney, himself, seemed to lack favor with Queen Elizabeth I and, consequently, found difficulty in obtaining employment. An examination of his literary works reveals that Sidney believed that he lived in an unjust age, but he effectively used his poetic skill and intellectual expression to articulate how justice should function in society. Sidney's pastoral The Old Arcadia, and his sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, firmly established the pastoral as an English literary tradition during the sixteenth century-a tradition that juxtaposed aesthetic, moral, and political values against the reality of the English political landscape as a tool of reform.
In Urania and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Wroth is concerned with fairness in society, but particularly with justice pertaining to the lives and social liberties of women during the reign of James I, who ruled in the early seventeenth century. Like her uncle, Wroth also chose the pastoral as a vehicle for changing society; she critiques the patriarchal status quo and manifests an alternative vision for the participation and contributionofwomen in seventeenth-century society. Wroth creates her alternative vision by granting considerable agency to female characters. Instead of completely abandoning the conventions of the pastoral that objectify women, Wroth uses satire to illustrate how such conventions are unrealistic representations of women. Wroth also criticizes the conventions that characterize and romanticize men by using humor and Irony. While Philip Sidney and other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English male authors participated in the English Renaissance by writing literature that was infused with classical references and a rapidly expanding English vocabulary, Tudor and Stuart women writers were largely limited in their literary pursuits to the practice of translations. During James I's reign, women lost even more freedom of expression as the king supported the publication of "conduct books" that attempted to confine women to home and marriage, social structures largely dominated by men. Naomi J. Miller asserts, however, that the monarchy's efforts to limit women's social activities indicates a "presence of conflicting notions of what was acceptably ... appropriate for a woman to write, and what right a voice from 'elsewhere' had to depict, let alone attack, the 'center.'" She further believes that Wroth's marginalized position helped to develop her
suggests that Wroth, also, embodies a spiritual principle within the character of Urania (216). Indeed, Urania plays a significant role in Wroth's pastoral as a counselor and guide to others in their search for love and self-actualization. In Wroth's legend, Urania's shepherd parents tell her that she is not their daughter, but was given to them to raise as their own. While Urania is lamenting the ignorance of her heritage, she meets Perissus, who declares that she is more like a princess than a shepherdess. Soon after, Urania leaves her foster parents for Naples after she discovers the truth of her royal lineage; she is the princess of Naples, sister to Amphilanthus, and cousin to Pamphilia. Urania's significant familial relationship to Wroth's two main characters signifies her importance in their lives. At key moments of Pamphilia's despair over Amphilanthus, Urania counsels Pamphilia to convert her attachment to passionate love into fidelity to divine love: "I love Love, as he should be loved, and so deare Lady do you, and then you will plainly see, he is not such a Deity, as your Idolatry makes him" (Urania 3.469). Wroth's Urania represents Pamphilia's spiritual guide, reminiscent of Virgil who served as Dante's spiritual guide in The Divine Comedy and who helped Dante transform his tormented, earth-bound perspective into divine perception. An appraisal of Pamphi Ii a's character further reveals Wroth's indebtedness to Sidney's Arcadia. Wroth symbolically authorizes her participation in the Sidnean literary tradition by arranging for Pamphilia to inherit her kingdom, not from her father, but from her uncle: '''Goe I must with mine Uncle, to be seene to the Pamphilians, and acknowledged their Princesse .... He long since chose me, and to that end gave mee that
name" (Urania 1.145). This is a deliberate strategy on Wroth's part of using the status of her uncle Sidney to gain access to the privileged territory of secular writing. Pamphilia's personality also resonates with the characteristics of two of Sidney's "complex female characters," Pamela and Philoclea (Beilin 215). Certainly, her name seems to be a permutation of theirs. Pamela is the older of the two sisters and portrays the characteristics of a future queen, while Philoclea, the younger, represents the embodiment of beauty and fruitful love. Beilin describes the sisters as follows: "Pamela and Philoclea reflect the archetypal opposition of Diana or armed chastity and Venus or love .... Pamela displays a virtuous self-sufficiency, while Philoclea invites relationship" (215). The sisters emulate contrasting virtues: one is active, the other passive. Wroth's Pamphilia exemplifies all of their combined, heroic characteristics and represents a "philosophically complex, emotionally conflicted, and more varied, more profound, more significant female hero" (Beilin 216). In Pamphilia, Wroth emphasizes not only the traditional female virtues-love, chastity and modesty-but also the more progressive virtues of independence and contribution to society. Pamphilia desires to love, yet radiates dignity and self-sufficiency at the same time, expressing these feelings and qualities in her lamentations, poetry, and through the care of her monarchy. Wroth's Literary Connection to Mary Sidney Herbert The influence of Mary Sidney Herbert, The Countess of Pembroke, is manifested not only through one of Wroth's characters, but also through Wroth's writing style. Wroth was Herbert's goddaughter and her namesake. Since Wroth's father was often away on business during her childhood, Wroth's mother, Barbara Gamage, and her
Amphilanthus, cousin and lover ofPamphilia. In addition to being Pamphilia's aunt, she is described as Pamphilia's "most honord friend" (Urania 3.363). The Queen of Naples also emulates Herbert's literary qualities. Hannay comments that the poem on page 490 of Urania that is attributed to the Queen of Naples was likely authored by Herbert (26-27). Hannay bases her opinion on Perissus' comment that "he had never heard any like them .... and her who knew when she did well, and would be unwilling to lose the due unto her selfe" (Urania 490) is characteristic of what is known of Herbert, who often noted her contributions and authorship (27). Since the Queen is described in Urania as "perfect in Poetry, and all other Princely virtues as any woman that ever liv'd, to bee esteemed excellent in anyone, shee was stor'd with all, and so the more admirable" (Urania 3.371), she certainly emulates the reputation that Herbert enjoyed during her lifetime; Herbert was known as a poet, a talented editor of Philip Sidney's works, and an extraordinary translator of major literary works. Herbert also most likely wrote "The Doleful Lay of Clorinda" that Edmund Spenser included in his "Astrophel (1595), a collection of elegies for Philip Sidney by various authors" (Lamb 61). Spenser refers to the author of the poem as Philip Sidney's sister. Herbert also wrote the poem "A Dialogue betweene two shepheards, Thenot, and Piers, in praise of Astrea" for Elizabeth I's planned, but later cancelled, visit to Wilton. She finished translating the Psalms that her brother Philip had begun but left incomplete at the time of his death (Wilson 482). Also, after her brother's death, Herbert revised and expanded the Arcadia, and translated into English the Discourse of Life and Death by Philippe de Momay, the Triumph of Death by Petrarch, and Robert Gamier's Marc Antoine. Herbert
was familiar enough with classical literature in order to interpret complex characters and plots, and her imagination was broad enough to understand how dramatic exposition can be displayed through poetry. Coburn Freer notes that Herbert was one of the first English writers to understand that "the poetic form of a play should mirror the speakers' mental states, and further, the poetry given an individual character might reasonably undergo some changes as the character develops" (489). No doubt, Wroth learned these dramatic techniques from Herbert since Pamphilia's poetry changes throughout Urania as she experiences and writes about her various emotions relating to love. In addition to being a noted author and a remarkable translator, Herbert, like the Queen of Naples in her society, was highly respected for her literary patronage. Mary Ellen Lamb reveals that "Abraham Fraunce, Nicholas Breton, Nathaniel Baxter, Thomas Moffett, and Edmund Spenser all inscribed her as a character in their poems" (28). These inscriptions appear to be designed to please Herbert so that she would approve economic. support for their authorship. Lamb remarks that [a]s a patron, the countess of Pembroke represented an especially powerful form of reader .... Because she was a patron ... Mary Sidney [Herbert]'s reading was not only independent of patriarchal control; it was even invested with the power to demonstrate disagreement with an author's work by withholding financial favors .... By committing their work to her perusal, and by expressing
when Steriamus meets Silvarina, Silvarina is singing a song that begins with "You, who ending never saw / Of pleasures best delighting" (414), which echo the following lines of Robert Sidney's Song 10, 1-6: You who favour do enjoy And spend and keep love's treasure, You who see no end of joy Nor limits find nor measure, You whose cares, triumphing on annoy, Give you a crown of pleasure. (Croft 232) These lines express the joy that love gives to lovers. Robert Sidney goes on in his song to recommend that lovers should enjoy their love while it lasts since it often fades away. In Robert's poem, he was deceived by his lover. In Urania, Silvarina also sings that she was deceived by her love and she grieves that love is past. When the Duke of Brunswick leaves his lady in Urania Book 4, his friend, the Duke of Wertenberg, writes a sonnet for him to give to her upon his departure. The lines of the third quatrain are as follows: Like one long kept in prison, brought to light; But for his end, condemned nere to bee Freed from his Dungeon, till that wretched hee, Conclude his living with his latest sight. (606) These words reverberate with the same thoughts that Robert Sidney uses in the third quatrain of his Sonnet 23,9-10: "For-as the condemned man from dungeon led I Who with first light he sees, ends his last breath" (Croft 221). The Duke's "death" results from
his having to leave his lady, but Sidney's is experienced because his lady refuses him; yet, even though their pain is from differing feelings on the part of their ladies, the absence of their lover causes the sorrow that their verse keenly expresses. Wroth's Social Standing among her Literary Contemporaries Wroth's connection to the Sidney family certainly provided her with notable standing among her literary contemporaries. Since her uncle Philip Sidney and her father Robert Sidney were active members ofthe court society, Wroth also was known within the court circles from her childhood into adulthood. In 1612, Robert's eldest son died and the poet Joshua Sylvester added a new poem about his death to a new edition of his Lachrymae Lachrymarum (Croft 2). In the dedication of this poem titled "An Elegie-&- Epistle Consolatorie," Sylvester affirms that Wroth inherits her literary talent from her uncle Sidney: Although I know None, but a Sidney's Muse, Worthy to sing a Sidney's Worthyness: None but Your Owne *AL-WORTH, Sidneides, In whom, Her Uncle's noble Veine renewes. (Croft 2) According to Peter J. Croft, "[t]his shows that Mary Wroth was known as a poet some eight years before the publication of her work in 1621" (2). No evidence exists that she circulated her poems among the members of court society, but, by this reference, it seems that her work was not only read but favorably received by at least some members of Jacobean society.
He also praises her bravery, perhaps because he knew that, as a woman, she threatened her reputation by writing creative works within a society that oppressed women's literary activities. Certainly, Wroth's 1621 publication of Urania and Pamphilia ta Amphilanthus was not well received by court nobility and Wroth soon after left the court, which indicates that she did experience a loss of status because of her literary activities. Wroth also knew Ben Jonson, one ofthe popular writers of court masques for James I's and Queen Anne's court. Ben Jonson wrote The Masque afBlackness (1605) in which Wroth participated (Das 3), and he dedicated his play The Alchemist to Wroth in 1610 (Roberts "Critical" xxxii); however, Jonson expressed great admiration of Wroth's literary capacity when he wrote a sonnet about her: I that have been a lover, and could show it, Though not in these, in rhymes not wholly dumb, Since I exscribe your sonnets, am become A better lover, and much better poet. Nor is my muse, or I ashamed to owe it To those true numerous graces; whereof some But charm the senses, others overcome Both brains and hearts; and mine now best do know it: For in your verse all Cupid's armory, His flames, his shafts, his quiver, and his bow, His very eyes are yours to overthrow. But then his mother's sweets you so apply,
Her joys, her smiles, her loves, as readers take For Venus' ceston, every line you make. ("A Sonnet, to the Noble Lady, the Lady Mary Wroth" 1-14) In the first line of his sonnet, Jonson establishes his credibility by asserting that, since he is a writer oflove poetry and has been a lover, he is a qualified judge of her verse. Jonson further asserts that Wroth's poetry has inspired him to become a "better lover" and a "better poet," a compliment that raises Wroth's literary status since Jacobean women were supposed to limit their writing to translations of other's works. Jonson asserts that Wroth's work not only appeals to readers' senses, but also engages readers' intellect and emotions. In his sonnet, he uses an analogy of Cupid and claims that Wroth is talented enough to overcome any of Cupid's injuries. Perhaps Jonson intended Cupid to represent the patriarchal society that limited women's voices through the promotion of "conduct books" and laws that restricted women's choices. Jonson contrasts this patriarchal and oppressive behavior with Wroth's impressive femininity. In the last three lines of his sonnet, Jonson describes Wroth's female voice in terms of feminine sweetness and Venus' aphrodisiacal quality. According to Robert C. Evans, "as a patronage poet he undoubtedly recognized the advantages of being able to write verse on such a perennially popular theme" (128). Jonson's praise reflects his respect of Wroth's literary talent, and certainly must have raised her literary status since Jonson was a highly respected member of court society.
the father against the innocence and purity of the young woman, and provides a stunning illustration ofthe injustice experienced by women who are subjected to the whims of their parents and society. Since Denny objected so strongly to its inclusion in Wroth's narrative, it also likely reflects Denny's misogynistic attitude toward women. Das reveals that Denny "wrote two heated letters remonstrating with Wroth about the alleged insult to his family, which Wroth denied" (5). Furthermore, he also wrote a poem "To Pamphilia from the father-in-law ofSeralius" that denigrated Wroth's book and her reputation, which he circulated among the courtiers: Hermophradite in show, in deed a monster As by thy words and works all men may conster Thy wrathfull spite conceived an Idell book Wherein thou strikes at some mans noble blood Of kinne to thine if thine be counted good
Both friend and foe to thee are even alike Thy witt runs madd not caring who it strike These slanderous flying f[l]ames rise from the pott
Thus hast thou made thyself a lying wonder Fooles and their BabIes seldom part asunder Work 0 th' Workes leave idle bookes alone
For wise and worthier women have writte none. (Denny 1-5, 11-13, 23-26) Denny's disapproval takes on a male-chauvinistic tone, especially in the last two lines when he tells Wroth to refrain from writing fiction because it is not an acceptable occupation for wise and worthy women. Wroth responded to Denny's accusation by writing a parody of his poem titled "Railing Rimes Returned upon the Author by Mistress Mary Wrothe" in which she, in turn, called him a "Hirmophradite in sense in Art a monster" (1). Tina Krontiris comments: the Denny affair ... clearly shows the combative spirit of Mary Wroth and her determination to fight back on equal terms. Her letters to Denny evidence her refusal to concede even the smallest point. Far from apologizing, she turned his accusations back against him. She denied his allegations vehemently .... It seems rather that by denying the charges and defending her book, the author was defending her right to criticize what she found objectionable in her culture. (125-26) Wroth's determination in defending her work mirrors her courage in creating a major romance that criticized her culture's restrictions on male-female relationships and the use of women as objects in social and economic transactions, such as the combining of estates through marriage. The Denny incident also reveals the difficulties that faced women who attempted to overcome the oppression of women in their society. Das comments that Denny's accusation "was evidently serious enough for her to look for additional support. She wrote to James I's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, and to