Josephine Roberts has referred to Wroth's "multiple self-portraits" in the Urania as indications of Wroth's "continuing struggle of self-representation, in which the author seeks to assert and justify her behavior in the face of a disapproving public" and to "integrate her public and private lives into a single portrait." (8) Several critics, including Nona Fienberg, Jeff Masten, and Mary Moore, have discussed Wroth's fashioning of an identity through her. external, is evident in both sonnet sequences. Because these women refused to hide their passion from the public, their literary works were interrupted, their voices silenced.īoth women were engaged in a negotiation between their public and private lives their private lives became public, even if that was not their intention. Though Mary Wroth was not executed for her deeds, she lost her position at court and the respect of her community. The silencing was much more serious in its consequences for Mary Stuart, for she was by birth a queen, rightful heir to the throne of Scotland, with a claim to the throne of England: her boldness and unconventional behavior ended in her execution. Furthermore, works by both women, written at times when women's sexuality and literary production were restricted, were interpreted in ways designed to silence their voices and personalities. (7) In their sonnet sequences, Stuart and Wroth created female personae who mirrored their authors' struggles with desire and jealousy. Both lost their reputations and their positions at court and were considered threats to the social order, though in different ways and to different degrees. Neither woman was able to live permanently with the man she loved. (6) Both women endured unhappy marriages, widowhood, and the loss of children, and both were involved in illicit love relationships. chief medical officer of Steward Health Care (Steward), which has 35 hospitals in nine states, about moving towards dedicating one hospital in Boston. Not only did Stuart and Wroth both write sonnets to the men they loved, but their lives had some surprising similarities. Mary Stuart, then, was a predecessor of Wroth's in the reversal of gender roles in a sonnet sequence, as well as an alternative example of a passionate, boldly defiant queen. It is also likely that Stuart was a model for some negative examples of female sovereigns in The Countess of Montgomery's Urania. In both sequences the themes of constancy and subjection complement and contradict each other as the female speakers express their desires for the unfaithful men they love. (4) However, Mary Wroth's sonnets are most similar to Stuart's in their expression of a paradoxical relationship between subjection and subjectivity (5) and in their focus on the speaker's constancy. ![]() ![]() Other female authors have been proposed as predecessors to Wroth-notably Christine de Pizan and Marguerite de Navarre, (1) Gaspara Stampa, (2) Veronica Franco, (3) and Louise Labe. An earlier example of this type of reversal is in the sequence known as Sonnets to Bothwell attributed to Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots). In Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Mary Wroth reversed traditional gender roles by writing of love from the point of view of a woman.
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