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Notes
1Lewalski, Writing Women, 243 – 307. Wroth's biography is well known, and has been alluded to in many of the studies of Urania listed below in these notes. My comments refer to her notoriety during her lifetime for which there is ample evidence. Niece to the renowned Philip Sidney, whose authorship greatly influenced her own, Wroth was highly regarded within the Sidney family's literary coterie, which extended beyond its own talented members to include such illustrious authors as Ben Jonson, who praised her on various occasions as poet and benefactor of the arts. In addition, Wroth was no stranger to King James I and Queen Anne's court, where she performed in a number of masques including Blacknesse. And if she “was not one of Queen Anne's inner circle” she did often host the King at Loughton, the Wroth country estate, and was in a position to personally appeal to both Anne and James for economic assistance on several occasions (Lewalski, Writing Women, 245, n. 2). Nevertheless, her notoriety was ultimately compromised by two major events in her life: an affair with her cousin, William Herbert, which produced two illegitimate children; and publication, in 1621, of her Urania, in whose episodes a number of courtiers (most notably Lord Denny) believed they saw themselves negatively figured. Scholars have noted that the Sidney family protected Wroth's children from detractors, and that there is no evidence that her literary quarrel with Denny led to the recall or removal of Urania from the marketplace; nevertheless, many references in Urania suggest that she suffered disgrace at court for her relationship with Pembroke. Moreover, Denny's attacks seem to have discouraged her from attempting to publish again. Instead, although she went on to write the second part of the Urania and Love's Victory (a pastoral drama), Wroth confined herself to manuscript circulation (if indeed she circulated her manuscript at all). With her literary talent obscured by the shadow of aspersions cast upon her sexual and authorial morality, Wroth literally disappeared into the margins of Jacobean society after 1621 leaving behind minimal evidence of her experiences for the next thirty years of her life. For centuries she remained an unread and rarely even mentioned name at the periphery of the light sometimes shed on the circle of her uncle's relations by those critics interested in the breadth of Sidney's influence.
2Lewalski, Writing Women, 243. Although Lewalsky is perhaps interested, as Jonathan Goldberg observes, in making the case for Wroth's inclusion as a canonical author, her analysis of Urania is actually a richly detailed yet large-scale examination of both books of the Urania, as well as of Wroth's personal history. See Goldberg's “Introduction,” 5, where he says that in every one of her chapters Lewalski “nominates [the] literary subject [of her critique] as a first”. My essay, like Goldberg's study, argues that Urania merits attention on other terms than canonical aesthetics and historical precedence.
3Carrell, 79 – 107; also see Roberts, “Labyrinths of Desire,” 183 – 92.
4Quilligan, 257 – 80; also Miller, Changing the Subject.
5Miller, “Engendering Discourse,” 154 – 72. Lamb, “Women Readers,” 120 – 7; Hackett, “Yet Tell Me,” 39 – 68; Jones, 135 – 53.
6Miller, “Not Much to Be Marked,” 121 – 37; Fienberg, 175 – 90; Masten, 67 – 87.
7Lamb, Gender and Authorship; Waller, 35 – 63.
8In viewing romance and autobiography as mutually constitutive, my study questions the solidity and validity of both semantic and syntactic generic categories. Like Fredric Jameson who takes a dialectical and historicizing approach to genre, I see romance not as archetypal myth or universal, abstract form, but as an always already highly fluid, deeply political range of forms and styles that resist such purifying designs. By positing the “contamination” of romance by autobiography as one of multiple coexisting unions in an ever shifting range of inter-related discourses, I attempt to articulate a variation on Jameson's thesis that the “ultimate condition of figuration [for romance]… is to be found in a transitional moment in which two distinct modes of production, or socioeconomic development, coexist” (Jameson, 132). In my formulation, sexual politics and the production of gendered bodies substitute for the economics of class divisions.
9Romance has—to some extent—always provided discursive space for transgressive female characters, though they are often constructed as witches, villain/sorceresses, and adulterous lovers. In the Renaissance this tradition continues with many more—and more varied—female transgressives (including the strong and valiant female hero), and their actions and stories are significantly more integral to the narrative, especially as sites of serious ideological contention. Sidney's Arcadia and Spenser's Faerie Queene challenge normative gender roles and relations with male and female characters who confound gender categories through transvestism and their willingness to act against gendered expectations and stereotypes. In Wroth's Urania such sartorial gender play is not as pronounced. There is only one man (Leonius) who is willing to don women's clothing for his love; most other men behave typically. Northrop Frye, 186, says that “In every age the ruling social or intellectual class tends to project its ideals in the form of romance, where the virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines represent the ideals and the villains the threats to their ascendancy.” I would agree that romance, like drama, stages conflicts between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces, but not in such clear cut and always containing ways. Those “ideals” are often exposed as oppressive, socially imposed norms and the “evils” to which they are opposed are shown to be defined by a binary logic that the text itself often challenges or even subverts. Moreover, a text like Wroth's challenges traditional male heroism in having its female characters resist gender stereotyping by redefining themselves through a contestatory knowledge of their bodies as textual.
10Lewalski,“Revising Genres,” 263.
11From such plays as the Revenger's Tragedy, Hamlet, and Othello, to The Duchess of Malfi, and ’Tis Pity She's a Whore, all the great tragedies of this era stage betrayal at the intersection of the personal and political. The fact that one might “smile, and smile and be a villain” was a palpable reality of court politics where individual sovereignty—one's very head—was always literally on the line.
12Wroth, 244.
13Wroth, 463. Pamphilia also says of herself after many years of having suffered Amphilantus's inconstancy: “Is it possible that thou hast lived to see Amphilantus kind again? Can he smile on these wrinkles and be loving in my decay? When he told me I was altered for the worse, and slightly regarded me …” (Wroth, 568).
14Stallybrass, 131.
15Ibid.
16Ibid., 129.
17The demarcations between seduction and rape are rarely, if ever, clear in this text. Wroth is never explicit in her allusions to sexual relations, nor to the manner in which they occur, but some of these seem to have been forced. In most we have some sense that these women have yielded, but how willingly is barely hinted. They are always manipulated with vows and promises, but there are also suggestions that they are physically pressured too—though they continue to love these men. See my section on Alena's being “unprovided” for resisting Lincus.
24Wroth, 492.
18This woman relates her history in verse and proves herself an accomplished poet, but by refusing to tell her name she is letting socially imposed shame keep her from the recognition she deserves.
19Goreau, 9 – 10, is not alone in her observation that “legally the woman's chastity was considered the property of either her father or husband.” Gayle Ruben's classic essay “The Traffic in Women,” 156 – 210, deals extensively with the subject of women as exchangeable property. Also, Peter Stallybrass, 123 – 42, focuses on the bodiliness of this “commodity.”
20Liana says of her father “he would have me join my dutiful agreement to his choice, and order my love to go along with his pleasure” (Wroth, 248). When she refuses and reminds him of his promise “never to force me against my will to marry,” he becomes so enraged that she remarks “I verily thought, he would have killed me” (248 – 9). Therewith he decides to imprison her in her aunt's home where “her father visits her once a day, though … to try, if by his unfatherly tortures, she may be brought to leave loving” Allanius (250).
21Although Allanius is not unfaithful to Liana, she believes he is and suffers for years as though he really were. She overhears a shepherd who is impersonating Allanius in order to win the favour of a maid who fancies Allanius. He says he thinks nothing of Liana in comparison with her. This mistake causes her to flee the real Allanius, as a false traitor. Often in Urania those who counterfeit others do so very fittingly, so that Allanius, being counterfeited as false may actually tell us more about his character than we ever get to see.
22Wroth, 516. The narrator says of Sirelius and his wife that “where such violence [of passion] is, seldom is there lasting love, for within two years after the marriage, whether his fondness ran to jealousy, or her youth, and love to change gave occasion, I dare not judge, but discontent grew and dislikes of all sides” (516). Finally it “was discovered that this stir was about a [very undeserving] young lord” (407) who insinuated himself too much into Sirelius's wife's company. Wroth implies that an affair has taken place despite the narrator's insistence that it was more the husband's jealousy than the woman's actions that made for such suspicions. Nonetheless, the father's violence against his daughter, faithful or not, is whole-heartedly condemned.
23Lord Denny was not the only court figure who believed he saw himself critically portrayed in Urania which many read as a roman a clef, but he was its most vocal and adamant critic. He engaged in an epistolary “dual” with Wroth in which he berated her for writing secular, scandalous texts, and his complaints to King James I ultimately forced Wroth to volunteer to have Urania removed from print. See Roberts, “An Unpublished Literary Quarrel,” 532 – 4.
25Ibid., 390.
26Ibid., 226.
27Henderson and McManus, 48.
28This knight goes about pretending to be Amphilantus in order to seduce women through the force of his reputation as a hero—a reputation which so proceeds him that he is loved even before he is ever encountered. This imposter who often behaves no worse than the true Amphilantus, suggests that Amphilantus is double by nature and that the true Amphilantus counterfeits as much as his imposter.
29Wroth, 298.
30Ibid., 226.
31Ibid., 229.
32Goreau, 9 – 10.
33Barbaro, 205.
34Henderson and McManus, 54.
35Stallybrass, 127. Stallybrass, 127, also quotes Samuel Rowlands's poem “Solomon's Harlot” which equates loquaciousness and sexual wandering. The harlot in her “brutish filthynesse. … Is noted to be full of words/ And doth the streets frequent,/ Not qualified as Sara was, to keepe within the tent.” Similarly, he demonstrates how in “the dominant discourses of early modern England, … woman's body could be both symbolic map of the ‘civilized’ and the dangerous terrain that had to be colonized,” (Stallybrass, 133).
36Wroth, 224.
37Wroth, 563.
38Swetnam, 47.
39The rest of this quote, which appears in Henderson and McManus, 47, reads “and if thou suffer thyself once to be led into fool's paradise (that is to say the bed or closet wherein a woman is), then I say thou art like a bird snared in a lime bush, which the more she striveth the faster she is.”
40Jordan, “Woman's Rule,” 421 – 51, especially her discussion of attacks on Mary Tudor as a Catholic by Thomas Becon, Antony Gilby and Christopher Goodman, 429 – 32. Knox, she says, denounces Mary Tudor as a woman first, but as a Catholic too.
41For a discussion of these rulers and a good introduction to the issue of female rule in late medieval and early modern Europe see Anderson and Zinsser, 44 – 61.
42Cavanaugh, 338.
43My quotes of Boccaccio are from Jordan, “Boccaccio's, Women” in which she discusses his ambivalence toward Iole, Circe and Cleopatra, among others, 5.
44Jordan, “Boccaccio,” 30.
45Ibid., 31.
46Ibid., 37.
47Wroth, 33.
48Ibid., 52.
49Ibid.
53Ibid., 74.
50In addition, she gets the king to agree that should he “happen to die while the new prince was under years, that then she would govern as protectress until he came of age” (Wroth, 71).
51Ibid.
52Ibid., 73.
54Of course, Queen Elizabeth I got around this dilemma by making her virginity a national asset. For these women, however, such suppression of desire is not an option. Power is valued by them precisely because it provides space for corporeal freedom.
55Wroth, 52 and 71, respectively.
56Butler, 39.
57Pamphilia is momentarily taken by this family in the midst of the distraction their performance causes. However, she is quickly rescued, and they are immediately imprisoned for trying to abduct her. Soon after, Amphilantus travels to Sio where he and his allies find this family's real castle and lay siege to it.
58Wroth, 118.
59Ibid., 141.
60Ibid., 128 – 9.
61Ibid., 131.
63Knox, 375.
62Roberts,“Radigund Revisited,” 188. Roberts makes a convincing argument for the continuing influence of Knox's thought throughout the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century despite the “large number of defenses of gynocracy, both from Anglicans and moderate Protestants” (188). She observes that, “Near the end of the sixteenth century the debate underwent a revival as the question of the queen's successor became a pressing political concern. In part the continuing power of Knox's book to excite response long after his own death in 1572 lay in the fact that he presented deeply disturbing cultural images that could not be answered by logical or rational argument” (188).
64Wroth, 132.
65Quoted in Butler, 41, where she defends Irigaray's analysis of the feminine.
66See Raleigh, 1028 – 31.
67Both Eden and Martyr are quoted in Kermode's still relevant Introduction to Shakespeare's, The Tempest, xxx – xxxv, where he discusses its colonial influences.
68Quoted in Kermode, xxxiii.
69Her name and the site of her “temple” go unspecified.
70Roberts,“Radigund Revisited,” 191.
71Roberts, “Radigund Revisited,” 191, also says that Radigund “replaces the laws of chivalry with her own law, uses political power for her personal satisfaction, and behaves as an absolute tyrant.” I argue that she defies male codes of honour and virtue.
72Wroth, 406.
73Ibid., 308.
74Swift, 328 – 46. Swift, 345, believes “Wroth vindicatesthis woman accused of madness” when she allows her to regain her throne. I would argue that although Nereana gets her power back, her kingdom is shown to be endlessly unstable, and she never does satisfy those desires for which she endured all her trials.
75Wroth, 344.
76Ibid.
77Quoted in Stallybrass, 127.
78Cavanaugh, 317.
80Ibid.
79Wroth, 436.
81Hackett,“Torture,” 100.
82Toste's marginal gloss to Varchi's The Blazon of Jealousy, quoted in Stallybrass, 127 – 8.
83Hacket,“Torture,” 106.
84Ibid., 93 – 108, esp. 101 – 3, for a discussion of the tortured body and religious martyrdom. Also see Scarry and Hanson, 53 – 84, which deals with the persecution of Catholics during Elizabeth's reign.
85Limena is vindicated by, and rewarded for, her sufferings when she is rescued by Perissus (and Parselius, who mortally wounds Philargos) and made his bride (and the Queen of Sicily), but her experience is so extreme as to suggest that hers is not a narrative to emulate.
86Hacket, “Yet Tell Me,” 99.
87Wroth, 625.