Mary Wroth was the first woman to publish a complete sonnet sequence. Wroth took on the challenge and crossed the traditional gender boundaries by writing love poetry and romance in which the female lover was the pursuer of the male. Sonnets were traditionally written from the man to the woman. Wroth wrote using the Petrarchan sonnet, which typically refers to the concept of unattainable love. The Petrarchan lyric sequence has long served for analyzing a male lover's passions, frustrations, and fantasies but Wroth took the challenge and tried to reverse the roles. Before reading Wroth, I though she would have a more positive outlook on love. She portrayed that there is no way to satisfy love and it cannot be trusted.
Wroth's sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus uses language which paints love as more controlling. Many of the other writers describe the power of love as something they enjoy. Mary Wroth uses language that makes love seem like something controlling her. The beginning of Sonnet 74 provides an example of such language: "Love a child is ever crying, / Please him, and he straight is flying; / Give him, he the more is craving, / Never satisfied with having" (p. 1459-1460). The language in this passage is portraying a woman trapped by love.
Another difference noted between Wroth and other writers is that she has a more negative outlook. This is not something typically expected due to being a female. Through reading her work and seeing the negative point of view she is portraying, a reader may believe she is a male because females typically have a more positive outlook on love. Sonnet 16 speaks of love as a prison and as something that devours personal liberty: "And captive leads me prisoner, bound, unfree" (p. 1457). Love is thought to be freedom and freeing for an individual but for Wroth it is holding her back, bounding her down.
Wroth makes it clear in many of her sonnets that she does not want to be in love. Sonnet 74 conveys a cynical image of love. Love is an abstract thing and that is visible through her sonnet sequence. The other writers seem eager in different pieces to show their love, but Mary Wroth uses language to show not only her helplessness, but also to show how unfair love is.
My favorite part about Wroth was the fact that she was able to breakdown gender barriers and offer an alternative perspective to the universal theme of love. I thought it was interesting how you were able to analyze her poetic structures and relate it to her overall themes. When I was reading the sonnets I also found her to be cynical at times, but I felt she spoke in contradictions. While she may have been cynical with regards to love, I still felt that she hoped for some form of love.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post! Also, I agree with Kevin in the sense that although she is cynical about love, she still seems to harbor a secret craving for it. In my eyes, she appears bitter about the love that she has experienced but somehow hopeful for the fairy-tale love that she hopes to find.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed reading a sonnet from the woman's perspective; it's not often that a woman is writing love poetry to a man (it's one of the reasons I love Sappho - because she wrote love poetry to both men and women) and it's empowering to know that Wroth broke down that barrier, as Kevin said, and write love poetry to men instead of being pined over herself.
ReplyDeleteWhat struck me as most interesting about Wroth's sonnets was that they talked about love as what was really causing her to be a prisoner and in pain, she doesn't talk much about the real person who was the source of that love.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that her cynicism does mask a true desire to be in love and attain love.
You brought up many good points in your post. The lines "Love a child is ever crying..."(p. 1459-1460) you brought up were the perfect example of how she felt love as a trap. I agree with most of the posts above, when I say I believe the speaker had a secret longing for love. The speaker spoke with such passion about her negative feelings towards love, it only makes sense that deep down she really wants to be in love.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your post, Jessica. It is so interesting to hear a woman's perspective of love at that time when their voice was suppressed by societal norms. I also wrote my rumination on Wroth, and initially thought she would have a more optimistic outlook on love. I thought it was especially intriguing that she didn't feel a need to write what was expected of a woman, but could instead compose how she truly felt.
ReplyDeleteWroth does want to be in love, but also wants it on her terms. I think she was a feminist. Wroth felt she had no choice being a women and society expecting her to accept the love of a man that she herself had no feelings for. Women during that time had to abstain from carnal love and be worthy of praise and the love a good man. I love the way she decided to let the world know that women can be equal to men in their ability to make a decision on love their own.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read the sonnets from "Pamphilia to Amphilanthus", I was surprised that the loved one is not really discribed. In all the other works we studied this week, there were whole sonnets entirely dedicated to discribing the beauty (spiritually and physically) of the beloved, but here there is no such thing.
ReplyDeleteWroth expresses a lot of angst about her experiences of love. She addresses (and sometimes verbally attacks) "Love" directly in an attempt to resolve her inner conflict in a social environment too often deaf to the ideas of women. I get the feeling she wasn't a cynic in regards to love. She merely wanted her voice, her emotions to be known in a world that mainly centered around the thoughts and the doings of men.
I really enjoyed reading this! I agree that she is not like a typical woman who would right the lovely things of love. She does seem very cynical about love, but that is probably due to her experiences. It is very interesting how she spoke up about love and was not the average woman writing what people expected her to write about love.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading Wroth, I had very similar reactions to your post as well. Initially I assumed that a woman writing love sonnets during this time would be talking about the mushy-gushy, head-over-heels kind of love that we assume all women want and experience. Not only does Wroth push the envelope by being a woman poet, but she also writes about love in a very different manner. Often times, men wrote sonnets about wooing women and having them be theirs forever. For example, Spenser writes the Amoretti sonnets to show his love for his wife by writing sonnets about their courtship and marriage. In Wroth's sonnets she is definitely bitter and cynical when speaking of love. I think that this opinion on love came from some life experience that she had, either with family, friends, or a past lover. Secretly everyone wants to be loved, and like many of you said, I think she masked her true sense of emptiness without love by writing about how love is unsatisfying.
ReplyDeleteThe paradigm shift that this poem portrays, the idea that "love sucks" was shocking to me as well. Whereas all of the men write to women wishing for love, Wroth wants NOTHING to do with it. Where sonnets are usually based around being, as Christina said, "mushy gushy", this was a pretty rock solid declaration against that exact principle. I took this as a breath of fresh air, despite how depressing it is.
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