Mary Wroth - worth a second read

The introductions and the footnotes for each of our reading sections really helps me to start to understand what I'm reading,. Sometimes, it is just as interesting, if not more so, to read about the lives of the poets.  Take Mary Wroth for example. At a time when women were not allowed the same freedoms as men, the niece of the famous poet Sir. Philip Sydney, became such a well-known poet herself. Reading the information regarding her life puts some of her poetry in perspective.  From an unhappy arranged marriage, to a long standing affair with her first cousin, the poetry we read now makes more sense. Without reading the introduction about Mary, I wouldn’t have grasped the significance of “Pamphilia” and “Amphilanthus”.  So we have an all loving person writing to an unfaithful lover.  Now her sonnets are starting to become a little easier to understand.  Her sonnets are beautifully written; nevertheless there is a central theme running through them.  Pamphilia is helpless to stop the feelings of love that she bears. 

     “Am I thus conquered? Have I lost the powers

       That to withstand, which joys to ruin me?

       Must I be still while it my strength devours,

      And captive leads me prisoner, bound, unfree?”  (sonnet 16,pg 1457)

Pamphilia has no control over the love she feels.   Although it pains her, she has no choice.  “But O my hurt makes my lost heart confess/I love, and must: So farewell liberty” (sonnet 16).  This same theme runs through most of the sonnets that we read; which makes more sense to me as I take another look at this and now realize that this comes from a 558 page romance.  In every sonnet and song, there is something written about Pamphilia’s pain of betrayal.   

I realize that Norton is trying to provide a good sample of her work, but I wonder about the tone of the poetry between sonnets 77 and 103.

Sonnet 103 seems different somehow.  There does not seem to be the same level of indecision and pain in this sonnet. Rather, this sonnet is more relaxed.  “My muse now happy, lay thyself to rest/Sleep in the quiet of a faithful love, write you no more, but these fancies move /some other hearts, wake not to new unrest”.  It’s like Pamphilia has accepted her path and come to peace with it after wrestling with it for quite some time.