Love, Sonnets and Songs :: Sonnet essays

Love, Sonnets and Songs.   Mary Wroth's prose romance, The Countess of Mountgomeries Urania, closely compares with her uncle, Sir Philip Sidney, 1593 edition The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.   Wroth was undoubtedly following her uncle's lead by trying to emulate Astrophil and Stella.   Astrophil and Stella and Pamphilia to Amphilantus are both about being in love and they both have over one hundred sonnets and songs. After rereading both pieces, I was struck not by their similarities but by their differences.   For example, Stella is assertive and Pamphilia is passive.   Stella is truly bound by her love for Astrophil while Pamphilia cannot break herself free from the love she feels forAmphilantus.   Sidney creates a female beauty that retains her voice and speaks, whereas Wroth allows her woman to remain inactive and vulnerable.   However, Wroth no longer allows the female to be the object.   She gives the female a voice and she is now the speaking subject.   Pamphilia remains inactive and unfulfilled but very patient. A good question for the reader to ask oneself is why would Wroth not establish a strong female speaking subject like the one she was trying to imitate?   Wroth was the first woman writer in England to publish a romance and a sonnet sequence.   She was by no means conservative or cared about what people thought of her, which has been proved by the antics of her personal life.   So why not establish that same woman character/speaking voice in her prose?   I would like now to look at the similarities and differences of Stella and Pamphilia. First, Philip Sidney and his female character Stella.   Stella has a voice and does speak, however, she speaks in the songs and not the sonnets themselves.   We see in the first two lines in each stanza of the Eleventh Song, Stella speaking and Astrophil answering her. Who is it that this dark night Underneath my window plaineth? It is one who from they sight Being (ah) exiled, disdaineth Every other vulgar light. Because she is not granted a sonnet, the standpoint that women are not allowed a voice has some truth to it.   Another standpoint is the way the women are viewed.   Women are viewed by their physical aspects.   For example, in sonnet 7, the speaker states: When Nature make her chief work, Stella's eyes In color black why wrapped she beams so bright?