Writing love poetry breached the conventional boundaries of female modesty on two counts: writing was a masculine activity and early modern etiquette dictated that women impassioned with love had to suffer in silence. The sense of feeling trapped is abundantly clear in \u2018A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love\u2019 which forms one section of Wroth\u2019s sonnet sequence. \u00a0It begins<\/p>\n
In this strange labyrinth how shall I turn?<\/em>
\nWays are on all sides while the way I miss.<\/em>
\nIf to the right hand, there, in love I burn;<\/em>
\nLet me go forward, therein danger is.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nFormer Maize Maze at Penshurst Place<\/p><\/div>\n
The image of being lost in a dangerous labyrinth of love is common in sonnets. Philip Sidney had claimed \u2018I have entered the labyrinth from which I see no escape\u2019 (Sonnet\u00a0 102), for example. Many Elizabethan formal gardens had mazes or labyrinths (usually planted with box hedges) as forms of entertainment, similar to the maize maze at Penshurst Place, Wroth\u2019s family home.<\/p>\n
The origins of the maze go back to the myth of Theseus being rescued by Ariadne who gives him a golden thread to lead him out of the Minotaur\u2019s labyrinth. In Wroth\u2019s Crown of Sonnets, however, the maze provides a perfect metaphor for the suffocation of her own desires by the early modern conventions that silenced women.\u00a0 Her heroine Pamphilia dare not tell Amphilanthus that she loves him. Nevertheless, she cannot escape her feelings: she vows to \u2018leave all, and take the thread of Love.\u2019 The structure of the \u2018Crown of sonnets\u2019 recreates the maze experience of feeling trapped: the last line of each of the twelve sonnets forms the first line of the next sonnet, with the final sonnet circling back to the beginning as it ends with the question<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So though in love I fervently do burn,
\nIn this strange labyrinth how shall I turn?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/em><\/p>\n
Even though the heroine Pamphilia may have felt helpless, Wroth\u2019s daring sonnets show us how \u2018fervently\u2019\u00a0 the supposedly cold Petrarchan mistress burns with erotic passion.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The experience of being hopelessly in love has been captured in English sonnets for over 400 years, but mostly from a male perspective. Lady Mary Wroth is an early, rare exception to this rule, having written a sequence of sonnets entitled\u00a0Pamphilia to Amphilanthus,\u00a0which puts the woman (Pamphilia\u2019s) experience first.\u00a0 Wroth\u2019s uncle, Sir Philip Sidney, had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1202,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"nosidebar-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-185","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/cmda-testarea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/cmda-testarea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/cmda-testarea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/cmda-testarea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/cmda-testarea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/cmda-testarea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/cmda-testarea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/185\/revisions\/246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/cmda-testarea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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