>

Sidney's Arcadia and Wroth's Urania

The consummate literary courtier, Sir Philip Sidney, wrote his massively influential romance[s?] in the late sixteenth century: the Old Arcadia in the 70s (a text that underwent at least four major revisions), the New Arcadia in the early 80s, and the composite Arcadia published in 1593. Therefore, what is referred to as Sidney's Arcadia is an extremely slippery, unstable text. With a slippery author-the composite Arcadia (which grafts the last three books of the Old Arcadia to the New Arcadia, which ends in mid-sentence during Book Three, and which rearranges and augments other parts of the Old and New Arcadias) was edited [rewritten?] by Sidney's sister Mary, the Countess of Pembroke. The convoluted history of the Arcadia reflects production conditions before the market control later made possible by regulated publishing, copyright laws, and a growing 'mass readership.'  

Given this history, it's not surprising that the Arcadia (by this term, I guess I mean all of them) is a hybrid text, using poetry, theatrical structure, and rhetorical set-pieces to embellish a bipolar narrative in which the world of pastoral counters the world of courtly romance with the aim of showing how gentlemanly virtue and effective government are fashioned. Another aim, evidently, was to provide an alternative to euphuism: Sidney's "Arcadian" style is considerably more direct than Lyly's style. A brief example may be illustrative. Here, a prince complains of being trapped in a court-dictated role that isolates him from heroic action and from authentic identity:

Alas, incomparable Philoclea, thou ever seest me, but dost never see me as I am: thou hearest willingly all that I dare say, and I dare not say that which were most fit for thee to heare. Alas, who ever but I was imprisoned in libertie, and banished being still present? To whom but me have lovers bene jailours, and honour a captivitie?

Obviously, Sidney still works with a rhetorical self-consciousness [note, for instance, the balanced clauses, the careful antitheses] far removed from the 'natural' speech often associated with the 'modern' novel. But this less labored style [in comparison to Lyly, anyway] allows a certain psychological verisimilitude that later authors like Richardson will make into a central novelistic feature. In addition, the threatened Utopia that is 'Arcadia' points to an important feature of much early modern English prose fiction: the tactic of displacement, of setting action in other worlds so that authors can comment on English life and politics 'from a distance.' This tactic can be seen as a textual corollary to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English colonizing activities. New World adventuring brought a new consciousness of alternative cultures (interesting mainly in how they compared to, contrasted with, and/or benefited 'home' culture) as well as a way to situate England within a global network of relationships. The nobles, ambassadors, and fair ladies who move in and out of Arcadia bring with them various 'outsider' viewpoints which contribute to the interrogation of public and private virtue that forms the Arcadia's didactic purpose.

Sidney's niece, Lady Mary Wroth, published The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania in 1621--the first published work of fiction by an Englishwoman. Wroth emphasized her relationship to Sidney, and to the Arcadia, but her text is a quite different type of romance. For one thing, much of Urania is a roman à clef that depicts contemporary individuals and events in the guise of romance characters and stories. Her thinly disguised account of the powerful Denny family elicited a counterattack from Sir Edmund Denny, the family patriarch [he called her a "Hermaphrodite in show, in deed a monster"], which ultimately forced her to withdraw her book from publication. The problems Wroth encountered predict the problems that women writers would continue to face-and the types of attacks that would be mounted on 'women who attempt the pen.'

This huge text is structured episodically, rather like a chivalric romance, and contains an enormous cast of characters. Such unity as it has is thematic: Wroth explores what she calls 'spider love' (love that can entrap and entangle), most frequently from a woman's standpoint. Her interest often lies in women betrayed, mistreated, and abandoned by their lovers (inside as well as outside marriage). Here is a scene in which a woman goes bird-hunting with her former lover and his new mistress:

I haue gone [. . . ] a Fouling with them, where so much fauour I receiued from him who was once mine, as she being a little parted from vs to shoote at a Fowle, he went as fast from mee as hee could without running, while his scorne rann to me. [. . . ] I went apace after my flyer, the way of necessity leading me to follow my disdainer. When they met, with what loue did he take her hand and kisse it? I following vnmarckt, but weary, and dabled like a hunted Hare in Winter, tyred with my disgrace, and weary of my wrongs, sweeting with passionate paine, and durted in despaire, yet loued I still.

 We see here a mixture of self-conscious rhetoric [similar to Sidney's, much less ornate than Lyly's] with psychological realism. Wroth's "feminist" (the term is obviously anachronistic) sensibilities could be characterized as pessimistic: her virtuous female characters often are made miserable [through their own credulousness as well as by men's actions] and her maleficent female characters come to bad ends. In writing about the latter type of women, Wroth draws on misogynist stereotypes-not necessarily ironically. An episode in which a lustful Queen pursues a visiting gentleman provides a case in point. The gentleman accuses the Queen in the following manner:

"Alas madam, why seek you at my hands your dishonour and my shame? How dare you venture your honour in the power of a stranger, who likely would use it to his glory and your reproach. Besides, you know I love one whose worth and truth must not be hurt or blotted in my fault, my life not worthy to satisfy the crime should her unspotted loyalty suffer for my sin." "Yet satisfy my desire," said she, "and then love whom you will." "Love whom you will?" cried the furious forsaken [I think this is a previous lover of the Queen's, whom she had convinced to kill the King, but the plot is-to say the least-convoluted], rushing into the room as much unexpected and unwelcome as thunder in winter, which is counted prodigious. 

The Queen stood amazed while he used these speeches: "Fie, faithless woman, verifier of that fault whereof I hoped women had been slandered, and not subject unto. Have I obeyed you in your wicked and abominable treasons thus to be rewarded?" She, finding he had not only found her, but also had discovered her falsehood, withal considering his rage, she fell at his feet asking pardon. "Pardon yourself," said he, "if you can, and me, who want it as drought doth water. Be your protestations, vows and daily given oaths come to this?"

He attacks the Queen and both are thrown into prison. He is executed by being drawn and quartered, she by the more 'merciful' means of beheading. This is an almost medieval poetic justice, and it makes the misery endured by the text's 'good women' somewhat puzzling. Despite Wroth's 'modern' investigations of female self-doubt and self-punishment, the moral logic of Urania may suggest that women, the daughters of Eve, deserve the pain that life deals them. As we will see, female characters in later prose fiction will continue to be subjects of cultural victimization, but they will also demonstrate the evolving acceptance of autonomy for women.