SOURCE: "A New Woman of Romance," in Modern Language Studies, Vol. XXI, No. 4, Fall, 1991, pp. 63-77.

An examination of Pamphilia, the cynosure and central character of the Lady Mary Wroth's romance Urania, shows to how great an extent her author appears to have internalized the Renaissance ideal of womanhood with its insistence on chastity above all, then silence and obedience. On the other hand, Wroth's women characters also embody glimmerings of new kinds of political, poetic, and persuasive powers just becoming available to women as well as men. Pamphilia suppresses her impulses to power or disguises them as something more acceptable; she keeps her most extreme transgression, her writing, very private. Other women, like Nereana, who try to exercise undisguised power, are usually presented as eccentrics who risk public shame, punishment and even insanity. Pamphilia, however, for all her conventional perfections, finally subverts the ideal in another way: she carries the patriarchal idea of feminine virtue to fiercely independent extremes.

Lady Mary Wroth published The Countesse of Montgomery's Urania, a long but unfinished prose romance, in 1621. Almost immediately objections to its publication were raised by Edward Denny, Baron of Waltham, who fancied that he saw himself and his family's private affairs pilloried in the episode of Seralius and his father-inlaw, and the book may have been partially suppressed. A continuation, which follows the heroines and heroes of the romance into the next generation but also is without formal ending, exists only in a single holography copy held by the Newberry Library. Josephine A. Roberts, editor of Wroth's poems, is presently at work on an edition of both parts of the romance; meanwhile the text of the published Urania is available from Brown University's Women Writers Project. Seminars, conference papers and publications that comment on it have begun to appear.

The earliest published reaction to the Urania, when critics noticed it at all, was to dismiss it as an impoverished derivative of Sidney's Arcadia, but recently scholars have realized that the ways in which the niece's romance is different from her uncle's are significant, and have begun to disagree in interesting ways about how Wroth's work may best be understood. Gary Waller, in the 1977 introduction to [Pamphilia to Amphilanthus] his edition of her sonnets, emphasizes its Jacobean anomie, the "disillusioned amorality, where betrayal, loss, and infidelity are accepted with resignation as inevitable," in contrast with the moral tone and conventional romance closure of the Arcadia. Josephine Roberts [in her The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth] agrees with Waller that the Urania depicts a court life "rife with corruption and villainy," but claims that the important difference from the Arcadia is its intense focus on love to the virtual exclusion of conventional romance heroics. Comparing the two Renaissance romances has begun a continuing interest in Wroth's text as the voice of a woman writing about woman's experiences. Lyn Swift and Elaine Beilin [in Redeeming Eve] both have claimed that Mary Wroth holds conservative views about women's roles, though Swift, who says "the Urania makes marriage the only reward for women's merit and therefore desirable inspite of its pain," questions her own premise by pointing out that the fiercely autonomous unmarried character Nereana is both the heroine's antithesis and an example of how "women may be justifiably angry at society," while Beilin prefers to emphasize that "in her main character, Pamphilia, Wroth created another variation on a familiar figure, the true Christian woman." Very recently, essays have appeared from readers who find Wroth a more subversive critic of Jacobean misogyny than either Swift or Beilin do. Naomi Miller points out her focus on female friendship, while Jeff Masten and Maureen Quilligan are most interested in the project the author shares with her heroine, the effort to find an authentic voice as a woman writer. The Urania, which may well be the last English romance as it is also the first English novel, still awaits its share of genre studies. For all these reasons and more, excitement is growing about this soon not to be rare book.

One reason is the literary and historical centrality of Wroth's family connections. Niece of the Countess of Pembroke and of Sir Philip Sidney, daughter of Robert Sidney of Penshurst and Barbara Gamage, young Mary Sidney was presented at court near the end of Elizabeth's reign, and acted in masques at the court of King James. Ben Jonson, among a large number of contemporary writers, knew and admired her poetry. These connections, however, impeded appreciation of the Urania itself until recently, because of its being dismissed as a pale imitation of Sidney's Arcadia. One need only read the first page to see that this is probably not so, since the shepherdess Urania, whose absent ideality haunts the beginning of the New Arcadia, is present and very real in the Urania's opening paragraphs. Indeed, all of Wroth's imitations are in the service of something very different: the world of romance from a seventeenth-century woman's point of view.

Generically, the Urania is a repository of the old and the start of something new. It inherits conventions from medieval romance, Renaissance pastoral fiction, dynastic epic, and Petrarchan love poetry, but it is also one of the earliest psychological novels, in which thinly veiled autobiography and daring passages of roman a clef are undisguised by allegory. Fragments of the dozens of stories embedded in the central narrative imitate Malory and his French originals, Spenser and his magic landscapes, Sidney and his stories of generational conflict of love. On the other hand, that its author is a woman, "and therefore not much to be marked," probably made possible the astonishing degree of psychological realism and just plain gossip that this seventeenth century narrative adds to the romance tradition.

Similarly, Wroth's utterly chaste, reputedly silent, and conventionally obedient heroine subverts the ideal embodied in the traditional woman of romance. Pamphilia's chastity is presented as neither religious nor dynastic, but rather as synonymous with her constancy to her love for her cousin, the matchless Amphilanthus. Her choices are virginity or marriage; as she will not marry anyone but Amphilanthus, and he remains elusive, virginity is a given. She evades her father's desire that she wed Leandrus, a dynastically suitable prince, by quoting Elizabeth Tudor's claim that she has espoused her country. Unlike Queen Elizabeth, however, Queen Pamphilia—and her creator Mary Wroth—is apparently more interested in love than in politics. Furthermore, she is arguably more interested in defining herself than in love, though love is necessary, Pamphilia says, to that definition. Other young queens marry and give control of their holdings to their husbands, but the country of Pamphilia would be an after dinner mint for Amphilanthus, Emperor by acclamation of Germany and most of Italy. Pamphilia does not want to win Amphilanthus by political means, even if such were possible; she wants him to acknowledge that she herself is matchless and to love her for her excellence, just as she does him.

As time goes by, and Amphilanthus' broad travels and demanding acts of heroism give him continued scope for his attraction to various women, a chaste and unilateral constancy becomes more and more the means by which Pamphilia defines herself. Her natural propensity to "daintinesse and feare," pointed out to her by the seeress Mellissea joins with Amphilanthus' unavailability to lock her into a longterm maidenhood. Although she professes to envy her friends, sister, and cousin, whose lovers all become their husbands, there is also evidence that she scorns their willingness to settle for less than perfection. Even when she has Amphilanthus' undivided attention, however, she avoids inviting behavior, shying away from his invitations to speak freely of her feelings, expressing—not clearly, and only to herself and the reader—her unwillingness to risk the public humiliation of his possible lack of interest and probable defection.

Thus for Pamphilia chastity and self-protective restraint become as inextricable as chastity and reputation. One of Amphilanthus' previous adventures includes a meeting with a strange household made up of a complacent husband, a chaste wife, and her passionate but chaste lover who is also her cousin. These cousin-lovers are completely fulfilled and happy with daily meetings and conversation, with looking at each other and occasionally enjoying an innocent kiss. Seeing this, Amphilanthus wishes he could have the same good fortune. It is a strange desire for a man so virile; it is, however, probably what Pamphilia would have if she could, or what Wroth would have for her heroine. Perhaps the taint of incest somewhat influences her desire for passion without sexual contact, love without marriage. But Pamela's chastity is also based upon her desire to be herself, discreet, discrete and constant to an idea of excellence not even the "matchlesse prince" can live up to.

Chastity, although it is enjoined on women by both religious and secular patriarchal society, can also be a practice that intelligent women embrace willingly, not simply out of resignation. Reputation is certainly a matter of social life or death in the enclosed society of a court; it can even stand between life and starvation. Beyond such practical considerations, however, is the tenuous hold on a separate self available to women of this time. Daughters, wives, mothers of men, the most illustrious shine primarily as the pride of their patriarchal houses. For example, in delineating the talent and intelligence of the Queen of Naples, the narrator caps her compliments by saying that such a woman is worthy to be the mother of Amphilanthus. The few women who hold countries in their own names surrender land and title gladly to the men, usually landless younger sons, who marry them. Pamphilia never says she does not want to do that, but she also never says she does, and, disappointed in love as she may be, by remaining single she is never faced with having to.

There are a number of things that Pamphilia never says. This discreetest of princesses is presented as an ideal of feminine verbal restraint, and it is true that she manages never to make public her love for Amphilanthus while all about her are advertising their passions to the world. In the first Book, her constant companion is the princess Antissia, Amphilanthus' then current lady. While it is no wonder she does not make her rival her confidante, her discretion is in high contrast with Antissia's impassioned adoration which, as Amphilanthus' affection toward her cools and shifts toward his cousin, rises to a pitch of jealous frenzy.

Like her creator, Pamphilia speaks through her poetry, containing her sorrow mostly in the discipline of sonnets and the simple measures of ballad quatrains. Although she is usually reluctant to share these poems, she has achieved a reputation for them, and a reputation for encouraging and enjoying the writings of others. This is a form of expression becoming increasingly available to women; Amphilanthus' mother, the Queen of Naples, also has earned fame as a writer and patron of poetry. Pamphilia's writing is a major part of her sense of who she is, both because she takes a craftswoman's pride in it and because its subject is herself and a subjective exploration of the way love makes her feel. She suppresses it by keeping it mostly private; nonetheless what belief she has in her own worth is partly tied to her reputation as a writer. Women writing: this is a far more realistic power than those wielded by other women characters in romance—Morgan's sorcery, Cecropia's brutality, or Britomart's disguising as a knight—and one with a far greater potential for subversion of the established order.

Pamphilia speaks socially and politically, as well. In fact, it is remarkable that she has achieved such a reputation for discretion, given her willingness to express strong opinions. Her very first words in the romance are saucy ones in response to Amphilanthus' praise of Antissia's beauty: essentially what she says is that some people might admire the type. Her message is clear to the prince, who teases her about her sharp and envious tongue. Later, when the young men decide to free Meriana and reclaim Macedonia before making a major assault on Albania, Pamphilia participates as a tactician in changing the battle plans. She talks her father out of marrying her to Leandrus, but spends even more time and wit persuading Leandrus himself that a woman has no need for a man's protection. So cogent is her argument for feminine autonomy that, although we must presume it would not apply if Amphilanthus were the suitor, it seems to be spoken from deep personal conviction. Finally, even when her beloved cousin's unfaithfulness has brought her to despondency, she does not become a bad ruler, but keeps her subjects' love and admiration through her wise counsel and judgements.

Pamphilia also uses the power of words to blow smokescreens in the eyes of those who would know her too closely. Adroit at deflecting direct personal questions, she manages to evade admitting first that she loves, then whom, for quite some time. In daily contact with such self-possession, the passionate Antissia comes to believe that two such excellences as Pamphilia and Amphilanthus cannot exist in the same space without falling in love with each other. In an agony of theoretical jealousy, Antissia sees Rosindy, Pamphilia's younger brother, visit secretly in his sister's private garden, and mistakes him for his cousin. Respecting Rosindy's desire for secrecy, Pamphilia denies quite truthfully that he is Amphilanthus, but her not telling the whole truth drives Antissia wild. Pamphilia engages in such doublespeak quite often, but this particular instance obtains for her, whether she intended it or not, an underhanded revenge on the woman who had once held Amphilanthus' heart. Later, when another companion, Dorilena, presses her to share her personal poetry, Pamphilia puts her off by talking instead about the sad experiences of a woman called Lindamira. Dorilena's response to this tantalizing story is that it is "some thing more exactly related then a fixion", but she is too well brought up to press Pamphilia farther. For all her reputation for ladylike reticence, Pamphilia is a skilled wielder of words.

Obedience in the direct patriarchal sense is not much required of the young queen. Her father is gentle and indulgent; her uncle left her his kingdom of Pamphilia with no strings attached, and she has neither husband nor acknowledged lover who might claim the right to curb her behavior. She does, however, set limits on herself in keeping with what she feels is generally expected of her. Although she is the governing Queen of Pamphilia, she doesn't linger much in her own country, located simply in "Asia," but spends most of her time in her father's household in Morea. One reason for this is that the company is liveliest here, but Pamphilia's asking her parents' permission to leave home and visit her own kingdom also reflects proper behavior in an unmarried daughter. She is recalled to sociability by her cousin the Princess Urania even when her heart is breaking most from Amphilanthus' inconstancy, because she accepts and obeys what is considered gracious behavior in a female member of a royal household. All in all, she puts high value on her reputation for the judgement and discretion that is said to be appropriate to her sex even as it is also praised as unusual.

Her strictest adherence of all, however, is to her own fierce standard of constancy. Nothing, not even his chilliest shunning, his most careless greetings, or his most deliberate mistreatment of her, can make her untrue to her love for her royal cousin. Just as she uses the patriarchal admonition to be chaste to such extremes that she challenges the "traffic in women" which is said to anchor the patriarchy's power, she carries obedience to her chosen ideal of constancy to such lengths that her independence is assured.

Queen Pamphilia, obedient to social expectations and to her own high standards, chaste beyond all ordinary expectations, and reputed to be discreet if not entirely silent at the same time that she displays enormous power over language, has pride enough to refuse unwanted suitors, but cannot break with social limits and speak first to the man she herself desires. Scornful of what she sees as excessive vanity in women, she cannot quite acknowledge that she deserves what she wants most, or that she has the right to seek it. When men importune reluctant women, as both Steriamus and Leandrus do her, she does not scorn them for presumption, because it is natural that men should want the best and try for it. She simply tries to make them see that she cannot return their love, no matter how deserving they might be. But when a woman demonstrates the self-confidence to claim a man before he speaks, Pamphilia is disturbed, and from the evidence of the fate of such women and from the narrator's comments on them, so is her creator.

And yet the Urania is rife with such women: unchaste, outspoken, disobedient, full of the confidence conferred by self-esteem. Although some are evil and none is to be admired as a perfectly virtuous lady by the standards of Wroth's society, they emerge as believable, energetic, and at least partially successful in the projects that they dare to undertake. One in particular deserves close attention, since onto her may well be displaced whatever impulses Mary Wroth might have given her heroine overtly to assert herself and openly to disobey social limits.

Woven into the many admonitory and ambiguous love stories of Book Two and Three are the adventures of Nereana, Princess of Stalamina. The first part of Nereana's story is told by Amphilanthus to his sister Urania and his cousin Pamphilia. It is thus through the eyes of exemplary masculinity that the reader first sees her, and the great prince is not impressed. He tells how he and his companion Steriamus, heir to the Albanian throne, happened onto the island of Stalamina. Here they found the ruler to be a woman, "the most ignorantly proud that euer mine eyes saw." Amphilanthus' illustration of her pride is the story of her pursuit of Steriamus, himself in an agony of love for Pamphilia. Insensitive to Steriamus' desire to be left alone—just as he had been to Pamphilia's similar desire—Nereana woos him with a conventionally masculine argument: that he ought to feel honored to be loved by a princess descended from the kings of Romania who is absolute ruler of this island. When he scorns her boldness and tells her "Twere more credit he was sure for her, to be more sparingly, and silently modest, then with so much boldnesse to proclaime affection to any stranger," she simply calls him a fool "to refuse the profferd loue of a Princesse." To be sure, this argument is more often presented by a suitor to his lady's father than to the lady herself, but in the bargains between men, it is usually effective. Steriamus next attempts to silence her by extolling Pamphilia and declaring that Nereana is not worthy to kiss her feet; saying that Pamphilia is the "perfectest" woman and Nereana is her contrary. Nereana's response to this is to continue to pursue him with attention until he flees, and then, taking a vow of love, to pursue him literally to Morea, where she also wants to have a look at her rival.

All this is narrated by Amphilanthus, whose tone is as scornful as the words he repeats. Pamphilia says that she shrinks from the idea of meeting this woman who hates her so much, but Urania is as fascinated as she would be by any freak of nature: "I wish she were here (said Urania), since it is a rare thing surely to see so amorous a Lady." The story resumes when Nereana does arrive at the Morean court. She finds Steriamus not there, but she explains herself without embarrassment to the king and all assembled, then publicly addresses her rival. Pamphilia's response to Nereana show none of the timidity she had earlier expressed to Amphilanthus; instead it shows an interesting ambivalence. She begins by reflecting the view of both her cousins that this is a prodigy:

In truth I a[m] sorry, that such a Lady should take so great and painfull a voyage, to so fond an end, being the first that euer I heard of, who took so Kingth-like a search in hand; men being us'd to follow scornefull Ladies, but you to wander after a passionate, or disdainfull Prince, it is great pitie for you.

But then she goes on to express not pity but an ambiguity of encouragement and scorn:

Yet Madam, so much I praise you for it, as I would incourage you to proceede, since neuer feare of winning him, when so many excellencies may speake for you: as great beauty, high birth, rich possessions, absolute command, and what is most, matchless loue, and loyaltie…

Pamphilia assures Nereana that to her knowledge Steriamus "loues not mee," which is rather a polite lie, and that "I affect not him," which is certainly true. "Thus are you secure, that after some more labour you may gaine, what I will not accept, if offered me, so much do I esteeme of your affectionate search."

Nereana is not sure how to react: the words are faultless, but the tone may not quite match them. And no wonder: the list of excellencies Pamphilia acknowledges in Nereana mirror her own qualities, the qualities that she would have Amphilanthus love, but which, because she is the discreetest of women, she cannot parade before him. Nereana, who has no way of knowing Pamphilia's heart, acknowledges the young queen's excellent mind, brushes off the mix of admonitory comments and compliments from the king, and single-mindedly pursues her quest into the surrounding wilderness, where she is soon lost by her attendants.

Although Pamphilia dissociates herself from this astonishing woman, what happens next to Nereana continues to be a weird mirror of Pamphilia's situation. At first, no two women's lives could seem more different: Nereana in open pusuit of a man, Pamphilia determined to conceal the identity of the one she loves; Nereana battered by a storm at sea, Pamphilia enclosed and protected by architecture and ceremony; Nereana wandering alone in wild woods; Pamphilia also alone but in her private garden writing formal verse. But Nereana has a protection that Pamphilia cannot quite match. Although both women have a strong sense of self-worth, Nereana's is virtually unshakable, while Pamphilia's depends on her perception of what others, especially Amphilanthus, think of her.

Still, a wild wood holds dangers that require more than ego strength to withstand. As she wanders and rails, and as her servants search for her in vain, Nereana is captured. Her captor is Allanus, a lover gone mad. Mistaking her for his cruel Liana (whose side of this story Urania will tell later), Allanus tries to embrace her, begging her pardon, offering his, in a chaos of words very like her own railings. Angry and scornful, she does her best to deny that she is his mistress; to his "O pitty me" she responds "I hate thee," and these dread words send him into a further fit, from which he emerges no longer believing that she is Liana. Now she must be the goddess of those woods, whether she wants to or not, and to make sure of it, he ties her to a tree. At this point she is so furious, "with rage growing almost as madd as he," she has no power to dissuade or resist his treatment:

hee vndress'd her, pulling her haire down to the full length; cloathes hee left her none, saue onely one little petticoate of carnation tafatie; her green silke stockin[g]s hee turn'd, or rowld a little downe, making them serue for buskins; garlands hee put on her head, and armes, tucking vp her smock-sleeues to the elbowes, her necke bare, and a wreath of fine flowers he hung crosse from one shoulder vnder the other arme, like a belt, to hang her quiuer in: a white sticke, which he had newly whittled, he put into her hand, instead of a boare speare: then setting her at liberty he kneeled downe, and admired her …

It is a brilliant parody of five centuries of woman-worship and fetish-creation, a marvellous cartoon of courtly love's inevitable results, horrid for men and women alike. Creating safe distance from all the dangers of real affection by placing women on pedestals and demanding that they stay there, men create new dangers for themselves: for instance, that such treatment, paralyzing to natural sexual responses in women, will cause a hypertrophy of pride, and that some men will take the fiction of female supremacy so literally that they find themselves relegated to an eternal chaste and passionate adoration, and truly go mad. On the other hand, in an effort to avoid such absurd and dehumanizing treatment, some women harden themselves against even the possibility of reciprocal partnership: Nereana's grotesque adventure mirrors the vulnerability against which Pamphilia would protect herself.

Once she is untied, Nereana takes flight. In the morning, hearing the voice of a knight who has sheltered nearby, she believes she will be rescued, but her own arrogance prevents it. The errant knight, who is Pamphilia's youngest brother Philarchos, at first only teases her because her antic and immodest dress makes him believe her to be insane; when his treatment angers her she insults both him and his sister, and he simply leaves her there. In order to rescue ladies in distress, knights must first recognize them by their humility.

This is illustrated when, after seventy intervening pages of text, she is discovered, still wandering, by Prince Perissus on his way to the siege of Albania. At first, ashamed of her dishevelled state, she hides from him, but because her instincts do run to self-preservation, soon she approaches him humbly. What he sees in her then is "more then ordenary behauior, and a countenance that might carry greatnes with it, and had in it, though shadowed vnder pouerty." When she declared her nobility to Philarchos, he thought she was mad; when she convinced Allanus of it, he left her to it. Now Perissus, an exemplary knight, finds nobility in her humbleness and is pleased by it, enjoying the masculine prerogative of discovering and recreating a fair lady out of this pitiable creature, "carrying her to the Towne, where that night she was to lye, in his owne Charriot which was led spare, she rid thither, where he cloathed her according to her dignity."

Although in telling Perissus her story she had admitted that she owed her situation to her behavior in pursuing Steriamus and scorning Pamphilia only to condemn it, as soon as she is restored to the accoutrements of royalty she regains her more than royal self-esteem. Her rationalizations are absurd: that fortune cast her down only for the honor of raising one so deserving as she, that the adoration of a madman validated her, that Steriamus is now beneath her and King Perissus (in fact married and devoted to his queen) is obviously her slave, suffering because she cannot requite him. "Alas, I faine would helpe it if I could, but constancy (though a foolish vertue) gouerns me." Since at this point she has dismissed Steriamus, saying to herself, "Soare like the Hobby, and scorne to stoop to so poore a prey as Steriamus, who now looks before mine eyes, like a Dorr to a Faulcon; my mind preserued for height, goes vpward, none but the best shall haue liberty to ioyne with me, none Master me," her constancy can only be to her conception of her own selfworth.

But her pride is dealt another harsh blow when she returns to Stalamina only to find that her subjects, tired of both her arrogance and her year-long absence, have replaced her with her younger sister. In earlier years she had imprisoned and threatened her sister; now the new queen and the nobles imprison her, excusing the break in succession by telling the people that she is mad. Her subjects, the narrator tells us, "had suffiecient cause to belieue it, seeing her passions, which though naturall to her, yet appeared to their capacities meere lunatick actions." Here she remains at the end of Book Two. She will appear in the text one more time, near the end of Book Three (the Book in which many, though not all, loose ends are tied), again chastened by deprivation, restored to her throne by a conservative council, "and she deserud their due restoring her proouing an excellent Gouerness, and braue Lady, being able to ouerrule her old passions, & by the[m] to iudge how to fauour, licence, and curb others, & this experience, though late, is most profitable to Princes." As no further mention is made of her former desire for Steriamus, it can be assumed that love is among the passions successfully overruled. Nereana is just one of many examples of the way in which women in Wroth's world have to choose between a kingdom and a man and, by not far-fetched analogy, between love and independence. With no husband to indulge her or curb her, she ends up without love, but she becomes a responsible ruler for her people with a firm hold on her rightful throne. If she has been tamed by misfortune, she is still autonomous. Although her author could not approve of her, she could imagine her and let her live.

Nereana's resilient if often absurd self-confidence puts Pamphilia's wavering self-image into vivid relief. This is not to say that the young queen is without self-esteem: she is proud of her reputation as the discreetest of princesses, of her ability to control her own behavior, of her talent for writing. But this pride, appropriate to her noble nature, has a soft middle. Because story after story in the first two Books, many of which she hears or even observes unfold, show the dangers to women of letting their passions be publicly known, it is not surprising that she is slow to let anyone, even Amphilanthus himself, find out how she feels about him. But when she finally does, and he betrays her with Musalina, even though her passion is still far from a public matter she is devastated. It is not a matter of public shame, but of private self-doubt. Her cure for this is a hypertrophy of virtue.

Alone, she pours out her heart in chaotic contradiction, blaming him, blaming herself, blaming fortune. But every time she turns her anger outward to the man who is causing her pain, she quickly draws it in again, even if no one is listening. If another is sounding her, she is even more guarded, dissembling to his mother, the Queen of Naples, "because her spirit disdained to say she was lost, but most because she could not say so, but the saying blemished his worth." This motif reappears in a more extreme form when Meriana's innocent gossip about Amphilanthus' many love affairs tears at Pamphilia's heart. The young queen thinks to herself, "I could almost be brought to tell her [about her secret heartache] my selfe, and would, were it not to discouer his forgetfulnes and cruelty; but rather than my lips shall giue the least way to discouer any fault in him, I wil conceale all though they breake my heart; and if I only could be saued by accusing him, I sooner would be secret and so dye." Finally, when Urania is urging reason on her, saying she should openly scorn any man who truly mistreated her, and would say so "though I knew it were mine owne brother had caused this mischiefe," Pamphilia's response is that as his sister Urania ought "to hide, or couer his imperfections" if he were faulty, which she does not admit.

In her own chaotic thoughts, she does often accuse him, but each time she does she offers instant retraction, usually in the form of self-blame. At first this is urgent: tell me what I've done! Was it because I went to sea? I only did it at the urging of others. He is perfect, she believes, therefore his defection must be her fault. But she knows she has done nothing wrong, so she must simply be deficient. News of his glorious coronation comes from Germany: "nothing did she see or heare, but still of his glory and his loue. This was once, said shee, belonging vnto me, but I was not worthy of them, sure else he hadnot alter'd." On and on this goes:

Did I reiect the firme, and spotles loue of that excellent Prince Steriamus, the humble suites of all the greatest subiects and neighbor Princes, slighted the earnestnesse of the noble Prince Leandrus, refused all, and made myselfe a Vassall in affection to him, that weighes neither mee, nor these expressions of loue? I haue done all this, and I yet haue not done enough; for, O how worthy is he?

"I will truly and religiously confess, I am not worthy of you," she says a little later to an imaginary Amphilanthus, first cursing the self-confidence that led her to think she was, then assuring him that she would be worthy if she could, but that she does not wish the glory of such worthiness for herself, but only for his sake, so he could have someone to love who truly deserves him. She goes on to suggest that perhaps her constant and passionate suffering has made her worthy, then cries that he has done her no offence, "for I am yours, and may not you dispose of yours, as best doth like your selfe?" She ends this confessional with the thought that if he hears she has died, "your matchlesse heart may be content to let a sad thought hold you for a while, and if so, too too much for mee, who still do wish your blessednesse." It seems she must maintain Amphilanthus' worth to insure the worthiness of her declared obsession at the same time that she must use his special flaw to insure her own martyrdom, the saintly suffering that validates and excuses her unfeminine authonomy.

Urania, Pamphilia's cousin, Amphilanthus' sister and contented wife to be of Steriamus, has a simpler response. Sympathizing with Pamphilia's suffering and scorning her brother's bad behavior, she desires for Pamphilia the same clearheaded and deep but lighthearted love she herself has found, and tries to talk her out of this heart's prison. But Pamphilia is adamant; if she is unworthy of Amphilanthus in every other way, at least she outdoes him in constancy. To this she clings, an idee fixe, because without it there can be no Pamphilia. Twice Urania tries, twice her cousin answers her in much the same way, first asking her not to make her more unhappy, which, she says, "I shall bee, if I let in that worthless humour change, which I can neuer doe till I can change my selfe, and haue new creation and another soule; for this is true and loyall." In their second encounter, Pamphilia again claims that if she fails in her constancy, she will not be herself, but the context is more complex. Urania accuses Pamphilia of idolatry, saying she is worshipping love as a god when he is really nothing but a presumptuous child, charming if well-used and handled sensibly. Pamphilia replies by proving Urania to be correct, but her language is ambiguous. Almost from the start of this reply, "he" is not "loue" but Amphilanthus, then becomes "loue" and Amphilanthus at once, confirming Urania's accusation:

Alasse my friend said she, how sorry am I your excelle[n]t counsell is bestowed on one so little deseruing it, as not being able to right it by following it, which I am not able to doe, but some answere I must make to you, I am so wholy his as it is past mistaking, the wound being giuen mee deepely by his vnkindnes which martyrs mee. … To leaue him for being false, would shew my loue was not for his sake, but mine owne, that because he loued me, I therefore loued him, but when hee leaues, I can doe soe to. O noe deere Cousen, I loued him for him selfe, and would haue loued him had hee not loued mee, and will loue though he dispise me; this is true loue…. Pamphilia must be of a new composition before she can let such thoughts fall into her constant breast, which is a Sanctuary of zealous affection, and so well hath loue instructed me, as I can neuer leaue my master nor his precepts, but still maintaine a vertuous constancy.

During their previous encounter, Urania had said to her cousin, "Change … deserues no honour; but discretion may make you discerne when you should bee constant and when discreete, and then you doe not change but continue, iudiciall as alwayes you haue beene"; in the second, in the midst of a much longer lecture, Urania asks, "Where is that iudgement, and discreet govern'd spirit, for which this and all other places happy with the knowledge of your name, hath made you famous? … Call your powers together, you that haue been admired for a Masculine spirit, will you descend below the poorest Femenine in loue?" This is reasonable, but it does no good. Pamphilia is not in search of easy pleasure. Preferring the self-esteem she has conjured out of constancy, she has tossed out both Urania's notion of discretion and Amphilanthus himself. Her love for him has been the way she represented a desire to be his acknowledged equal and, if not that, to overgo him through exercise of the one virtue he does not have.

Thus she remains, though not in the sense Urania understands it, discrete. If she cannot be one with the matchless prince by annexing him and putting on his power, she will at least be self-defined in her monomania, a woman writer all alone making sonnets of her sorrow and the matchless constancy she has declared synonymous with her being. Furthermore, her story is told by yet another woman writer for whom the relations between men and women are not a patriarchal given—as they are in the medieval romances where the best knight wins the most beautiful lady as his rightful prize, even if she is married to his liege or his uncle—but matter for detailed examination. Inventing some women characters like Nereana who are overtly unchaste, foolishly outspoken, and clumsily disobedient, she punishes them in varying degrees, but in Pamphilia she invents a subversive, suffering rebel who gets away with an autonomy she can blame on male "perfection." Censored by courtiers made uncomfortable by stories "more exactly related then a fixion," Mary Wroth invents a heroine whose chastity is so fierce and so artfully defined as constancy that the two great transgressions she shares with her creator, daring to write and refusing to wed (Wroth, widowed at 27, never remarries), have a chance of slipping by unremarked. The Urania is most innovative in its focus on the psychology of women, on their mixed responses to a society that both represses them and offers them unprecedented possibilities for secular self-expression.