CorrieGrace



"A females forbidden masculine wishes have the same disastrous impact on her life as the analogous forbidden feminine wishes have on the life of a male. What adult women and men want is to regain access to the parts of themselves that they have learned to distrust and fear in the course of growing up from childhood to adulthood." - Louise Kaplan

Quick Overview: (According to Wikipedia). __Mary Wroth__: (1587–1651/3) was an English poet of the Renaissance. A member of a distinguished literary English family, Wroth was among the first female British writers to have achieved an enduring reputation. Her mother was Barbara Gamage and her father was Robert Sidney. Mary married Robert Wroth. The two had a son, James. However, a month after the birth of his first child, Robert Wroth died of gangrene and left Mary deeply in debt. Two years later, Wroth's son died causing Mary to lose the Wroth estate to John Wroth, the nearest male relative of her late husband. There is no evidence to suggest that Wroth was unfaithful to her husband, but after his death, she entered a relationship with her cousin, William Herbert. Mary and William shared many of the same interests in the arts and literature and had been childhood friends. The relationship produced at least two illegitimate children, a daughter, Catherine, and a son, William.

__William Herbert__: 3rd Earl of Pembroke. (April 8 1580 – April 10 1630). Was the son of Henry Herbert (2nd Earl of Pembroke) and his third wife, Mary Sidney. At the age of twenty, he had an affair with Mary Fitton, whom he impregnated. Admitting paternity, he refused to marry her and was sent to prison where he wrote. In 1604, William married Mary Talbot. Eventually, he has an affair with Lady Mary Wroth, his uncle's daughter. William Herbert dies in 1630 at age 50 from what some believe to have been syphillis. Williams title is pased to his brother, Philip Herbert.

In conclusion, Pembroke and Wroth were cousins and thought to be lovers. Mary Wroth's writings hinted this fact and often times refers to her relationship with William. It's been stated that "cousins, lovers, parents, and writers, their separate and conjoined histories make up a fascinating, multi-leveled family romance."

Family Romance: What is It?
 * According to Freud, the symptoms of family romance are: a person's desire to change his or her family circumstances, fantasies of having richer or more notble parents, not having to share parental love with siblings, may develop incestuous feelings for ones brother(s)/sister(s), desires to return to either fancied or real condidtions in early childhood. According to Freud, "in adults, the symptoms of the family romance emerge in desires to discover or recapture a lost state of autonomy, a goal that may be projected, negatively or positively, upon love-objects-lover, spouse, child- who therby become incorporated into the patterns of desire laid down in childhood." In conclusion, Freud also argues that, "our family romances...are the stories enacted in fantasies or patterns of concrete behavior, or in the narratives of art- that we repeat throughout our lives to enact, relate, or explain these early patterns of desire and frustration generated within the dynamics of the family."
 * Freud also believes in the psychoanalysis theory. Psychoanalysis has three main components:
 * 1) a method of investigation of the mind and the way one thinks;
 * 2) a systematized set of theories about human behavior;
 * 3) a method of treatment of psychological or emotional illness.
 * The above components are seen throughout the Sidney works.
 * Greg Waller, who wrote the book __The Sidney Family Romance: Mary Wroth, William Herbert, and The Early Modern Construciton of Gender__, challenges not only Freud's ideas but other theories as well. Part of the subject in this book, "is indeed, a pair of first cousins, not only their "awkward passion," but the stories they both lived and wrote about; and, more broadly, how they (cousins and narratives alike) were constituted as gendered and familial subjects within their complex, early seventeeth-century family romances."

__Family Romance and What it Means to Me__ After studying and analyzing the pieces read this semester, those by Mary, Herbert and others, I think the underlying idea/importance is the willingness to risk speaking out and going outside the norm for this time period. Lady Mary Wroth, no matter what personal opinions may arise, was brave to not only write during a time when women were meant to be silent, but to also write about a potential relationship with her first cousin. Miller writes that "the prescence of not only one, but two offspring resulting form Wroth's extramarital relations with William Herbert violated social norms in a highly visible manner...Wroth's willingness to transgress the social constraints considered appropriate to her sex extended from sexual to verbal license in her roles as mother and author, in a period when both modes of conduct on the part of women were liable to invite social ostracizaion and punishment." In my eyes, Mary Wroth is an inspiration to all women. She should be seen as a brave soul.

__Questions to Consider__: (Waller)
 * 1) Are there discernibly different gendered, historically specific, patterns of fantasy?
 * 2) What is the woman's version of the family romance?
 * 3) Do the answers to that question vary historically?


 * -Corrie Loos**

__Works Cited:__ Miller, Naomi J. "Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England." Waller, Gary. "The Sidney Family Romance." Wikipedia.