In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

98Rocky Mountain Review NAOMI J. MILLER. Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. 279 p. 1 he culmination ofover a quarter ofa century's feminist theory and critical practice, Naomi J. Miller's book synthesizes methods and assumptions from divergent forms of feminist criticism in order to illustrate how Mary Wroth's discursive subjectivity at once represents genderized assertions of the self in Wroth's historical moment as well as genderized reflections of the self in our own time. Further, aiming to move beyond the historical, biographical , and formalist analysis of Wroth that has obtained so far, Miller places Wroth's works in the broader contexts of other contemporary literary and non-literary, canonical and non-canonical texts so as to more suggestively "probe not simply 'the subject' of gender in her works, but the changing subject of gendered representations in the early modern period" (2). Most of the book is devoted to the elucidation of this "range of constantly changing constructions of femininity in early modern England" (235), though significant attention is paid to the "underlying measure of gender bias" (234) of the history of literary criticism that has made it so difficult to "change the subject" of study from male to female authors. One reason the book should be read, especially by the graduate student, is that its method and structure allow easy perception of argumentative purpose, which is essential to the success of the highly synthetic, temporally elastic argument. After an introductory chapter, each subsequent chapter proceeds systematically: the theme and thesis for the chapter is established, modern critical and theoretical context is marshaled, and non-literary and then literary texts are discussed in context of the theme and theory outlined for the chapter and in preparation for the discussion of Wroth's work. Finally, Wroth's works are interpreted, starting with the sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, followed by the play, Love's Victory, and concluding with the prose romance, The Countess of Montgomeries Urania, first the published part and then the manuscript continuation. The epilogue encapsulates the procedure and reiterates the book's major points. Playfully alluding to various early modern and modern concepts in all the chapter titles, chapters two through four treat the significance of Wroth's canon in relation to early modern cultural discourses. Culturally recognizable romance is elucidated first in chapter two, "Dark Lady: This Self Which Is Not One," as a way of indicating that "the roles of lover, wife, and widow," focused upon in romantic love situations, "provide only the starting point for Wroth's figurations of emergent female subjectivity" (63). Chapter three, "Matriarch's Daughter: Ties That Bind," begins the most important movement of the book, that of strongly indicating the "otherness" of women amongst themselves. Complementing Margaret Ezell's fine work, Miller exposes some current biases that disable the perception of many subject positions, such as the patriarch's wife or matriarch's daughter, in order to show that "Wroth's major female protagonists inhabit a state of maternity which . . . works to authorize the emergent subjectivity of each Book Reviews99 successive generation" (108). Having shown how Wroth authorizes female subjectivity in the family, Miller moves in chapter four, "Sovereign Subject: The Politics of Gender," to explaining how "Wroth's discursive relation to the figures not only of Elizabeth I, but also of James I, and James's wife, Anne of Denmark, attends to the gendered politics of 'sovereign subjects' in early modern England, in order to examine both the constraining and the enabling effects of these royal models upon Wroth's extensive representations of female sovereignty in both political and personal terms" (111-12). Through dynamic individual and social integration of the political and the personal, the sovereign and the subject, early modern subjectivity of women and men, monarchs and subjects, was created in genderized terms. The final two chapters examine specifically literary issues, notably issues of audience and thematic structure. Chapter five, "Engendering Discourse: In a Different Voice," documents the creation or use of female gendered audiences and female gendered authors in contrast to the textual assumptions of male authors that indicate expected male...

pdf

Share