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

In the following excerpt, Shaver examines Wroth's female protagonists, observing the ways in which they assert power within the strict behavioral confines of the feminine Renaissance ideal.

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...