Enslaved to Love: Comparing Sonnets by Mary Wroth and Sir Philip Sidney
When beginning to compare these two poems, it is important to first understand the different styles and backgrounds of the authors. Sir Philip Sidney’s poems were Petrarchan conventions and often described a woman’s physical beauty from head to the knee (often called a blazon). The suspense in Sidney’s poems is Astrophil’s inner struggle to control his undeniable worship of Stella and his devotion to her and also to somehow try to resolve this conflict in his heart and mind. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Mary Wroth whose sonnets were of a more cynical attitude regarding love. Being a woman, she had to face a considerable amount of scrutiny from the public eye concerning her romantic life. Her affair ruined her socially, and this may have contributed to her pessimistic views of love. While Sidney’s sonnets dealt with the hope of falling in love, Wroth’s sonnets were mainly about how to avoid love altogether.
The two authors seem to have opposing viewpoints about the concepts of slavery in the sonnets. In Sidney’s sonnet, his loss of liberty seems much less dramatic than Wroth’s loss. Astrophil is merely succumbing to his own urges and convincing himself that he must keep them under control. On the other hand, the reader is under the impression that life as we know it is over if one happens to fall in love, according to Mary Wroth’s sonnet. In A & S #47, Astrophil is enslaved by Stella’s beauty. Her beauty has the power to motivate him to do anything. He is thus, a slave captivated by her appearance. He wonders if he was born to feel this love for Stella or if her love has somehow held him a captive. Astrophil feels he must be in charge of his actions and he realizes that her physical beauty is having such a great impact on him that he loses this control easily. In the beginning of the sestet, he tries to “snap out of it” by proclaiming, “Virtue awake! Beauty but beauty is” (924). But in reality, he does not love her. Her beauty captures him and makes him believe that he really is in love with her soul and not just her physical beauty.
The enslaving in Sidney’s poem is quite harmless and possibly an enjoyable experience, yet the opposite is true in Wroth’s sonnet. In P & A #16, she has fallen in love and is mourning over the loss of her liberty. Love is not something she may have been born with. Love is like a plague and she must take extreme precautions to avoid catching it. But Sidney believes that love is perhaps a quality inherent at birth when he writes, “Can those black beams such burning marks engrave in my free side? Or am I born a slave, whose neck becomes such yoke of tyranny?” (924). While Astrophil seems to accept love and perhaps might even seek it out on occasion, Pamphilia argues that we should never fall in love in the first place. “Why should we not Love’s purblind charms resist? Must we be servile, doing what he list? No, seek some host to harbor theeâÂ?¦” (1428).
Wroth and Sidney also have their differences regarding the role physical beauty plays in love. Sidney’s poem focuses strongly on what is visible to the eye and how that can have an impact on one’s feelings for another. “O me, that eye doth make my heart to give my tongue the lie” (924). In comparison to Wroth’s sonnet, she makes no mention that physical attraction is involved in her experience of love. Love is just something that naturally comes upon her and despite all her efforts to avoid the curse of love, in the end, she knows that it is inevitable. “But O my hurt makes my lost heart confess I love, and must: So farewell liberty” (1428). It seems stereotypical that the male author is the one who associates physical beauty with love while the female author makes no mention of physical beauty. She alludes to the hurt and pain that love causes her while the male author treats love as a game. It suggests that love is very much a man’s game and the only defense a woman has is her appearance.
Although the differences in these poems far outweigh the similarities, the logical development of the sonnets have quite a bit in common. First, both poems essentially begin with the same question: “What, have I thus betrayed my liberty?” (924), and “Am I thus conquered?” (1428). Both of them wonder if their freedom has been taken from them by an inevitable love for another person. Following the first line, each narrator begins to wonder how this has happened to them or what could have caused this love. Astrophil wonders if he was born with the tendency to love her and if his “neck becomes such yoke of tyrannyâÂ?¦” (924). Pamphilia also wonders, how did she happen to fall in love? Despite her best efforts to abstain from love, it has happened. “Have I lost the powers that to withstand, which joys to ruin me?” (1428).
Sidney goes on to explain that he wishes to end this spiral because he is not praised for loving her but only scorned because he “may get no alms but scorn of beggary” (924). Here the poems begin to differ when Mary Wroth lists what must happen in order for her to give in to love. Her list is quite impossible with examples like “Desire shall quench Love’s flames” and “Love shall loose all his darts” (1428). In both of the sestets, the scenario turns and Astrophil reminds himself to consider the inside when falling in love and not just the outside. He then decides it may be to his benefit to ignore this love altogether. Pamphilia already understands that love is best when ignored. She contemplates why it is so hard to resist love. Astrophil realizes the charm that makes love irresistible is beauty. In the couplets, both have a mutual realization that no matter what they try to do, love will not take pity on them. Astrophil lies to Stella because his eye has caught her magnificent beauty and he simply cannot bear to tell her that he does not love her. He remains a slave to her beauty. Pamphilia, like Astrophil, remains a slave to love because her pain forces her heart to admit that it does love and it has to love.
Pamphilia and Astrophil’s experience and reactions to love are quite different and yet at the same time entail the same metaphor of love as a slave driver, mercilessly taking its victim’s freedoms from them. Mary Wroth and Sir Philip Sidney have very different perceptions of love and this comes across strongly in their poetry causing a huge contrast from the feeling one gets when reading the sonnets. Some major themes in each of the sonnets are slavery vs. liberty, physical appearance vs. honest love, and inescapable passion. Although their differences are great, they still both employ the same raw feelings that love elicits in all persons throughout time.
