Falling into place: Lady Mary Wroth's 'Urania' and the history of the female novel

Lady Mary Wroth (c.1587--1653?) is a writer who stood on the edge of a precipice between the aristocratic women writers of the Renaissance and the popular female fiction writers of the eighteenth century. By exploring The Countess of Montgomery's Urania (1621), I intend to prove that Wroth's multi-faceted tale is an underrated work by a pioneer in women's fiction.;The primary goal of the study is to open a dialogue concerning Wroth's place in the history of women's fiction in England. Wroth does not often get the recognition she deserves as an early experimenter with structure and character, and as the first woman to publish a fictional prose work in England, I argue that her work requires such attention for its innovation.;Wroth used writing to paradoxically reveal and conceal her interest in politics, amour, and the inner strength of a heroine. Her female characters can begin to be labeled as types, for example, the constant heroine of the amatory and the isolated Gothic heroine. In their own ways, these characters symbolize the power of the feminine. This power is depicted in heroines like Pamphilia, Urania, Limena, and Lindamira, but also can be read in Wroth herself. Although Wroth created new roles for her own female characters, she also represents a new role in English literature; the role of the published female fiction writer.;By evaluating the history of the female novel as it now stands, I will discuss how Wroth fits into that history. This study will demonstrate Wroth's achievement by discussing how the structure, characters, and plot of Urania foreshadow the fiction of later women writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and illustrate how Wroth's own life is echoed in the lives of other early women novelists. Because of her interest in female characters and the plight of the woman writer, Wroth was a trailblazer in the effort to validate women as a force in the literary world.