Mary Stuart and the English Sonnet Tradition: A Reassessment

Queen of Scotland practically from birth, Mary Stuart occupied a unique position of authority for a woman in the early modem moment. As Stuart struggled to solidify her power in Scotland, she represented the threat of female agency within a patriarchal culture. Stuart's political opponents used her personal correspondence, including a sonnet sequence known as the Casket Sonnets, as a means of illustrating Stuart's supposed abuse of power. In the Sonnets, Stuart reversed Petrarchan gender roles, placing a female in the masculine role of the aggressive lover. As monarch, Stuart could not escape the political implications of her personal desire, as the sonnets supposedly confirmed her female treachery. However, upon inspection, the sonnets offer an intriguing model of female agency which relies on dialectical strategy of ambiguity and mimicry. Stuart's political and private history serves as the framework for understanding her poetic model of female agency. Indeed, within the patriarchal world of the royal courts of France and Scotland, Stuart learned the necessity for a woman to engage in a strategy of clever evasiveness. Through a method of constant ambiguity and mimicry, Stuart sought to satisfy gender expectations while pursuing her own political ambitions. Having examined her history, one can observe similar dialectical maneuvering within the Casket Sonnets. Alternating between many postures, such as the courtier or the prince, the wife or the mistress, Stuart creates a female poet-lover who simultaneously submits and undermines patriarchal expectations. Through the manipulation of Petrarchan convention, Stuart creates a poetic space in which the female lover is able to speak. Due to the publication and wide circulation of Stuart's private documents, Stuart should be considered as an important influence on the English sonnet tradition. For example, later female writers avoided engaging in the secular sonnet tradition as a result of the scandals surrounding Stuart's sequence. However, fifty years after the initial publication of Stuart's sonnets, Mary Wroth composed Pamhilia and Amhilanthus, a sequence which contained a similar strategy of dialectical posturing. As such, Stuart's Casket Sonnets provide a model of female agency within the masculine world of politics and desire.