Description

I presented my first conference paper, “Told still shee was mad, and threatned to bee used accordingly”: The Subjectivity of Madness in Mary Wroth’s Urania,” at the UCSB Early Modern Center Annual Conference.

Abstract

In over 1200 pages of spiraling, discontinuous narration, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania rarely features discussions of disability. Virtually every character remains ablebodied (in addition to being upper-class and “beautiful”), with the exception of a few dwarf footmen and some isolated instances of madness, generally afflicting the male characters and caused by “love.” However, several characters accuse Nereana, a particularly prideful princess, of being “mad” because her vain perspective seems detached from the reality experienced by other characters. Although some characters use Nereana’s madness to justify their actions against her, Nereana remains steadfastly certain in her own sanity, her experience of madness widely diverging from that of the male characters. I argue that Nereana’s madness is defined through the disconnect between Nereana’s perspective on her own conduct and that of the other characters, providing one of the first disability studies critiques of the Urania. Employing Lindsay Row-Heyveld’s concept of “disabled knowledges,” itself indebted to Tobin Siebers, I further contend that, through her experiences with disability, Nereana acquires the skills that she needs to lead her people, even as she is forced to obscure parts of herself to reclaim her role as a monarch.