Narcissistic, reflection, Petrarchan, representation, Metamorphoses, Mirror, social, context, position, projection
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257
representation by being cast in the role of the Petrarchan heroine, and declines the opportunity to be “fair, in thralldom” (l.22). She refuses to internalise Rodney’s projection upon her of his idea of her or to become his Narcissistic reflection: “But this I need not plead, since beauty’s mirror/ Occasions not your suit, but your own error!” (ll.23-4). Alluding to Ovid’s tale of Narcissus from the Metamorphoses (III. 343-513), she attempts to re-/position herself as an heuristic agent who might lead him to the realisation that what he has become enamoured of is a projection of himself rather than a distinct other. She also insists that Rodney is deluded to think that she is free to choose a lover. Unlike Elizabeth, Seymour defers to a greater authority than herself, insisting that she “cannot take free passage in my choice”, thus he should “impute the fault to destiny, not me” (l.12 and l.8). She exchanges her role as fictional heroine for that of poetess and social realist, the doer rather than the done to. This is achieved by dislodging Rodney from his position as a poet and the manufacturer of the social context of their relationship, and recasting him as both fictional character and fiction-maker whose misrepresentation of the context of their relationship is a self-annihilating act that reduces him to a literary or stage convention.
Whereas Seymour’s arsenal comes from The Metamorphoses, she accuses Rodney of resorting to the Art of Love:
Success and custom (to weak women, foes)
Have made men wanton in our overthrows –
Because the worser of our sex have granted.
What is’t in their attempts men have not vaunted?
To weep, to threaten, flatter, beg, protest
Is in but earnest, lust – and love in jest. (ll.49-54)
The cony-catching of women into succumbing to ingenuous persuasions to love was a recurring theme of female complaint literature (see p.198, for instance). Because Rodney subscribes to the fiction of the Petrarchan lover wholesale, it is understandable that Seymour misreads his protestations of love as dissimulation. She claims to suspect Ovidian subterfuge, that the dissembling “Art of love” is being practiced upon her, and in doing so construes Petrarchan
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