The following creative thesis contains the first 100 pages of the historical fiction novel on the life of Lady Mary Wroth, the first woman in the Early Modern Era to publish a prose poetry novel. The thesis begins and ends in the year 1651. It is here that the text delves into the misgivings in Wroth’s life: losing her estate, her financial struggles, and her reputational conflicts. As the story unveils the truth about what happened in Wroth’s later life, it will show an up close and personal story of Wroth as a child in the year 1602, where the work explores the idea of girlhood in Early Modern England. In between narrative moments with present day Wroth and childhood Wroth is a third narrative structure: young adult Wroth. This section focuses on the years 1604-1606, where she began married life with Robert Wroth. It is my hope in this section to show what an Early Modern marriage looked like from a woman's perspective. The work does not follow a chronological order but instead follows a jump cut structure where times and events are explored and then the narration jumps to another time and another event with no logical connection. The reader learns about three different versions of Wroth at the same time, and each time period informs the story and draws the reader forward in the narrative. Thematic concerns such as feminist theory, womanhood, relationships between people and between people and the outside world, and memory and trauma are explored in the work. The creative thesis will provide a close examination of Lady Mary Wroth’s life, allowing readers to be inside the mind of Wroth during paramount moments in her life, the likes of which has never been done before.
