I also struggled (and continue to struggle) with not only interpreting, but following the poem. One way that I found it helpful to engage with the text is by utilizing our secondary source, the Hamilton article. For example, I found that Hamilton’s remarks that Virginia Woolf considered Spenser a feminist and that his first intended readership may have been female (4) to be an interesting lens through which to read parts of Book III. In particular, it appears that Spenser is catering to a female audience in the opening of the second Canto with his remarks that women were once powerful “till envious Men fearing their rules decay / Gan coyne streight laws to curb their liberty” (801). This line seems to almost critique patriarchy, yet in the previous Canto, Spenser spends a lot of time critiquing a woman for expressing sexuality, essentially curbing her liberty as much as the men in his poem. I am not sure how these moments are meant to relate to one another. Are they meant to be subversive in relation to one another? Or is this relationship hypocritical and / or paradoxical?