39-) English Literature

39-) English Literature 

Margaret Cavendish

Writings

The distinctive, even eccentric, character of Margaret Cavendish (known in the 1660s as “Mad Madge”) is apparent in all her works. A story she tells against herself in CCXI Sociable Letters (1664) gives a vivid sense of the different facets of this curious personality. In letter 66 she recounts that one day as she was “Pondering upon the natures of Mankind” she wrote down on one piece of paper all the virtues of her acquaintance, Lady A.N., and on another all her imperfections. She found so many “excellencies” that she thought the lady would be pleased to hear of them. But she accidentally included in her letter the wrong paper—the one listing her acquaintance’s imperfections. On receiving the reply she opened it “with great joy,” only to be horrified when she discovered her mistake. She now begs a friend to go to her and explain what happened, “for I dare not write to her again.” The incident demonstrates Cavendish’s passion for “philosophizing,” her sincerity, her good-heartedness, her social ineptness, and her naiveté.

Separating Cavendish’s works from her life is difficult, if not impossible. To understand her relationship with rhetoric, for example, one must recall that she first learned about it not in school but from her brothers, and later from her husband and her brother-in-law—all men who were considerably older than she and who had been educated according to high Renaissance principles and practices, which included a thorough grounding in the grand style. This situation might explain her lifelong ambivalence toward rhetoric: on the one hand, she despised it as an instrument of deceit and much preferred the plain style; on the other hand, even as late as 1667 she still felt inadequate because she had never learned its rules.

Cavendish, as a poet, philosopher, writer of prose romances, essayist and playwright, published under her own name at a time when most women writers remained anonymous. Her topics included gender, power, manners, scientific method and philosophy. Her utopian romance The Blazing World is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. She was unusual in her time for publishing extensively in natural philosophy and early modern science, producing over a dozen original works; with her revised works the total came to 21. She often would have her portrait engraved on the covers of her different works so that people would know that she was solely responsible for the creation of whatever she wrote and then published in some way or another.

Cavendish has been championed and criticised as a unique, ground-breaking woman writer. She rejected the Aristotelianism and mechanical philosophy of the 17th century, preferring a vitalist model. In May 1667, she became the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society of London, criticising and engaging with members and philosophers such as Robert Boyle. She has been claimed as an early opponent of animal testing.

Cavendish's publications brought her fame and helped to disprove the contemporary belief that women were inherently inferior to men. Cavendish used them to advocate women's education: women were capable of learning and benefiting from education, and she insisted her own works would have been better still if, like her brothers, she had been able to attend school.

Cavendish’s next publication, Orations of Divers Sorts, Accommodated to Divers Places (1662) is a collection of short speeches on a variety of topics about which, by her own admission, she knew little: part 2, for example, consists of sixteen pieces collected under the title “Orations in the Field of War.” No doubt she was able to draw upon the considerable experience of her husband. The orations were written while she was still in exile, though the prefatory letter that discusses the reception of her plays must have been added later. The rhetorical theory in Orations of Divers Sorts is found in the preliminary addresses, “To the Readers of My Works” and “A Praefactory Oration.” The former reveals not only her ideas on rhetoric but also her confusion about it and, above all, her insecurity. If she had been a “Learned Scholar,” she says, she might have written shorter orations. Here she is probably responding to ideas coming from the Senecan school, which recommended the curt style. But she goes on to object that extremely short speeches have no power to persuade. Here she is drawing on Renaissance doctrines of copia, or the rhetorical amplification of ideas and expression. In the next paragraph she engages in the standard seventeenth-century critique of Renaissance style: the charge that rhetoricians of the old school are concerned more with sound than with sense. In “A Praefactory Oration” she develops further her ideas on accommodation and decorum, relating the discussion to the tension between ratio and oratio: speeches that merely entertain need only eloquence, whereas the more serious kind demand deep thought. An interesting comment on Orations of Divers Sorts is to be found in the preface to CCXI Sociable Letters. Noting that she has been criticized for “Patronizing Vice,” she explains that she is merely following established oratorical practice in arguing on both sides of the question. This remark suggests that one of her projects in writing Orations of Divers Sorts was to give herself a rhetorical education, practising declamatio (a rhetorical exercise common at that time) like any other aspiring orator. Because she is thus using her orations to give herself practice in rhetoric, it is dangerous to cite her “Femal Orations” as evidence of her ideas about women’s ethos. In fact, each speaker takes a different point of view.

In The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince William Cavendishe, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle (1667) Cavendish’s love and admiration for her husband shine clearly through her prose, which is simple, direct, and sincere. In the preface she lays out what would now be called her methodology. Her discussion of the principles of historical writing is especially interesting for its modern views: she eschews “feigned Orations” and “fancied Policies,” dismissing them as “pleasant Romances” inappropriate in historical accounts, which must stick to the simple truth. This preface also makes it clear that even toward the end of her life Cavendish was still ambivalent about rhetoric: admiring of its power to adorn, suspicious of its power to deceive, and above all unhappy about her own lack of training in it.

Yet, relatively little work has been done on her rhetorical theory, for it was long assumed that women had no part in the rhetorical tradition. That judgment is now being questioned and revised, and women’s contributions to rhetoric are at last being studied. Especially noteworthy on Cavendish’s rhetoric is Patricia A. Sullivan’s “Female Writing beside the Rhetorical Tradition: Seventeenth Century British Biography and a Female Tradition in Rhetoric” (1980), an essay exploring the specifically female characteristics of Cavendish’s style. Sylvia Bowerbank also contributes to the discussion of Cavendish’s style in “The Spider’s Delight: Margaret Cavendish and the ‘Female’ Imagination” (1984). Kate Lilley provides an important account of aspects of Cavendish’s rhetoric in the introduction to her 1992 edition of The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World. In “My Brain the Stage: Margaret Cavendish and the Fantasy of Female Performance” (1992) Sophie Tomlinson shows the connection between acting and public speaking; and Andrew Hiscock suggests the liberating effects of the age of print in giving women a public voice in his “‘Here’s No Design, No Plot, Nor Any Ground’: The Drama of Margaret Cavendish and the Disorderly Woman” (1997). Amy Scott-Douglass’s important essay “Self-Crowned Laureatess: Towards a Critical Revaluation of Margaret Cavendish’s Prefaces” (2000) discusses Cavendish’s rhetorical strategies in creating her own image. Anna Battigelli gives an account of Cavendish’s use of narrative frames in chapter 4 of her Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind (1998). Mary Beth Rose considers Cavendish’s autobiography, A True Relation of My Birth and Breeding, in “Gender, Genre, and History: Seventeenth-Century English Women and the Art of Autobiography” (1986). Jane Donawerth’s work on Cavendish’s rhetorical theory is essential reading for anyone interested in the subject. She has discussed The Worlds Olio in two essays: “The Politics of Renaissance Rhetorical Theory by Women” (1995) and “Conversation and the Boundaries of Public Discourse in Rhetorical Theory by Renaissance Women” (1998). Especially valuable is her discussion of the importance of conversation in seventeenth-century women’s rhetoric. Christine Mason Sutherland has discussed Cavendish’s rhetoric in her essay “Aspiring to the Rhetorical Tradition: A Study of Margaret Cavendish” (1997); and Ryan John Stark has contributed to the subject in “Margaret Cavendish and Composition Style” (1999).

Major works

Poems and Fancies (1653)

Poems, and Fancies covers a variety of subjects, including science. So far as rhetorical theory is concerned, it is important for its prefaces, in which she defends her decision to publish, thus contributing to the burning question for women in rhetoric at the time: their ethos. She contends that in writing and publishing in order to achieve fame she has done nothing shameful or immodest. Another point of interest is found in her address “To Moral Philosophers”; here, in an extended metaphor from music, she discusses rhetorical pathos, the address to the passions. Cavendish loved music, and some of her most interesting rhetorical theory has to do with sound.

Poems and Fancies encompasses poems, epistles and some prose on topics that include natural philosophy, atoms, nature personified, macro/microcosms, other worlds, death, battle, hunting, love, honour and fame. Her poems at times take a dialogue form between such pairs as earth and darkness, an oak and a tree-cutter, melancholy and mirth, and peace and war. As noted by Mistress Toppe, formerly Elizabeth Chaplain and Cavendish's maid, Cavendish's writings took the form of poetical fiction, moral instruction, philosophical opinion, dialogue, discourses and poetical romances. Poems and Fancies included The Animal Parliament, a prose piece consisting largely of speeches and letters. The collection concludes with her thoughts on her writing and an advertisement for one of her future publications.

Authorial intent

Cavendish concluded the collection by stating she was aware that she did not write elegantly and that her phrasing and placement of words could be criticised. She said she had difficulty creating rhymes that could communicate her intended meaning. In short, Cavendish stated that she strove for meaning at the expense of elegance, her aim being to communicate ideas. She also noted that she expected her work to be criticised for not being useful, but she wrote not to instruct her readers in the arts, sciences or divinity, but to pass her time, asserting that she made better use of her time than many others. Cavendish returned to these points in her epistles and poems.

Epistle dedicatory

Cavendish, like authors such as Aphra Behn and William Wordsworth, stated her intended audience, writing purpose and philosophy in prefaces, prologues, epilogues and epistles. Her several epistle dedications for Poems and Fancies often sought to justify writing at a time when women writers were not encouraged and in terms of her subject choice. She instructed readers in how to read and respond to her poetry, most often by inviting praise from supporters and requesting silence from those unaffected by her work. Cavendish commonly used the epistles to admit and excuse potential weaknesses in her writing. They were directed at specific audiences and varied accordingly.

Mental spinning

Looking at several of the epistles in Poems and Fancies, her dedication to Sir Charles Cavendish, her brother in law, compares writing poetry to spinning and calls poetry mental spinning – it was commonly thought to be more appropriate for women to spin than to write, but she herself was better at writing. This is one of several occasions when Cavendish calls attention to stereotypical gender roles and expands on her reasons for not following them. As here, Cavendish often employed metaphors to describe her writing in terms of stereotypical feminine tasks or interests, such as spinning, fashion and motherhood. While criticising her own work, she said it would seem better if Sir Charles Cavendish looked favourably on it. Cavendish often appealed to readers for applause: if it were well received it would be somewhat improved. She ends by complimenting Charles's charity and generosity.

The pursuit of fame

In her epistle to noble and worthy ladies and in many others, Cavendish plainly expresses her desire for fame. She was not concerned that the best people should like her writing, as long as many people did. She justified this by linking fame to noise and noise to great numbers of people. Cavendish often assumed a defensive position, here justified by asserting that she expected critiques from males and females not only of her writing, but of her practice of writing itself. Cavendish argued that women who busy themselves writing will not act ineptly or gossip. Though she expected criticism from females, she calls for female support in gaining honour and reputation. She ends by stating that if she fails, she will see herself as martyred for the cause of women.

Defence of writing and fame

In her epistle to Mistress Toppe, Cavendish states a desire for fame as her main reason for writing. Again she asks for acceptance of her writing as a digression from accepted gender norms. While she often brings in metaphors of domestic or stereotypical feminine activities, here she tries to excuse her desire for fame by distancing her ambition from what is feminine: her ambition is a quest for glory, perfection and praise, which she states is not effeminate. Even while writing and pursuing fame she remained modest and honourable and does nothing to dishonour her family. Cavendish attributed her confidence, as a type of censor, to her belief that there is no evil, only innocence in her desire for fame. As to her writing without permission, Cavendish excuses herself by stating it is easier to get a pardon after the fact than to obtain leave beforehand. She places writing over gossip, as a common and negative female activity. She credits her books as tangible examples of her contemplation and contrasts her self-proclaimed harmless ideas with wild ideas that might lead to indiscreet actions.

Cavendish explored writing closet dramas in her exile. She became one of the best-known women playwrights through her interest in philosophical nature. This epistle is followed by a response from Mistress Toppe, praising Cavendish and her skill in poetical fiction, moral instruction, philosophical opinion, dialogue, discourses and poetical romances.

Language, knowledge and error

Cavendish included a prefatory letter to natural philosophers. She knew no language but English, and even her English was somewhat limited, since she was familiar only with "that which is most usually spoke." In other words, she downplayed her knowledge of the technical vocabulary used by natural philosophers, and thereby her knowledge of opinions and discourses that preceded her own. She then dismissed errors she might make as trivial, asserting that she did not mean her text to be taken as truth. She wrote simply to pass time and expected her work to be read for the same end. This epistle also explained her writing in verse: poets were thought to write fiction and that fiction was aligned with pastime, not truth. So verse might be expected to contain errors. Cavendish lamented that her work was not more entertaining and advised readers to skip any part they did not like.

Writing to pass the time

Her epistle states that with no children and at that time no estate, she has a lot of spare time, which she fills by writing, not housekeeping. Food husbandry in poetry was well-ordered fancy composed of fine language, proper phrases and significant words. Cavendish excused errors that might be found in her work as due to youth and inexperience, for she wrote only to distract herself from hardships of her husband's and her own. Comparing her book to a child, she said that it was innocent, young, well-behaved, bashful and sensitive. Readers should blame her, not the book, if they did not like it. If, however, the book was well liked, she made it clear that she expected fame.

Instruction on comprehension and judgement

In her epistle to the poets, Cavendish notes that as women seldom wrote, her writing may be ridiculed, as the strange and unusual seem fantastical, the fantastical seems odd, and the odd seems ridiculous. She requests that her work be judged by reason, not prejudice. She then excuses weaknesses in her poetry by stating that she writes only to escape melancholy thoughts and fill idle time. She employs a food/feasting metaphor: her poems are not ripe, but applause and praise will make them pass as a "general feast" to those of vulgar taste who take quantity over quality. As was typical in her writing, applause is welcomed and criticism censored, as she advises those who dislike her poetry to keep silent. Hers are poems of fancy and so require study. She recommends that as one with a troubled conscience ought to look to a minister for guidance. Likewise a reader will ask a poet for help in understanding her poems. Attempting again to guide readers to a positive reception of her book, Cavendish distinguishes poets (able judges of poetry) from rhymers (faulty judges of poetry) and advises people not to call her book nonsense or poorly constructed out of their own ignorance and malice. Returning again to her desire for fame, Cavendish notes that if judged by an honest poet, who would not be envious, her work would receive applause.

Cavendish asks the reader to read her fancies (poems) slowly, paying heed to each word, for each is a fancy itself. She warns that if readers lose their place or skip lines, they will miss the meaning of the entire work.

Poems: excuses and instructions

Cavendish followed some epistles with poems on how they came to be published and how they should be received. The proximity of the poems to the epistles and their similarity in subject and tone, suggests that they may be interpreted as Cavendish's own point of view.

The poem The Poetresses sic hasty Resolution, like many of Cavendish's epistles, contains excuses for errors that may be found in the poet's work and begs for praise. The poet states that self-love influences her judgement of her own poetry, which she finds she likes so much that she is moved to continue writing in hope of fame. She claims to write without thought of how her work would be received by critics. She then recalls how she was visited by Reason, who advised her to stop writing. Reason said her writing was a waste of time, that her work would not be well received and she should not have her work printed, so that the printer would not lose money. Reason also stated that there were already too many books and she should burn what she had written to spare the world from more. The poet noted her own angry response: she sent her book to press before she could be persuaded otherwise. In hindsight, however, she regretted doing so: she felt ashamed by her writing and told the reader to pity her and wipe away her tears with praise.

In The Poetresses Petition, she compares a negative reception to her books with their death. If the books suffer such a death (i. e. criticism), she requests silence and that they be forgotten, without alteration or inscriptions, and left undisturbed unless new merit is found. Again Cavendish sought to censor criticism and promote fame by instructing that only positive criticism should be voiced.

In An Apology for Writing So Much upon This Book, she compares it to a child and the book/child and author/parent to birds. The book is like a baby bird just going out on its own. The author, like a parent bird, is unsure whether the book/baby bird will be safe and chirrups an attempt to protect it.

Nature's Pictures drawn by Fancy's Pencil to the Life (1656)

This is viewed as "Cavendish's most ambitious attempt to combine modes and genres." It includes short prose romances – "The Contract" and "Assaulted and Pursued Chastity" – and several prefatory addresses to the reader. The stories concern "the advantageous production of woman as spectacle" and "repeatedly [feminise] the aristocratic and chivalric trope (or figure) of the fair unknown."

A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life (1656)

Cavendish published this autobiographical memoir as an addendum to Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life, in 1656. She wrote it at the age of 33, which has been discussed by literary critics. One critic sees Cavendish's autobiography as a way to gain credibility and a marketable image that would undercut a socially improper public image. Cavendish wrote her autobiography in response to what people were saying of her in her lifetime. It relates Cavendish's lineage, social status, fortune, upbringing, education and marriage, describes her pastimes and manners, and offers an account of her personality and ambition, including thoughts on her bashfulness, contemplative nature and writing. She also shares her views on gender (appropriate behaviour and activity), politics (Parliamentarians v. Royalists) and class (proper behaviour of servants).

The memoir details the lives of her family, including a short account of her brother Charles Lucas, one of the best Civil War Cavalier cavalry commanders, executed by the Parliamentarians for treason in the Second English Civil War. She goes on to address the economic and personal hardships that she and her family faced from the war and their political allegiance, such as loss of estates and bereavements.

CCXI Sociable Letters (1664)

CCXI Sociable Letters was published in 1664, but many of the letters were written while she was still in exile. Some were presumably written before Orations of Divers Sorts—particularly letter 175, in which she discusses the idea of writing a book of orations, expressing her reservations about her competence to do so. She knows “no Rules in Rhetorick,” never having been to school. In this letter she tells of the “antient decayed gentlewoman” who taught her to read and write. Four other pieces in CCXI Sociable Letters are significant to Cavendish’s views on rhetoric: two prefaces and letters 27 and 28. “To All Professors of Learning and Art” offers her familiar excuse for the deficiencies of the work: she is a woman and therefore inferior both by nature and by “breeding.” The preface addressed to “Noble Readers” is a rebuttal of criticisms of earlier works. One other important point in this preface concerns style; and again her rhetorical theory takes the form of defense, this time against the anticipated criticism that she does not use “High Words and Mystical Expressions.” What she is endeavoring to do, she explains, is to reproduce conversational style in letters. Letters 27 and 28 are panegyrics on rhetoric. In spite of what she says elsewhere about the superiority of thought over expression, she now speaks in praise of eloquence considered as pathos, the address to the emotions. In letter 27 she praises men for their natural eloquence. She fears women are incapable of it and therefore envies men. In the next letter she defends herself against the charge that she admires mere words, explaining that the reason she loves eloquence “before all other Musick” is that it has the power to make truth operative. CCXI Sociable Letters is certainly one of the most successful of all Cavendish’s works, beguiling in its candor, and with shrewd comments on everyday life and domestic relations that add a delicious sharpness. The racy style suggests that, had it not been for her debilitating bashfulness, she might have been a famous conversationalist. She herself knows that this particular genre is her forte: she explains in another preface to the work (titled “The Preface”) that she has chosen to write letters rather than plays because they allow her to use the conversational style.

Published in 1664 by William Wilson, CCXI Sociable Letters (1664) is a collection of letters, written as if composed by real women. The organisation is similar to that of The World's Olio (1655). The topics are as varied as the forms and length of the letters. They cover marriage, war, politics, medicine, science, English and classical literature, and miscellaneous matters like gambling and religious extremism. Some letters seem to point to characters as actual people – Thomas Hobbes may appear in letter 173 and C. R. stand for King Charles II, – and some are addressed to real people with whom Cavendish often communicated, but most are fictional, leading to a surprisingly vibrant, ongoing conversation and observation of contemporary life.

Cavendish's natural philosophy

Throughout her work on natural philosophy, Margaret Cavendish defends the belief that all nature is composed of free, self-moving, rational matter.[33] Eileen O'Neill provides an overview of Cavendish's natural philosophy and its critical reception in her introduction to Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. She describes Cavendish's natural philosophy as rejecting Aristotelianism and mechanical philosophy and favouring Stoic doctrines: while women rarely wrote about natural philosophy in the 17th century, Cavendish published six books on the subject. O'Neill points out that Cavendish herself was not formally educated in natural philosophy, though William Cavendish and his brother Charles shared an interest in the subject and supported her interest and study in the area. She may also have been influenced by social encounters with philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes. O'Neill believes Hobbes (who had instructed Charles in philosophy) had marked influence on Cavendish's natural philosophy, making her one of the few 17th-century supporters of Hobbes' materialist philosophy, which argued that incorporeal souls did not exist in nature. Beginning in the 1660s, Cavendish began to study the work of her contemporaries more seriously. O'Neill suggests that such study was meant to enable Cavendish to argue her own points better by contrast with those of other natural philosophers.

O'Neill notes that Cavendish's natural philosophy and her writing in general were criticised by many contemporaries and by more recent readers, such as Pepys, Henry More and Virginia Woolf. Cavendish's work has also received positive criticism and been lauded by many for tackling typically male-dominated subjects such as natural philosophy. Letters and poems of praise by her husband were included in several of her published works.

Writing as an honourable disease

Cavendish in her preface to Observations upon Experimental Philosophy states that she expects readers to say that her practice of writing prolifically is a disease. If so, Cavendish stated, many others, including Aristotle, Cicero, Homer and St Augustine, have suffered the same disease. It was an honour for someone of great ambition (as she often identified herself) to share the disease of such wise and eloquent men. In these, as in her other writings, she asserts that she writes for herself and that her writing is a harmless pastime when compared with those of many other women. She contradicts herself, however, by adding that she writes for delight, which she had denied in her previous work. Also somewhat contradictory is her intention of continuing to write even if she has no readers, which belies her desire for fame. Ultimately, Cavendish excuses her criticism of and engagement with the theories of other natural philosophers as a necessary step in the search for truth.

Learning versus wit

In her epistle to the reader, Cavendish writes that woman's wit may equal that of man, and women may be able to learn as easily as men. She argues that wit is natural, whereas learning is artificial, and in her time, men have more chance of educating themselves than women.

Cavendish remarks on her own experience reading philosophical works: many such works have challenged her understanding with their frequently difficult words and expressions. Thus Cavendish advises writers of philosophy to use language appropriate to less expert readers. She defends this by stating that philosophical terms should ease communication of thoughts. She believes that successful communication is possible in all languages and accuses those who complicate communication (particularly English writers) of aiming for esteem from those who admire writing simply because they do not understand it, without considering that it may be nonsense. In her own work, Cavendish states, she chooses not to use difficult terms, although she adds that she understands such terms. Her stated reason is that she desires her work to be accessible to people regardless of their education. Her aim is to communicate her ideas clearly. She requests that any errors that may be found in her work be overlooked and readers remain focused on her main ideas. Here, as in many epistles, she instructs readers on how to approach her work and requests them to read it fully and withhold criticism until they have done so.

The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666)

Cavendish's prose tale was published in 1666 and again in 1668, each time with Observations upon Experimental Philosophy.

As many such as Silvia Bowerbank and Sara Mendelson have noted,this early version of science fiction critiques and explores such issues as science, gender and power. It also views relations between imagination and reason and philosophy and fiction. Cavendish writes herself into the book, which details a fictional, quite separate new world and its empress. She remarks in her epilogue that she is the empress, adding that in much the same way as there was a Charles the First, she would be seen as Margaret the First.

Plays in 1662 and 1668

Cavendish’s first collection of plays, though written during her exile, was not published  until 1662, the original manuscript having been lost at sea. The prefatory material includes a discussion of gender: here, as in The Worlds Olio, Cavendish shows a clear recognition of the difference between masculine and feminine styles and their different uses. This time she does not suggest that women are naturally inferior. She also takes further her ideas on accommodation: because discourse must be adjusted to particular audiences and circumstances, one cannot expect the orator to use the same style in private conversation as in public speech. On the relationship between speaking and writing, she asserts that the best writers are not usually the best speakers; and women cannot be good writers because they talk too much. A short note immediately preceding a prefatory poem by William Cavendish is especially interesting because it gives instructions about delivery. Here again, Cavendish is concerned with decorum: the readers must not read the scenes as if they were chapters in a book. The last play in this collection, The Female Academy, uses the idea of a women’s retreat, rather similar to the one in William Shakespeare’s Loves Labors Lost (1598). One must be cautious in attributing the ideas of the various speakers to Cavendish herself, for they represent a variety of points of view; but they are worth noting, especially those that also occur in her nonfictional works. Of these, three should be noted in particular.

The first has to do with attitudes toward rhetoric: the lady speaker in act 2, scene 4, represents rhetoric as the art of deceit. This position is consistent with Cavendish’s own in The Worlds Olio, though not with that in CCXI Sociable Letters. Second, the ideas expressed on the subject of propriety are also consistent with what is known from other sources of Cavendish’s views: a true aristocrat, she insists upon proper deference to different ranks. Finally, the characters in the play develop the idea of music as rhetoric found in The Worlds Olio: disputative discourses are compared to “Chromatick Musick”; and in act 2, scene 16, music itself is added as a fifth kind of discourse after the four major kinds listed: reasoning belongs to the soul; speaking to the senses; actions to life; and writing, painting, and carving to the arts; but music is “the Language of the Gods.”

Two volumes of Cavendish's dramatic works were printed. Plays (1662), printed by A. Warren (London) includes:

Loves Adventures , The Several Wits , Youths Glory, and Deaths Banquet

The Lady Contemplation , Wits Cabal , The Unnatural Tragedy , The Public Wooing , The Matrimonial Trouble , Nature's Three Daughters, Beauty, Love and Wit , The Religious , The Comical Hash , Bell in Campo , A Comedy of the Apocryphal Ladies , The Female Academy , Plays, Never Before Printed (1668) was published by Anne Maxwell (London): , The Sociable Companions, or the Female Wits , The Presence , Scenes (edited from The Presence) , The Bridals , The Convent of Pleasure , A Piece of a Play

Other works

Cavendish also published collections of Philosophical Letters (1664), orations, as in her collection entitled Orations (1662). Many of her works address such issues as natural philosophy, gender, power and manners. Cavendish's plays were never acted in her lifetime, but a number, including The Convent of Pleasure (1668) have been staged since. Several of Cavendish's works have epistles, prefaces, prologues and epilogues in which she discusses her work, philosophy and ambition, while instructing the reader on how to read and respond to her writing. Her work has been alternately criticised and championed from its original publication to the present day.

Critical reception

Cavendish’s works were not well received in her own day. Two celebrated diarists made fun of her: Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, who wrote a rude ballad about her visit to the Royal Society on 30 May 1667. Evelyn’s wife, Mary, and Dorothy Osbourne, wife of William Temple, both thought her so eccentric that she ought not to be allowed out. She had her admirers, however: Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, wrote a poem in her honor on the flyleaf of his copy of Poems, and Fancies; John Dryden congratulated Newcastle on his wife’s “masculine style”; Sir Kenelm Digby and Henry More, to both of whom she gave copies of her work, professed to value it; and Joseph Glanvill and Walter Charleton respected her enough to offer her serious criticism and advice. Among women, Bathsua Makin paid tribute to her in An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (1673). In general, however, she remained a frequently satirized figure.

Cavendish’s reputation fared little better in subsequent generations, though she continued to have admirers: Alexander Nicol appended extracts from Natures Pictures to Poems on Several Subjects, Both Comical and Serious (1766); Sir Egerton Bridges in 1814 published an edition of Cavendish’s “A True Relation of My Birthe and Breeding”; and Kathleen Jones reports in her 1988 biography of Cavendish that Charles Lamb enjoyed her Sociable Letters and so much admired her biography of her husband, the duke, that he referred to it as a jewel. In the twentieth century Virginia Woolf valued her work, though she also made trenchant criticisms of it. Only in the latter part of the twentieth century, however, did Cavendish’s importance begin to be recognized. Many contemporary scholars are now engaged in studying her works, and there is a flourishing Margaret Cavendish Society.

Cavendish was an unorthodox and daring intellectual who received positive and negative commentary from her contemporaries. Negative comments can be found by the Royal Society member Samuel Pepys who once wrote of her as "a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman" though he was eager to read her work. Dorothy Osborne reflected in one published letter, after reading a book by the Duchess, that she was "sure there are soberer people in Bedlam." She also had numerous admirers, Constantijn Huygens, Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, John Dryden, Kenelm Digby, Henry More were among them. Joseph Glanvill and Walter Charleton corresponded with her and engaged with philosophy and science. After her death, her husband William Cavendish compiled a book of admiring letters, poems, and epitaphs by numerous people. In the nineteenth century Charles Lamb enjoyed her Sociable Letters and so much admired her biography of her husband that he called it a jewel "for which no casket is rich enough." James Fitzmaurice argues “Cavendish was viewed sympathetically by the English Romantic poets”.

Margaret Cavendish was the first person to develop an original theory of atomism in Britain. She was also the first female to be invited to attend a session of the Royal Society. One member, John Evelyn, saw in Cavendish "a mighty pretender to learning, poetry, and philosophy". Yet her knowledge was recognised by some, such as the protofeminist Bathsua Makin: "The present Dutchess of New-Castle, by her own Genius, rather than any timely Instruction, over-tops many grave Gown-Men." She saw her exemplifying what women could become through education. New manuscript evidence also suggests she was read and taken seriously by at least some early Royal Society members, such as its secretary, Nehemiah Grew.

Cavendish was mostly lost to obscurity in the early twentieth century. Not until Virginia Woolf's The Common Reader (1925) did discourse rediscover the Duchess. Woolf remarked that:

the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of authentic fire. One cannot help following the lure of her erratic and lovable personality as it meanders and twinkles through page after page. There is something noble and Quixotic and high-spirited, as well as crack-brained and bird-witted, about her. Her simplicity is so open; her intelligence so active.

Margaret Cavendish began to generate intense scholarly interest in the 1980s, when rediscovered and analysed from a modern feminist perspective. Since then there have been many book-length critical studies of her. She has also gained fame as one of the first science-fiction writers, with her novel The Blazing World. Her self inserted as a character named Margaret Cavendish in The Blazing World is said to be among the earliest examples of the modern Mary Sue trope. More recently, her plays have been examined in performance studies, for blurring the lines between performance and literature, challenging gender identities and upsetting gender norms. Further analysis on Cavendish appears here.

This new interest has engendered media projects. The film, The Blazing World (2021) is loosely inspired by Cavendish's science fiction story. Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World (2014), which was also loosely inspired by Cavendish, won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and was long listed for the Booker Prize. Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton dramatises her "with lucid precision and sharp cuts through narrative time", as a new approach to "imagining the life of a historical woman".[60]] As the digital humanities grow, several projects have begun archiving Cavendish. The International Margaret Cavendish Society was set up as "a means of communication between scholars worldwide", to increase awareness of Cavendish's scholarly presence as a hub for newsletters, contacts and links to Cavendish's works. Likewise the Digital Cavendish Project works to make Cavendish's writing accessible and readable for people across the web and "highlight digital research, image archives, scholarly projects, and teaching materials". On 26 January 2018, the Digital Cavendish Twitter account announced that its next goal was to compile the Complete Works of Margaret Cavendish.

A question that necessarily arises for contemporary scholars is whether or not Margaret Cavendish should be regarded as an early feminist. She certainly paved the way for the feminists who came later; however, she evinces little of that solidarity with other women that characterizes feminism. In fact, at the beginning of Natures Pictures she not only confesses to extraordinary ambition but also admits that she does not want to share her glory with other women: “I dare not examin the former times, for fear I should meet with such of my Sex that have out-done all the glory I can aime at.” An alternative approach is to see Cavendish in terms of the aristocratic culture of her own time, one that adopted an ideology of display. Hero Chalmers discusses Cavendish as an aristocrat in “Dismantling the Myth of ‘Mad Madge’: The Cultural Context of Margaret Cavendish’s Authorial Self-Presentation” (1997). Diana Barnes reinforces this approach in “The Restoration of Royalist Form in Margaret Cavendish’s Sociable Letters” (2001). In “Margaret Cavendish: Strategies Rhetorical and Philosophical against the Charge of Wantonness, or Her Excuses for Writing So Much” (1991), Sylvia Brown also sees Cavendish in terms of a heroic ideology, rather than as an early feminist, though she puts forward the idea that Cavendish offered a new, feminine interpretation of copia.