From Nancy, one of the useful entries in Pepys's diary about Margaret Cavendish:
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1667/04/11/
Having received this money I home with Balty and it, and then abroad by coach with
my wife and set her down at
her father’s, and I to
White Hall, thinking there to have seen the
Duchess of Newcastle’s coming this night to Court, to make a visit to
the Queene,
the King
having been with her yesterday, to make her a visit since her coming to
town. The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she do is
romantick. Her footmen in velvet coats, and herself in an antique dress,
as they say; and was the other day at her own play,
“The Humourous Lovers;” the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote, but yet she and
her Lord
mightily pleased with it; and she, at the end, made her respects to the
players from her box, and did give them thanks. There is as much
expectation of her coming to Court, that so people may come to see her,
as if it were the Queen of Sheba [L&M say
“Queen of Sweden”. P.G.]; but I lost my labour, for she did not come this night.
Pepys also said:
(March 18, 1668) Thence home, and there, in favour to my eyes, stayed at home, reading the ridiculous
History of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by
his wife, which shews her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to
him, and of him.
(May 30, 1667) After dinner I walked to
Arundell House, the way very dusty, the day of meeting of
the Society
being changed from Wednesday to Thursday, which I knew not before,
because the Wednesday is a Council- day, and several of the Council are
of the Society, and would come but for their attending
the King at Council; where I find much company, indeed very much company, in expectation of the
Duchesse of Newcastle,
who had desired to be invited to the Society; and was, after much
debate, pro and con., it seems many being against it; and we do believe
the town will be full of ballads of it. Anon comes the Duchesse with her
women attending her; among others, the
Ferabosco, of whom so much talk is that her lady would bid her show her face and kill the gallants. She is indeed
black,
and hath good black little eyes, but otherwise but a very ordinary
woman I do think, but they say sings well. The Duchesse hath been a
good, comely woman; but her dress so antick, and her deportment so
ordinary, that I do not like her at all, nor did I hear her say any
thing that was worth hearing, but that she was full of admiration, all
admiration. Several fine experiments were shown her of colours,
loadstones,
microscopes, and of liquors among others, of one that did, while she was there, turn a piece of roasted
mutton into pure blood, which was very rare. Here was Mrs. Moore [L&M say “
Mr. Moore”. P.G.] of
Cambridge,
whom I had not seen before, and I was glad to see her; as also a very
pretty black boy that run up and down the room, somebody’s child in
Arundell House. After they had shown her many experiments, and she cried
still she was full of admiration, she departed, being led out and in by
several Lords that were there; among others
Lord George Barkeley and
Earl of Carlisle, and a very pretty young man, the
Duke of Somerset.
She gone, I by coach home, and there busy at my letters till night, and
then with my wife in the evening singing with her in the garden with
great pleasure, and so home to supper and to bed.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1667/05/30/
(May 10, 1667) Then to my
Lord Treasurer’s, but missed
Sir Ph. Warwicke, and so back again, and drove hard towards
Clerkenwell,
1 thinking to have overtaken my
Lady Newcastle,
whom I saw before us in her coach, with 100 boys and girls running
looking upon her but I could not: and so she got home before I could
come up to her. But I will get a time to see her.
May 1, 1667) Thence Sir W. Pen and I in his coach,
Tiburne way, into
the Park, where a horrid dust, and number of coaches, without pleasure or order. That which we, and almost all went for, was to see my
Lady Newcastle;
which we could not, she being followed and crowded upon by coaches all
the way she went, that nobody could come near her; only I could see she
was in a large black coach, adorned with silver instead of gold, and so
white curtains, and every thing black and white, and herself in her cap,
but other parts I could not make [out]. But that which I did see, and
wonder at with reason, was to find
Pegg Pen in a new coach, with only her husband’s pretty
sister with her, both
patched
and very fine, and in much the finest coach in the park, and I think
that ever I did see one or other, for neatness and richness in gold, and
everything that is noble. My
Lady Castlemayne, the King, my
Lord St. Albans, nor
Mr. Jermyn,
have so neat a coach, that ever I saw. And, Lord! to have them have
this, and nothing else that is correspondent, is to me one of the most
ridiculous sights that ever I did see, though her present dress was well
enough; but to live in the condition they do at home, and be abroad in
this coach, astonishes me.
(April 26, 1667) This done Sir W. Batten and I back again to London, and in the way met my
Lady Newcastle
going with her coaches and footmen all in velvet: herself, whom I never
saw before, as I have heard her often described, for all the town-talk
is now-a-days of her extravagancies, with her velvetcap, her hair about
her ears; many
black patches, because of pimples about her mouth; naked-necked, without any thing about it, and a black
just-au-corps. She seemed to me a very comely woman: but I hope to see more of her on
Mayday. My mind is mightily of late upon a coach.
(March 30, 1667) Up, and the French
periwigg maker of whom I bought two yesterday comes with them, and I am very well pleased with them. So to
the office, where all the morning. At noon
home to dinner, and thence with
my wife’s knowledge and leave did by coach go see the silly play of my
Lady Newcastle’s, called
“The Humourous Lovers;”
the most silly thing that ever come upon a stage. I was sick to see it,
but yet would not but have seen it, that I might the better understand
her. Here I spied
Knipp and
Betty, of the
King’s house, and sent Knipp
oranges, but, having little money about me, did not offer to carry them abroad, which otherwise I had, I fear, been tempted to.
Pepys on anatomy including circulation of the blood, which fascinated Margaret Cavendish too:
Friday 27 February 1662/63
Up and to
my office, whither several persons came to me about office business. About 11 o’clock,
Commissioner Pett and I walked to
Chyrurgeon’s Hall
(we being all invited thither, and promised to dine there); where we
were led into the Theatre; and by and by comes the reader,
Dr. Tearne,
with the Master and Company, in a very handsome manner: and all being
settled, he begun his lecture, this being the second upon the kidneys,
ureters, &c., which was very fine; and his discourse being ended, we
walked into the Hall, and there being great store of company, we had a
fine dinner and good learned company, many Doctors of Phisique, and we
used with extraordinary great respect. Among other observables we drank
the King’s health out of a gilt cup given by
King Henry VIII. to
this Company,
with bells hanging at it, which every man is to ring by shaking after
he hath drunk up the whole cup. There is also a very excellent piece of
the King, done by
Holbein, stands up in the Hall, with the officers of the Company kneeling to him to receive their Charter. After dinner
Dr. Scarborough
took some of his friends, and I went along with them, to see the body
alone, which we did, which was a lusty fellow, a seaman, that was hanged
for a robbery. I did touch the dead body with my bare hand: it felt
cold, but methought it was a very unpleasant sight. It seems one
Dillon,
of a great family, was, after much endeavours to have saved him, hanged
with a silken halter this Sessions (of his own preparing), not for
honour only, but it seems, it being soft and sleek, it do slip close and
kills, that is, strangles presently: whereas, a stiff one do not come
so close together, and so the party may live the longer before killed.
But all the Doctors at table conclude, that there is no pain at all in
hanging, for that it do stop the circulation of the blood; and so stops
all sense and motion in an instant. Thence we went into a private room,
where I perceive they prepare the bodies, and there were the kidneys,
ureters [&c.], upon which he read to-day, and Dr. Scarborough upon
my desire and the company’s did show very clearly the manner of the
disease of the stone and the cutting and all other questions that I
could think of … [Poor Mr. Wheatley could not even stand a medical
lecture on physiology. D.W.] how the water [comes] into the bladder
through the three skins or coats just as poor Dr. Jolly has heretofore
told me. Thence with great satisfaction to me back to the Company,
where I heard good discourse, and so to the afternoon Lecture upon the
heart and lungs, &c., and that being done we broke up, took leave,
and back to the office, we two,
Sir W. Batten, who dined here also, being gone before. Here late, and to Sir W. Batten’s to speak upon some business, where I found
Sir J. Minnes pretty well fuddled I thought: he took me aside to tell me how being at my
Lord Chancellor’s to-day, my Lord told him that there was a Great Seal passing for
Sir W. Pen, through the impossibility of the
Comptroller’s
duty to be performed by one man; to be as it were joynt-comptroller
with him, at which he is stark mad; and swears he will give up his
place, and do rail at Sir W. Pen the cruellest; he I made shift to
encourage as much as I could, but it pleased me heartily to hear him
rail against him, so that I do see thoroughly that they are not like to
be great friends, for he cries out against him for his house and yard
and God knows what. For my part, I do hope, when all is done, that my
following my business will keep me secure against all their envys. But
to see how the old man do strut, and swear that he understands all his
duty as easily as crack a nut, and easier, he told my Lord Chancellor,
for his teeth are gone; and that he understands it as well as any man in
England; and that he will never leave to record that he should be said
to be unable to do his duty alone; though, God knows, he cannot do it
more than a child. All this I am glad to see fall out between them and
myself safe, and yet I hope the King’s service well done for all this,
for I would not that should be hindered by any of our private
differences. So to my office, and then
home to supper and to bed.
Robert Hooke's Micrographia
Here is a UC Berkeley site that summarizes Hooke's key work on microscopes and has further links:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/hooke.html
An article on Newton, the Royal Society, and the telescope that we have in J-STOR (you will need to be logged in through GSU to access this):
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.gsu.edu/stable/531836?&Search=yes&searchText=Society%27s&searchText=Telescope&searchText=Royal&searchText=Newton&searchText=Account&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DAn%2BAccount%2Bof%2Bthe%2BRoyal%2BSociety%2527s%2BNewton%2BTelescope%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=1&ttl=381&returnArticleService=showFullText
Or put the search terms "An Account of the Royal Society's Newton Telescope" in the search bar of J-STOR.
If you are interested in the empirical science behind Blazing World you can also search in J-STOR, MLA etc for "Royal Society 1600-1699" or "Royal Society Margaret Cavendish"
Some secondary source suggestions from Nancy:
Royalist, Romancist, Racialist: Rank, Gender, and Race in the Science and Fiction of Margaret Cavendish
(This is Iyengar, Sujata, English Literary History 69 (3): 649-72, 2001
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30032037?seq=4
Margaret Cavendish among the prophets: performance ideologies and gender in and after the english civil war
(This is Wiseman, Susan, Women's Writing 6: 95-111, 1999)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09699089900200062
Cavendish's Poems
The weight of Atomes.
If Atomes are as small, as small can bee,
They must in quantity of Matter all agree:
And if consisting Matter of the same (be right,)
Then every Atome must weigh just alike.
Thus Quantity, Quality and Weight, all
Together meets in every Atome small. |
|
The joyning of severall
Figur'd Atomes make other Figures.
Severall Figur'd Atomes well agreeing,
When joyn'd, do give another Figure being.
For as those Figures joyned, severall waies,
The Fabrick of each severall Creature raise. |
|
_______________
Line 1. Severall Figur'd: distinctively
shaped.
Line 2. Figure: shape, form
Line 4. Severall: distinct, individual. |
|
A World in an Eare-Ring.
An Eare-ring round may well a Zodiacke bee,
Where in a Sun goeth round, and we not see.
And Planets seven about that Sun may move,
And Hee stand still, as some wise men would prove.
And fixed Stars, like twinkling Diamonds, plac'd
About this Eare-ring, which a World is vast.
That same which doth the Eare-ring hold, the hole,
Is that, which we do call the Pole.
There nipping Frosts may be, and Winter cold,
Yet never on the Ladies Eare take hold.
10
And Lightnings, Thunder, and great Winds may blow
Within this Eare-ring, yet the Eare not know.
There Seas may ebb, and flow, where Fishes
swim,
And Islands be, where Spices grow therein.
There Christall Rocks hang dangling at each Eare,
And Golden Mines as Jewels may they weare.
There Earth-quakes be, which Mountains vast downe fling,
And yet nere stir the Ladies Eare, nor Ring.
There Meadowes bee, and Pastures fresh, and greene,
And Cattell feed, and yet be never seene:
20
And Gardens fresh, and Birds which sweetly sing,
Although we heare them not in an Eare-ring.
There Night, and Day, and Heat, and Cold,
and so
May Life, and Death, and Young, and Old,
still grow.
Thus Youth may spring, and severall Ages dye,
Great Plagues may be, and no Infections nigh,
There Cityes bee, and stately Houses built,
Their inside gaye, and finely may be gilt.
There Churches bee, and Priests to teach therein,
And Steeple too, yet heare the Bells not ring.
30
From thence may pious Teares to Heaven run,
And yet the Eare not know which way they're gone.
There Markets bee, and things both bought, and sold,
Know not the price, nor how the Markets hold.
There Governours do rule, and Kings do Reigne,
And Battels fought, where many may be slaine.
And all within the Compasse of this Ring,
And yet not tidings to the Wearer bring.
Within the Ring wise Counsellors may sit,
And yet the Eare not one wise word may get.
40
There may be dancing all Night at a Ball,
And yet the Eare be not disturb'd at all.
There Rivals Duels fight, where some are slaine;
There Lovers mourne, yet heare them not complaine.
And Death may dig a Lovers Grave, thus were
A Lover Dead, in a Faire Ladies Eare.
But when the Ring is broke, the World is done,
Then Lovers they into Elysium run.
Here is a BIOGRAPHICAL article from the
Encyclopedia of World Biography. Copyright 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved:
Margaret Lucas Cavendish Biography
Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) was one of the first prolific female
science writers. As the author of approximately 14 scientific or
quasi-scientific books, she helped to popularize some of the most
important ideas of the scientific revolution, including the competing
vitalistic and mechanistic natural philosophies and atomism. A
flamboyant and eccentric woman, Cavendish was the most visible of the
"scientific ladies" of the seventeenth century.
Margaret Lucas was born into a life of luxury near Colchester,
England, in 1623, the youngest of eight children of Sir Thomas Lucas.
She was educated informally at home. At the age of eighteen, she left
her sheltered life to become Maid of Honor to Queen Henrietta Maria,
wife of Charles I, accompanying the queen into exile in France following
the defeat of the royalists in the civil war. There she fell in love
with and married William Cavendish, the Duke of Newcastle, a 52 year-old
widower, who had been commander of the royalist forces in the north of
England. Joining other exiled royalists in Antwerp, the couple rented
the mansion of the artist Rubens. Margaret Cavendish was first exposed
to science in their informal salon society, "The Newcastle Circle,"
which included the philosophers Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, and
Pierre Gassendi. She visited England in 1651-52 to try to collect
revenues from the Newcastle estate to satisfy their foreign creditors.
It was at this time that Cavendish first gained her reputation for
extravagant dress and manners, as well as for her beauty and her bizarre
poetry.
Published Original Natural Philosophy
Cavendish prided herself on her originality and boasted that her
ideas were the products of her own imagination, not derived from the
writings of others. Cavendish's first anthology, Poems, and Fancies,
included the earliest version of her natural philosophy. Although
English atomic theory in the seventeenth century attempted to explain
all natural phenomena as matter in motion, in Cavendish's philosophy all
atoms contained the same amount of matter but differed in size and
shape; thus, earth atoms were square, water particles were round, atoms
of air were long, and fire atoms were sharp. This led to her humoral
theory of disease, wherein illness was due to fighting between atoms or
an overabundance of one atomic shape. However in her second volume,
Philosophical Fancies, published later in the same year, Cavendish
already had disavowed her own atomic theory. By 1663, when she published
Philosophical and Physical Opinions, she had decided that if atoms were
"Animated Matter," then they would have "Free-will and Liberty" and
thus would always be at war with one another and unable to cooperate in
the creation of complex organisms and minerals. Nevertheless, Cavendish
continued to view all matter as composed of one material, animate and
intelligent, in contrast to the Cartesian view of a mechanistic
universe.
Challenged Other Scientists
Cavendish and her husband returned to England with the restoration of
the monarchy in 1660 and, for the first time, she began to study the
works of other scientists. Finding herself in disagreement with most of
them, she wrote Philosophical Letters: or, Modest Reflections upon some
Opinions in Natural Philosophy, maintained by several Famous and Learned
Authors of this Age, Expressed by way of Letters in 1664. Cavendish
sent copies of this work, along with Philosophical and Physical
Opinions, by special messenger to the most famous scientists and
celebrities of the day. In 1666 and again in 1668, she published
Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, a response to Robert Hooke's
Micrographia, in which she attacked the use of recently-developed
microscopes and telescopes as leading to false observations and
interpretations of the natural world. Included in the same volume with
Observations was The Blazing World was a semi-scientific utopian
romance, in which Cavendish declared herself "Margaret the First."
Invited to the Royal Society
More than anything else, Cavendish yearned for the recognition of the
scientific community. She presented the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge with each of her publications and she ordered a Latin index to
accompany the writings she presented to the University of Leyden,
hoping thereby that her work would be utilized by European scholars.
After much debate among the membership of the Royal Society of
London, Cavendish became the first woman invited to visit the
prestigious institution, although the controversy had more to due with
her notoriety than with her sex. On May 30, 1667, Cavendish arrived with
a large retinue of attendants and watched as Robert Boyle and Robert
Hooke weighed air, dissolved mutton in sulfuric acid, and conducted
various other experiments. It was a major advance for the scientific
lady and a personal triumph for Cavendish.
Cavendish published the final revision of her Philosophical and
Physical Opinions, entitled Grounds of Natural Philosophy, in 1668.
Significantly more modest than her previous works, in this volume
Cavendish presented her views somewhat tentatively and retracted some of
her earlier, more extravagant claims. Cavendish acted as her own
physician, and her self-inflicted prescriptions, purgings, and bleedings
resulted in the rapid deterioration of her health. She died in 1673 and
was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Although her writings remained well outside the mainstream of
seventeenth-century science, Cavendish's efforts were of major
significance. She helped to popularize many of the ideas of the
scientific revolution and she was one of the first natural philosophers
to argue that theology was outside the parameters of scientific inquiry.
Furthermore, her work and her prominence as England's first recognized
woman scientist argued strongly for the education of women and for their
involvement in scientific pursuits. In addition to her scientific
writings, Cavendish published a book of speeches, a volume of poetry,
and a large number of plays. Several of the latter, particularly The
Female Academy, included learned women and arguments in favor of female
education. Her most enduring work, a biography of her husband, included
as an appendix to her 24 page memoir, was first published in 1656 as a
part of Nature's Pictures. This memoir is regarded as the first major
secular autobiography written by a woman.
Books
Alic, Margaret, Hypatia's Heritage: A History of Women in Science
from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, Beacon Press, 1986.
Battigelli, Anna, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind, University Press of Kentucky, 1998.
Grant, Douglas, Margaret the First: A Biography of Margaret
Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1623-1673, University of Toronto Press,
1957.
Kargon, Robert Hugh, Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton, Clarendon, 1966.
Meyer, Gerald Dennis, The Scientific Lady in England 1650-1760: An
Account of her Rise, with emphasis on the Major Roles of the Telescope
and Microscope, University of California Press, 1955.
Schiebinger, Londa, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science, Harvard University Press, 1989.
PIERRE GASSENDI
One of the big influences on Margaret Cavendish's thinking was the Epicurean atomism of Pierre Gassendi. Here is the link to the Stanford Encylcopedia entry on Gassendi as well as the intro section from it:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gassendi/
Pierre Gassendi (b. 1592, d. 1655) was a French philosopher,
scientific chronicler, observer, and experimentalist, scholar of
ancient texts and debates, and active participant in contemporary
deliberations of the first half of the seventeenth century. His
significance in early modern thought has in recent years been
rediscovered and explored, towards a better understanding of the dawn
of modern empiricism, the mechanical philosophy, and relations of
modern philosophy to ancient and medieval discussions. While Gassendi
is perhaps best known in history of philosophy for his disputes with
Descartes, his relations with other major figures, including Kepler,
Galileo, Mersenne, Beeckman, and Hobbes, represented even more
important transactions of ideas. And while Gassendi also sought to
communicate anew the ideas of Epicurus, the Stoics, and other earlier
thinkers, his resulting amalgam of perspectives provides a modern view
of his own making, one of the touchstones of philosophy and science in
his times: our access to knowledge of the natural world is dependent
on the constraints and licenses that follow from our epistemic grasp
being limited to information provided by senses. Through this
arch-empiricism—tempered by his priestly adherence to key
elements of Church doctrine—Gassendi views metaphysics as a
realm for speculation grounded in the possibility of empirical
confirmation, logic as (by turns) a psychologistic and probabilistic
enterprise, knowledge of the external world as built on and forever
subject to sensory-based evidence, and ethics in quasi-hedonist,
possibly quantifiable terms. Gassendi's philosophy is a constant
review of other sources, a thorough consideration of the landscape
into which his own empiricism fits and represents an alternative to
contrasting claims, past and present. What is sometimes thought of as
eclecticism—particularly in the posthumous masterwork, the
Syntagma Philosophicum—actually recasts philosophy as a
fully-referenced scholarly enterprise, advancing historical styles and
rhetorical modes in philosophical research and exposition. In these
changes he matches even the magnitude of innovation that marks his
atomist matter theory, empiricist perspectives, explorations and
defenses of the new physics, objections to the
Meditations,
and refutations of contemporary Aristotelians and mystical
thinkers. It has been argued—perhaps unfairly—that
Gassendi's core ideas are better preserved through the medium of
writings by Boyle, Locke, Huygens, and Newton. Yet his presentation of
an empiricism, atomism, and new cosmology in historical and
philosophical context greatly advanced the community of scholarship in
his day, and represents what was then a fairly new model of research
and exposition—still in philosophical use today.
THE ROYAL SOCIETY
The following link to Jack Lynch's online edition of selections from the Royal Society gives you a sense right away of the rejection of syllogistic reasoning in favor of empirical methodology as well as emphasis on mathematical style in language (a masculine discourse that was opposed to chaotic feminine elements of pleasure):
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/sprat.html
Some questions for discussion from Nancy, who is presenting:
1. The Blazing World has been said to "border on schizophrenia." What is your reaction to that statement?
2. How could a "rhetoric of loss" help us understand this work?
3. What are the components of Cavendish's Utopia?
Bibliographical materials reviewed:
Holmesland, Oddvar, 'Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World: Natural Art and the Body Politic', Studies in Philology 96: 457-79, 1999.
http://ehis.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.gsu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=13c5f511-c71c-4f3a-b746-90f987db3228%40sessionmgr111&vid=4&hid=23
In his article entitled “Margaret
Cavendish’s The Blazing World: Natural Art and Body Politic” Oddvar
Holmesland takes “a sympathetic view” of
Cavendish and her self labeled “ambition.” He seeks to reconcile Cavendish’s
contradictory inclinations to portray both an “aristocratic ideology” as well as
“a new order where women’s true potential is valued” (Holmesland, 458).
Holmesland begins with a review of
criticism aimed at Cavendish on
mostly feminist grounds. He mentions
Lisa T. Sarasohn, who writes that Cavendish “defended the superiority of monarchy
and hierarchy, reflecting class rather than gender solidarity” and Susan
Wiseman who states that Cavendish “mounted only limited challenges to gender
hierarchy.” Holmesland also mentions Janet Todd who suggests that “the
Duchess’s immense egoism puffs out any incipient feminist feeling.”
Holmesland’s more sympathetic interpretation of Cavendish makes claims that the
reader could interpret Cavendish’s wish ‘not only to be Empress, but Authoress
of a whole world’... in a ‘poetical’ sense. He centers Cavendish’s
achievement in her creation of an
“epistemological space” brought about by
her “artistic vision” (458). Holmesland writes, that Cavendish, “In her
artistic vision... explores a more natural Restoration world, expanded and
complemented through the individual creative imagination” (459). He finds that The
Blazing World offers a dialectic “between an aristocratically conceived
natural order and the desire for emulation and singularity’ (459). This notion
of singularity is crucial to Holmesland. He finds that there is a
transition “from the ‘ideology of
absolute monarchy’ to that of ‘absolute self” (460).
Holmesland states that critics have noted a dialectic, but “not
on the premise of nature” (459). He believes that she seeks to present a
“naturalizing” method where “the notion of self becomes relative through
references to the motion of nature thought to permeate all individuals, like
all matter” (464). He finds that her
“idea of singularity seems closely linked to attaining the privilege of a natural
artistic freedom” (460). He states, then, that it would be “reductive” to
consider her perspective “solipsistic” (460). From his readings in her Observations,”
Holmesland finds that Cavendish was
fascinated with matter and motion - “with self motion being the basic process
in a naturally ordered universe“”(463). He believes that she represents “civic
humanism” which “treats human affairs, political and economic, in accordance
with a presumed law of the universe” (463).
He also finds that her “poetical description” is a means of transcending
the limits of empirical observation. He writes that Cavendish uses the
imagination, the free mind, as “analogies to nature’s free motion.” (469) In this way, Cavendish “creates a complex
blend of theological, romantic, fantastic, scientifically experimental, and
philosophically speculative ode -a kind of “hybridization” (470.) He notes from her “Observations” that “Art produces
Hermaphroditical effects, that is, such are partly Natural, and partly
Artificial” (470). Holmesland finds Cavendish expressing that: “poetic freedom
allows individuals the opportunity of hybridized self-creation” (475) and that
she presents “poetic freedom as a starting point for restoring natural
relations among people” (475). Her expression of hermaphrodite space allows the
simultaneous consideration of more than one point of view. He believes that Cavendish creates her own Cabbala where
she fashions contradictory elements into a world “of peace and tranquility”
(475).
Holmesland writes that it is “too confining...to sum up The
Blazing World as the imaginary voyage of an imperialistic self. Rather, the
imperialist vision- the image of the expanded self- also makes a widening
artistic and epistemological space” (478). In this epistemological space,
Cavendish is then free to explore contradictory ideas concurrently, making The
Blazing World a place of freedom
--what one might term an “epistemological community.” Although
Holmesland frees Cavendish by placing her artistic aims as beyond the scope of
everyday politics and gender issues, positing her strength in the creation of
free artistic space, Cavendish, in The Blazing World, still presents
readers with a complex work that yields more questions than answers, which may
be the point. Cavendish explores and reveals the concerns and anxieties not
only of herself as an individual but her society as a whole. Her concept of
herself as an individual sits uneasily alongside her concept and support of a
national identity. Holmesland gives us some tools to take a look at this
hermaphroditic creation.
(Reviewer, Nancy)
