The Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)

by Cavendish, Margaret

  19 The average age of first marriage for the upper landed classes in the seventeenth century was mid-twenties, according to Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1977. Some aristocratic marriage negotiations involving children are documented in Margaret J.M. Ezell, The Patriarch’s Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987, 22–34. She comments that child marriages ‘can be assumed to have been extraordinary’, ‘confined to families with extensive property interests to protect’ (28).

  20 Lawrence Stone shows that, although ‘odd cases are known from the late sixteenth century’, breach of contract suits ‘did not become common until about the 1670s’, Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, 86.

  21 On the cult of Elizabeth, see, for instance, Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century, London: Routledge, 1975; Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry, London: Thames and Hudson, 1977, and Philippa Berry, Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen, London: Routledge, 1989. On Henrietta Maria, masques and Margaret Cavendish see Tomlinson, n.5.

  NOTE ON THIS EDITION

  The copy-text of The Blazing World is the Harvard Library copy of the first edition (1666), which has been checked against the second edition (1668). The copy-text for ‘The Contract’ and ‘Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’ is the British Library copy of the first edition of Nature’s Pictures (1656).

  Spelling has been modernized, except that some archaic or eccentric hyphenated forms have been retained because Cavendish shows a distinct preference for them. Grammar and punctuation have not been modernized or otherwise altered except where strictly necessary for sense. Any interpolations are enclosed in square brackets.

  Cavendish’s extremely idiosyncratic punctuation and grammar have usually been seen as simply a function of her lack of formal education, and carelessness in overseeing the preparation and printing of her manuscripts. It seems to me important not to discount the defiance with which Cavendish treated normative writing practices at every level, and the way in which she assimilated that contempt to a gendered and elitist critique of the modish or commonplace.

  In the preface to the second book of The World’s Olio (1655), Cavendish argues specifically for the transgressive potential of grammatical singularity, drawing an implicit comparison between a figure of woman and the equally specularized body of her texts:

  as for the grammar part, I confess I am no scholar, and therefore understand it not, but that little I have heard of it, is enough for me to renounce it…. those that are nobly bred have no rules but honour, and honesty, and learn in the school of wisdom to understand sense, and to express themselves sensibly and freely, with a graceful negligence, not to be hidebound with nice and strict words, and set phrases, as if the wit were created in the inkhorn, and not in the brain; besides say some, should one bring up a new way of speaking, then were the former grammar of no effect… everyone may be his own grammarian, if by his natural grammar he can make his hearers understand the sense; for though there must be rules in a language to make it sociable, yet those rules may be stricter than need to be, and to be too strict makes them too unpleasant and uneasy. But language should be like garments, for though every garment hath a general cut, yet their trimmings may be different, and not go out of the fashion; so wit may place words to its own becoming, delight, and advantage…. As for wit, it is wild and fantastical, and therefore must have no set rules; for rules curb, and shackle it, and in that bondage it dies. (The World’s Olio, 1655, 94)

  Clearly, for Cavendish, writing was far from innocent and her ‘fantastical’ grammar seems integral to that.

  CHRONOLOGY

  1623 Margaret Lucas born, youngest of eight, St John’s nr Colchester, Essex.

  1625 Death of Margaret’s father, Thomas Lucas, Earl of Colchester.

  Accession of Charles I; Charles m. Henrietta Maria.

  1637 René Descartes, Discours sur la Methode. Ben Jonson dies.

  1641 Anna van Schurman’s The Learned Maid (Leyden; trans. 1659).

  1642 Outbreak of Civil War. Theatres closed.

  Lucas family move to Royalist base at Oxford.

  1643 Margaret becomes Maid of Honour to Henrietta Maria, Oxford.

  1644 Henrietta Maria escapes to Paris, Margaret attending. Battle of Marston Moor: William Cavendish into exile. John Milton, Areopagitica.

  1645 Margaret m. William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle (b.1593) in Paris.

  1646 End of First Civil War.

  1647 Margaret’s sister Mary Lucas Killigrew and mother, Elizabeth Leighton Lucas, the of natural causes; her brother Sir Charles Lucas executed (with Sir George Lisle) and the family tomb broken open.

  1648 Second Civil War. Newcastles move to Antwerp.

  1649 30 January: Trial and Execution of Charles 1. Commonwealth declared.

  14 March: Newcastle banished, estates confiscated.

  Gerrard Winstanley, The True Leveller’s Standard.

  1650 Descartes dies. Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse.

  1651 November: Margaret to London with her brother-in-law, Charles Cavendish.

  December: Unsuccessful petition to sequestration committee.

  Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.

  1653 Cromwell declared Lord Protector.

  Early March: Margaret returns to Antwerp.

  Late March: Publishes Poems and Fancies.

  May: Publishes Philosophical Fancies.

  Ann Collins, Divine Songs and Meditations.

  1654 Charles Cavendish dies. Anna Trapnel, The Cry of a Stone.

  1655 Margaret publishes The World’s Olio and Philosophical and Physical Opinions.

  1656 Margaret publishes Nature’s Pictures. James Harrington, Oceana.

  1660 Restoration of monarchy and House of Lords.

  Newcastles return to England, retire to Welbeck, Nott.

  Theatres reopen. Royal Society founded.

  1661 Coronation of Charles II. Anne Finch born.

  1662 Margaret publishes Orations of Divers Sorts and Plays.

  1663 Revised Philosophical and Physical Opinions issued.

  1664 Margaret publishes Sociable Letters and Philosophical Letters.

  1665 Newcastle made Duke by Charles II.

  Robert Hooke, Micrographia. The Great Plague.

  1666 Observations on Experimental Philosophy with The Blazing World.

  Margaret Fell, Womens Speaking Justified. Great Fire of London.

  1667 Margaret publishes Life of William Cavendish, visits Royal Society.

  Katherine Philips, Collected Poems (posth.). Milton, Paradise Lost.

  1668 Reissues of Observations plus Blazing World, Orations of Divers Sorts, Grounds of Natural Philosophy, Poems or Several Fancies; first publication, Plays never Before Printed.

  1670 Behn’s first play, The Forced Marriage produced.

  1671 Reissues of The World’s Olio and Nature’s Pictures.

  1673 15 December: Margaret dies.

  1674 7 January: Buried in Westminster Abbey. Her sisters, Lady Pye and Anne Lucas chief mourners.

  Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen.

  1675 Life of William Cavendish reissued. Greenwich Observatory opened.

  1676 Newcastle dies, interred beside Margaret.

  Letters and Poems in Honour of the incomparable Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, ed. William Cavendish.

  WORKS BY MARGARET CAVENDISH

  Poems, and Fancies, 1653. 2nd edn, 1664. 3rd edn, Poems, or Several Fancies in Verse: with the Animal Parliament, in Prose, 1668.

  Philosophical Fancies, 1653.

  The World’s Olio, 1655. 2nd edn, 1671.

  Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 1655. 2nd edn, 1663. Reissued as Grounds of Natural Philosophy, 1668.

  Nature’s Pictures, 1656 (including ‘A T
rue Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life’). 2nd edn, 1671.

  Plays, 1662.

  Orations of Divers Sorts, 1662. 2nd edn, 1668.

  CCXI Sociable Letters, 1664.

  Philosophical Letters, 1664.

  Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. To which is added, The Description of a New World Called the Blazing World, 1666. 2nd edn, 1668.

  The Life of… William Cavendish, 1667. 2nd edn, 1675. Latin translation by Walter Charleton, 1668.

  Plays, never before Printed, 1668.

  SELECTED MODERN EDITIONS

  Bowerbank, Sylvia and Sara Mendelson, eds Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader, Calgary: Broadview Press, 1999.

  Fitzmaurice, James, ed. Margaret Cavendish: Sociable Letters, New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

  James, Susan, ed. Margaret Cavendish: Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

  O’Neill, Eileen, ed. Margaret Cavendish: Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

  Partington, Leigh Tillman, ed. The Atomic Poems of Margaret (Lucas) Cavendish, Women Writers Resource Project, Emory University; Website: http://chaucer.library.emory.edu/wrrp/index.html

  Shaver, Anne, ed. Margaret Cavendish: The Convent of Pleasure and Other Plays, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

  Women Writers Online, the Brown University Women Writers Project, www.wwp.brown.edu.

  FURTHER READING

  Ballaster, Ros, ‘Restoring the Renaissance: Margaret Cavendish and Katherine Philips’, in Renaissance Configurations: Voices, Bodies, Spaces 1580–1690, ed. Gordon McMullan, London: Palgrave, 2001.

  Battigelli, Anna, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind, Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 1998.

  Boesky, Amy, Founding Fictions: Utopias in Early Modern England, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996.

  Burgess, Irene, ‘Recent Studies in Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623–1674); William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle (1593–1676); and Jane Cavendish Cheyne (1622–1669)’, English Literary Rennaissance 32: 452–73, 2002.

  Campbell, Mary Baine, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.

  Clucas, Stephen, ed. A Princely Brave Woman: Essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, London: Ashgate, 2003.

  Cottegnies, Line and Nancy Weitz, eds Authorial Conquests: Essays on Genre in the Writings of Margaret Cavendish, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003.

  Holmesland, Oddvar, ‘Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World: Natural Art and the Body Politic’, Studies in Philology 96: 457–79, 1999.

  Ingram, Randall, ‘First Words and Second Thoughts: Margaret Cavendish, Humphrey Moseley, and “the Book”’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30: 101-24, 2000.

  Iyengar, Sujata, ‘Royalist, Romancer, Racialist: Rank, Race and Gender in the Science and Fiction of Margaret Cavendish, English Literary History 69(3): 649–72, 2002.

  Kahn, Victoria, ‘Margaret Cavendish and the Romance of Contract’, Renaissance Quarterly 50: 526–66, 1997.

  Kegl, Rosemary, ‘“The World I Have Made”: Margaret Cavendish, Feminism and The Blazing World’, in Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture, eds Valerie Traub, Lindsay M. Kaplan and Dympna Callaghan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

  Keller, Eve, ‘Producing Petty Gods: Margaret Cavendish’s Critique of Experimental Science’, English Literary History 64: 447-71, 1997.

  Khanna, Lee Cullen, ‘The Subject of Utopia; Margaret Cavendish and Her Blazing World’, in Utopian and Science Fiction by Women, eds Jane L. Donawerth and Carol A. Kolmerten, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1994.

  Lawrence, Karen R., Penelope Voyages: Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.

  Leslie, Marina, ‘Evading Rape and Embracing Empire in Margaret Cavendish’s Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’, in Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds Marina Leslie and Kathleen Coyne Kelly, University of Delaware Press, 1999.

  Leslie, Marina, Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.

  Masten, Jeffrey, Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

  Mendelson, Sara Heller, The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies, Brighton: Harvester, 1987.

  Pacheco, Anita, ed. A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

  Rees, Emma, ed. Cavendish Issue, Women’s Writing 4(3), 1997.

  Rogers, John, The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry and Politics in the Age of Milton, 1996.

  Rosenthal, Laura J., Playwrights and Plagiarists in Early Modern England: Gender, Authorship, Literary Property, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.

  Schwarz, Kathryn, ‘Chastity, Militant and Married: Cavendish’s Romance, Milton’s Masque’, PMLA 118: 270–85, 2003.

  Spiller, Elizabeth, ‘Reading through Galileo’s Telescope: Margaret Cavendish and the Experience of Reading’, Renaissance Quarterly 53: 192–221, 2000.

  Taneja, Gulshan, ed. Cavendish Issue, In-Between 9(1–2), 2000.

  Whitaker, Katie, Mad Madge, New York: Basic Books, 2002.

  Wilcox, Helen, ed. Women and Literature in Britain 1500–1700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

  Wiseman, Susan, ‘Margaret Cavendish among the Prophets: Performance Ideologies and Gender in and after the English Civil War’, Women’s Writing 6: 95–111, 1999.

  For James Fitzmaurice’s regularly updated online Cavendish bibliography visit http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/˜jbf/CavBiblio.html.

  THE CONTRACT

  A noble gentleman that had been married many years, but his wife being barren, did bear him no children; at last she died, and his friends did advise him to marry again, because his brother’s children were dead, and his wife was likely to have no more: so he took to wife a virtuous young Lady, and after one year she conceived with child, and great joy there was of all sides: but in her child-bed she died, leaving only one daughter to her sorrowful husband, who in a short time, oppressed with melancholy, died, and left his young daughter, who was not a year old, to the care and breeding of his brother, and withal left her a great estate, for he was very rich. After the ceremonies of the funeral, his brother carried the child home, which was nursed up very carefully by his wife; and being all that was likely to succeed in their family, the uncle grew extreme fond and tender of his niece, insomuch that she grew all the comfort and delight of his life.

  A great Duke which commanded that province, would often come and eat a breakfast with this gentleman as he rid a-hunting; and so often they met after this manner, that there grew a great friendship; for this gentleman was well bred, knowing the world by his travels in his younger days; and though he had served in the wars, and had fought in many battles, yet was not ignorant of courtly entertainment. Besides, he was very conversible, for he had a voluble tongue, and a ready understanding, and in his retired life was a great student, whereby he became an excellent scholar; so that the Duke took great delight in his company. Besides, the Duke had a desire to match the niece of this gentleman, his friend, to his younger son, having only two sons, and knowing this child had a great estate left by her father, and was likely to have her uncle’s estate joined thereto, was earnest upon it: but her uncle was unwilling to marry her to a younger brother, although he was of a great family; but with much persuasion, he agreed, and gave his consent, when she was old enough to marry, for she was then not seven years old. But the Duke fell very sick; and when the physicians told him, he could not live, he sent for the gentleman and his niece, to take his last farewell; and when they came, the Duke desired his friend that he would agree to join his niece and his son in marriage; he answered, that he was very willing, if she were of years to consent.

  Said the Duke, I desire
we may do our parts, which is, to join them as fast as we can; for youth is wild, various, and inconstant; and when I am dead, I know not how my son may dispose of himself when he is left to his own choice; for he privately found his son very unwilling thereto, he being a man grown, and she a child. The gentleman seeing him so desirous, agreed thereto.

  Then the Duke called his son privately to him, and told him his intentions were to see him bestowed in marriage before he died.

  His son desired him, not to marry him against his affections, in marrying him to a child.

  His father told him, she had a great estate, and it was like to be greater, by reason all the revenue was laid up to increase it; and besides, she was likely to be heir to her uncle, who loved her as his own child; and her riches may draw so many suitors when she is a woman, said he, that you may be refused.

  He told his father, her riches could not make him happy, if he could not affect her. Whereupon the Duke grew so angry, that he said, that his disobedience would disturb his death, leaving the world with an unsatisfied mind.

  Whereupon he seemed to consent, to please his father. Then were they as firmly contracted as the priest could make them, and two or three witnesses to avow it.

  But after his father was dead, he being discontented, went to the wars; but in short time he was called from thence, by reason his elder brother died, and so the Dukedom and all the estate came to him, being then the only heir: but he never came near the young Lady, nor so much as sent to her, for he was at that time extremely in love with a great lady, who was young and handsome, being wife to a grandee [who] was very rich, but was very old, whose age made her more facile to young lovers, especially to this young Duke, who returned him equal affections; he being a man that was favoured by nature, fortune, and breeding, for he was very handsome, and of a ready wit, active, valiant, full of generosity, affable, well fashioned; and had he not been sullied with some debaucheries, he had been the completest man in that age.