For Wednesday: Cavendish, “The Blazing World” (pp.125-170 or so)

The “Chaucer” group should answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In her preface to the work, Cavendish writes that “I am not covetous, but as ambitious as ever any of my sex was, is, or can be; which makes, that though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet I endeavour to be Margaret the First” (124). Based on this, what about this work strikes you as especially ambitious, groundbreaking, or shocking to a 17th century audience? How might she be staking her claim as a great author (or a unique one) with this book?

Q2: Cavendish is writing within an established tradition of her time going back to Thomas More’s famous book, Utopia (1516), which as ‘fake’ travel book about going to a “perfect society” (even though “utopia” is Latin for “no-place.” Since More was satirical in his book, is Cavendish? Is her vision of utopia a perfect society that offers a brave new world for her readers? Or is it merely a mirror of her own society, with the same problems transposed to a different culture? You might consider the roles that women play in this society, for example.

Q3: In one passage, the bear-men tell the Empress that “we take more delight in artificial delusions, than in natural truths...for were there nothing but truth, and no falsehood, there would be no occasion for to dispute” (142). As a woman, why might Cavendish find cause to criticize and satirize the scientific pursuits of her time? What might she be able to see that her “betters” (the closed society of men) were blind to?

Q4: Even though Cavendish is a novelist (an artist), she has the Empress engage in a lengthy discussion of the purpose of art, which she claims “is, for the most part, irregular, and disorders men’s understandings more than it rectifies them, and leads them into a labyrinth whence they’ll never get out, and makes them dull and unfit for employments” (161). What does she mean by this? If art is “irregular” and creates “disorder,” should it be banned from the perfect society? What makes it dangerous—and what, perhaps, can also make it useful?