Re Nalo and Mike Levy's comments on Cavendish. I too think that Cavendish
was being ironic. The description that she was "fantastical" would be
perogative in this context, but fantasy, phastasms and the like were also
reckoned to be a neccesary part of the psyche. I'm just reading
Paradise Lost, and in an apparently standard piece of restoration
psychology (according to the footnotes of my edition) Milton considers
that fancy is produced by the action of the world on the senses of the
human body. It is then tempered by reason to form thought. Fantasy is only
ominous when it is untempered by reason: at night when we sleep, reason
retires and fantasy has a free riegn (allowing Satan to tempt Eve in a
dream).
As Mike Levy pointed out, most commentators saw Cavendish as
completely nuts (ie her fancy was seen as untempered
by reason), although Pepys was certainly as fascinated as he was
appalled. She cross-dressed, engaged in scientific speculation (and was no
more offbase than most scientists of the time, and was surpisingly
perceptive occassionally, imagining a microscopic world of creatures
living in an earring for example). She was the first woman to visit the
Royal Society, and of course she wrote and published.Clearly, quite
crazy! :-)
There's quite alot of Cavendish criticism about these days- its a growth
area, as it should be."The Blazing World" is perhaps one of the most
interesting utopias of the period, where Cavendish imagines this world as
one bead on
a string of beads, where it is possible to pass from bead to bead via the
poles (but only if you are young and beautiful enough). Cavendish
ends up in an Edenic paradise as a scribe, setting up a new church
where women are allowed to worship, and encouraging a fantastic array of
creatures to form scientific societies (that are disbanded because they
are too argumentative). Its great stuff! I do reccommend it (although the
language and structure of the piece is something of a barrier).
Tanya.
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