On Sun, 13 Jul 1997, Janet Dowling wrote:
> In a message dated 08/07/97 21:31:02, you write:
>
> <<
> Having spent 35 years of my life consorting with SF people, and a
> smaller, but still significant part of my life hanging out with
> feminists, without ever hearing the name of Margaret Cavendish
> (1623-1673) invoked, I think that it's amazing that the authors of two
> consecutive, but unrelated posts, Anastasia and Nalo, have mentioned her. I
> did part of my dissertation on her fantasy poetry.
> >>
> So while I am still learning can someone tell me who she is, and where I can
> find out more about her
>
> janet
>
> (seemingly I am being motivated to delurk again)
>
Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newscastle, was the wife of one of the
most powerful men in England at the time of the Revolution that cost
Charles I his head and, since her husband was one of the relatively few
noblemen who sided with the Puritans, he and she did quite nicely during
the Cromwellian years. Like most women at that time, Cavendish had
little formal education. Brilliant and eccentric, she read widely, but
with very little structure or plan. She wrote an enormous amount in a
wide number of genres, but is best remembered for her poetry and plays.
Her best poems, IMO, imitated the fairy poetry of Shakespeare and
Herrick, but took tinyness to an amazing extreme. Having done some
experimentation with early microscopes (some of the greatest scientists
of the day spent extended periods of time in her home, Christian Huygens
for example) she envisioned fairies of microscopic size in amazing detail.
Cavendish's recent rediscovery, however, is probably due more to her
plays, some of which (if I'm remembering this accurately) were decidedly
science-fictional and feminist in tone. I remember one, the title escapes me,
in which an army of women comes to the rescue of a defeated army of men.
Cavendish is not really an important figure within the context of
traditional history. What she is, though, is a woman who clearly had the
brilliance to have been important if she'd been given the chance.
Virginia Wolf wrote an interesting essay on her. It's in one of the
Common Readers, I think.
Mike Levy
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