Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T08:46:35.629Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Margaret Cavendish on Gender, Nature, and Freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Deborah Boyle
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Some scholars have argued that Margaret Cavendish was ambivalent about women's roles and capabilities, for she seems sometimes to hold that women are naturally inferior to men, but sometimes that this inferiority is due to inferior education. I argue that attention to Cavendish's natural philosophy can illuminate her views on gender. In section II I consider the implications of Cavendish's natural philosophy for her views on male and female nature, arguing that Cavendish thought that such natures were not fixed. However, I argue that although Cavendish thought women needed to be better educated, and could change if they had such an education, she also thought their education should reinforce the feminine virtues. Section III examines Cavendish's notorious “Preface to the Reader” (from The Worlds Olio), where Cavendish claims that women are naturally inferior in strength and intelligence to men. Section IV addresses another notorious Cavendish text, “Female Orations,” arguing that its message is similar to that of the “Preface to the Reader.” Nonetheless, although Cavendish held conventional views about male and female nature and appropriate gender roles, she also recognized how social institutions could limit women's freedom; section V explores the complexities of Cavendish's critique of one such institution, patriarchal marriage.

Type
Open Issue Content
Information
Hypatia , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , Summer 2013 , pp. 516 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Broad, Jacqueline, and Green, Karen. 2009. A history of women's political thought in Europe, 1400–1700. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1653. Poems, and fancies. London: Printed by T. R. for J. Martin, and J. Allestrye. Women Writers Online. Women Writers Project, Brown University. http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/cavendish.fancies.html (accessed January 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1655a. Philosophical and physical opinions. London: J. Martin and J. Allestrye.Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1655b. The worlds olio. London: Printed for J. Martin and J. Allestrye. Women Writers Online. Women Writers Project, Brown University. http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/cavendish.olio.html (accessed January 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1656. Natures pictures. London: Printed for J. Martin and J. Allestrye. Women Writers Online. Women Writers Project, Brown University. http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/cavendish.natpix.html (accessed January 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1662a. Orations of divers sorts, accommodated to divers places. London.Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1662b. Playes. London: Printed by A. Warren, for John Martyn, James Allestrye, and Tho. Dicas. Women Writers Online. Women Writers Project, Brown University. http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/cavendish.62.html (accessed January 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1664a. Philosophical letters. London. Women Writers Online. Women Writers Project, Brown University. http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/cavendish.philosophical.html (accessed January 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1664b. CCXI Sociable letters. London: William Wilson.Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1666. Observations upon experimental philosophy. Women Writers Online. Women Writers Project, Brown University. http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/cavendish.observations.html (accessed January 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1668a. The description of a new world, called the Blazing‐World. London: A. Maxwell. Women Writers Online. Women Writers Project, Brown University. http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/cavendish.blazing.html (accessed January 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1668b. Grounds of natural philosophy. London: A. Maxwell.Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1668c. The convent of pleasure. In Plays, never before printed. London: A. Maxwell. Women Writers Online. Women Writers Project, Brown University. http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/cavendish.68e.html (accessed January 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Chappell, Vere, ed. 1999. Hobbes and Bramhall: On liberty and necessity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dekker, Rudolf M., and van de Pol, Lotte C. 1989. The tradition of female transvestism in early modern Europe. New York: St. Martin's Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Detlefsen, Karen. 2006. Atomism, monism, and causation in the natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish. In Oxford studies in early modern philosophy, vol. 3, ed. Garber, Daniel and Nadler, Steven. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Detlefsen, Karen. 2007. Reason and freedom: Margaret Cavendish on the order and disorder of nature. Archiv für geschichte der philosophie 89 (2): 157–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowler, Ellayne. 1996. Margaret Cavendish and the ideal commonwealth. Utopian Studies 7 (1): 38–48.Google Scholar
Henderson, Katherine Usher, and McManus, Barbara F. 1985. Half humankind: Contexts and texts of the controversy about women in England, 1540–1650. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Hic mulier; or, the man‐woman. 1620. London: I. Trundle.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. 1994. Leviathan, ed. Curley, Edwin. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Hobby, Elaine. 1988. Virtue of necessity: English women's writing, 1649–88. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Hutton, Sarah. 1997. In dialogue with Thomas Hobbes: Margaret Cavendish's natural philosophy. Women's Writing 4 (3): 421–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Susan. 1999. The philosophical innovations of Margaret Cavendish. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (2): 219–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
James, Susan. 2003. Introduction. Margaret Cavendish: Political writings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kelly, Joan. 1984. Early feminist theory and the querelle des femmes. In Women, history, and theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, Eric. 2001. The legacy of Margaret Cavendish. Perspectives on Science 9 (3): 341–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuire, Mary Ann. 1971. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, on the nature and status of women. International Journal of Women's Studies 1 (2): 193–206.Google Scholar
Mendelson, Sara, and Crawford, Patricia. 1998. Women in early modern England 1550–1720. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1874. On nature. In Nature, the utility of religion, and theism. London: Longmans, Greene, Reader and Dyer.Google Scholar
O'Neill, Eileen. 2001. Introduction. Observations upon experimental philosophy, by Margaret Cavendish, ed. O'Neill, Eileen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Purkiss, Diane. 1992. The seventeenth‐century woman debate. In Women, texts and histories 1575–1760, ed. Brant, Clare and Purkiss, Diane. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sarasohn, Lisa. 1984. A science turned upside down: Feminism and the natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish. Huntington Library Quarterly 47: 289–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarasohn, Lisa. 2011. The natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish: Reason and fancy during the scientific revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Schiebinger, Londa. 1989. The mind has no sex? Women in the origins of modern science. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Hilda L. 1982. Reason's disciples. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Whitaker, Katie. 2002. Mad Madge: The extraordinary life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the first woman to live by her pen. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar