Abstract

Several recent papers and books have argued that Cavendish's work in natural philosophy foreshadows some twentieth-century feminist philosophers' critiques of epistemology and science. These readings fall into three groups: arguments that Cavendish's early atomistic poems present an alternative, female way of knowing; arguments that such an alternative epistemology occurs in Cavendish's _Blazing World_; and arguments that her ontology was driven by feminist concerns for the implications of atomism and mechanism. Such interpretations, however, are in need of reassessment. This paper argues that there is in fact very little evidence for attributing such protofeminism to Cavendish. The paper begins with a chronological overview of Cavendish's natural philosophy, and then returns to the three groups of interpretations to discuss why they fail. Finally, the paper considers (and rejects) the possibility that Cavendish saw the fact that she was a woman writing philosophy as having feminist implications.