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The Blazing World Analysis

2007 Words9 Pages

In a preambled note ‘To all Noble and Worthy Ladies’ Margaret Cavendish outlines the structure of The Blazing World by declaring “The First Part is Romancical; the Second, Philosophical; and the Third is meerly Fancy’. Through the agency of misdirection, Cavendish disregards two important ideologies which epitomise any reading of the Blazing World. These two unspoken dominant discourses are; the concept of seeking a utopia through feminism and a utopia through the ambition of personal conquest. Throughout The Blazing World, Cavendish responds to the fundamental social problems within patriarchal society and provides a respondence to these specific dilemmas through the introduction of feminism. Cavendish also depicts her ambition of personal conquest through conveying her religious, scientific and philosophical methods throughout The Blazing World. Furthermore it is within these two disciplines, it is evident that Cavendish’s utopian impulse seeks to solve the fundamental social problems through the influence of conquest and feminism.

Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the …show more content…

Therefore, it not a question of the existence of Cavendish’s utopian impulse or her means to achieve one, but is instead a question of what medium she directs her pre-existing impulse towards. Although Cavendish’s recurrent feminist discourse is a dominant motif within the Blazing World as it is depicted in the novels, plot, structure and symbolism. Feminism may act as a form of misdirection from her own personal utopia; which is instead achieved through changing perspectives within the realms of science and philosophy as opposed to gender. This is further illustrated by the release of The Blazing World alongside her philosophical work ‘Observations Upon Experimental

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