Women’s Studies, 37:441–463, 2008

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0049-7878 print / 1547-7045 online
DOI: 10.1080/00497870802165429

THE POWER OF TRANSPORT, THE TRANSPORT OF

1547-7045Studies,
0049-7878
GWST
Women’s Studies Vol. 37, No. 5, May 2007: pp. 1–17

POWER: MARGARET CAVENDISH’S BLAZING WORLD

ANNE M. THELL
The Power
Anne of Transport
M. Thell

Fordham University, New York

“[F]or I had rather die in the adventure of noble atchievements, then

live in obscure and sluggish security; since by the one, I may live in a
glorious Fame, and by the other I am buried in oblivion” (212).
—The Duchess

Margaret Cavendish was ridiculed vehemently in her lifetime.

Her tombstone was even defaced to mock and discredit—an espe-
cially cruel attack that registers the extreme anger and contempt
she elicited from her contemporaries. Such hyperbolic reactions
to this “mad, conceited, ridiculous woman” (Rees 12), in the
notorious words of Samuel Pepys, seem to stem from her flam-
boyant public persona, her audacity in writing, and, most promi-
nently, her daring to participate in the masculinist intellectual
debates of the day. At the heart of all of these issues lies power,
and it is the question of power, too, that motivates and maintains
much of her work, particularly The Description of a New World,
Called the Blazing World (1666). In this bizarre and brilliant narra-
tive, Cavendish sets out not only to construct and dominate an
entire literary, metaphoric, and mental world, but also to author
and control a very real companion to and critique of the world
outside of the text. She attains her speaking position by locating
the early modern loci of power—namely, the discourses of impe-
rialism, science, religion, discovery, and travel—authorizing her-
self through them, and then harnessing them to fuel an absolute
textual conquest. The trope of travel is, in fact, not only one of
the sources of power she seizes, but also the factor that enables
and maintains her usurpation of all other types of power. Most
importantly, the Blazing World is not an escapist or separatist

Address correspondence to Anne M. Thell, 133 Barrow St., 3B, New York, NY 10014,
USA. E-mail: annethell@yahoo.com

441
442 Anne M. Thell

world, but a reciprocal or symbiotic world that directly comments

on and eventually breaks through into Cavendish’s contemporary
reality. Through the purposeful elision of worlds and personas,
and of text and life, the Empress is ingeniously brought to power
in the Blazing World only so that Cavendish can transfer this
potency back into her own voice.
In the past two decades, many critics have positioned Blazing
World within the proto-feminist, female utopic, and/or escapist
genres.1 Such readings register the work’s prescience and its status as
an astute social commentary, but can be limiting in that they often
consider Cavendish’s fictional world as one that is separate or
detached from the real world in which she lived. Even more recently,
many scholars have raised Cavendish studies to a new level by firmly
locating the author within Restoration scientific and philosophical
discourse and investigating how many of Cavendish’s works not only
critique contemporary intellectual debates, but also adumbrate the
author’s own multifarious opinions.2 More specifically, many new
and exciting studies have focused on Cavendish and the New Sci-
ence,3 an area of inquiry that moves even further away from con-
cepts of “Mad Madge” to instead portray a savvy rhetorician who is
constantly maneuvering through and wrangling with the political,
philosophical, and scientific discourses of her day. Still, though, all
too often, Blazing World is linked to an isolationist or exilic interiority,
which ultimately detracts from the massive scope of the narrative: it
disallows one from recognizing the complex relationship between
the Blazing World and the real world, when they are indeed viscer-
ally and crucially linked.
We see immediately that Blazing World is sanctioned by the
“real” world in two ways: by the words of Cavendish’s husband, a

1
Sylvia Bowerbank and Sara Mendelson posit that Blazing World is a proto–science fic-
tion narrative (while also claiming, of course, that the work offers an important critique of
the New Science). See Paper Bodies 151. Emma Rees, too, establishes a convincing argu-
ment regarding the theme of the exilic that runs throughout Cavendish’s works. See
Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Genre, Exile.
2
Namely Hero Chalmers, Sara Mendelson, Lisa T. Sarasohn, Line Cottegnies & Nancy
Weitz, and Anna Battigelli. See, respectively, Royalist Women Writers: 1650–1689; The Mental
World of Stuart Women: Three Studies; “Leviathan and the Lady: Cavendish’s Critique of
Hobbes”; Authorial Conquests; and Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind.
3
See Battigelli, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind; Hutton, “Anne Conway, Marg-
aret Cavendish and Seventeenth-Century Scientific Thought” and “Science and Satire”; Osler,
“The Gender of Nature and the Nature of Gender in Early Modern Natural Philosophy.”
 The Power of Transport 443

male aristocrat, and by the discourse of discovery. The prefatory

poem written by the Duke of Newcastle for his wife reads:

Our Elder World, with all their Skill and Arts,

Could but divide the World into three Parts:
Columbus then for Navigation fam’d,
Found a new World, America ‘tis nam’d;
Now this one World was found, it was not made,
Onely discovered, lying in Times shade.
Then what are You, having no Chaos found
To make a World, or any such least ground?
But your creating Fancy, thought it fit
To make your World of Nothing, but pure Wit.
Your Blazing-world, beyond the Star mounts higher,
Enlightens all with a Coelestial Fier. (151-152)

This poem accomplishes several things: it officially incorporates Mar-

garet Cavendish into the patriarchal economy as wife; it sanctions
her work through the patriarchal aristocracy and through the dis-
course of discovery; and it sets up the dynamic between the Blazing
World and real world that will be toyed with and exploited through-
out the narrative. The poem posits the Blazing World “higher” than
other worlds—locating it amidst the “Stars” and “Coelestial Fier”—
which situates it above, and yet very much relative to, the world from
which she writes. The directional cues point above and outwards, but
only in relation to her place in “reality.” Cavendish’s new world is
positioned within and sanctioned by the trope of explorative dis-
course, but located higher than others in this trope since it is created
of “pure Wit”—better, of course, because it is self-fashioned and
purely rationalist, instead of inherently problematic like worlds
“found[,] not made.” As in many of her writings, this paratextual
device is integral to understanding Cavendish’s aims and methods.
We cannot forget, too, that Blazing World was originally
attached to Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666), a
decision that Cavendish immediately addresses in her preface
“To the Reader.” She instructs us that we should not see this cou-
pling as “a disparagement to Philosophy,” since philosophy is not
“merely Fiction.” She explains, however, that “there is but one
Truth in Nature, [and] all those that hit not this Truth, do err”
(152). Thus, all types of inquiry “err,” or are not true, if they hap-
pen to miss their intellectual target. She continues, “Nevertheless,
444 Anne M. Thell

all do ground their Opinions upon Reason; that is, upon rational
probabilities” (152). This disclaimer frames Cavendish’s entire
project: her narrative, like natural philosophy, is grounded “upon
Reason.” Both “Fiction” and “Philosophy,” then, have the capacity
to be false (to “err”) or alternately to hit upon the “one Truth in
Nature.” To make this point more explicit, she says:

The end of Reason, is Truth; the end of Fancy, is Fiction: But mistake me
not, when I distinguish Fancy from Reason; I mean not as if Fancy were not
made by the Rational parts of Matter; but by Reason I understand a ratio-
nal search and enquiry into the causes of natural effects; and by Fancy a
voluntary creation of production of the Mind, both being effects, or
rather reactions of the rational part of Matter; of which, as that is a more
profitable and useful study then this, so it is also more laborious and diffi-
cult, and requires sometimes the help of Fancy, to recreate the Mind, and
withdraw from its more serious contemplations. (152–53)

Cavendish very carefully distinguishes between these two types of

inquiry and claims that while Reason and Fancy have different aims,
both spring from the same well, “the rational parts of Matter” (153).
While “Reason” aims at discovering the “causes of natural effects”
and “Fancy” is a “voluntary production,” they are not oppositional—
in fact, they are often co-dependent: the more “laborious” pursuits
of “Reason” at times need the “help of Fancy” to “recreate” the
Mind; while less “serious,” Fancy is necessary to tease out intellectual
produce. Besides denoting refreshment, “recreation” also suggests
the “work” Fancy does re-creating or rebuilding the “rational parts
of Matter” in a different, fictional form. (This is reinforced in the
Epilogue, where Cavendish says, “[T]he Worlds I have made, both
the Blazing- and the other Philosophical World [. . .] are framed
and composed of the most pure, that is, the rational parts of Matter,
which are the parts of my Mind” [250].) These immediate distinc-
tions provide solid rational footing for the following narrative: a
“voluntary creation” of the mind, but one that stems from rational-
ity and co-exists with Reason. That is to say, the proposals of this new
world are counterparts to her preceding scientific treatise; they are
a reconstruction of similar principles in a different form.4

4
Cavendish constructs dualistic, “complementary” genres elsewhere, too, as when she
attached “A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life” to the second edition of
Natures Pictures in 1656 (Paper Bodies 41).
 The Power of Transport 445

In fact, the symbiotic relationship between Reason and Fancy

presents the same dynamic that exists between the texts of
Observations upon Experimental Philosophy and Blazing World, which
Cavendish (dizzyingly) illustrates by comparing it to the relation-
ship that exists within the narrative between the Empress’s
former world and the Blazing World. Directly after defining Rea-
son and Fancy, Cavendish says, “And this is the reason, why I
added this Piece of Fancy to my Philosophical Observations, and
joined them as two Worlds at the ends of their Poles; both for my
own sake [. . .] and to delight the Reader with variety” (153). In
this immediate invocation of her most essential travel meta-
phor—“joined [. . . .] as two Worlds at the ends of their Poles”—
Cavendish tightly binds the two works and also overtly compares
the relationship between them to that between her two narrative
worlds (the Blazing World and the Empress’s original world),
which are also joined at “the ends of their Poles.”5 In light of
these multi-layered correspondences, we should certainly read
the external world and the Blazing World as relating to and depen-
dent on each other. This, then, immediately collapses distinctions
between the real and the imaginative, writing and life, and each
of her various worlds, since they have all sprung from reason and
are all employed for similar aims: arguably, to rationally investi-
gate Cavendish’s contemporary reality. Cavendish reiterates soon
after: “[L]est my Fancy should stray too much, I chose such a Fic-
tion as would be agreeable to the subject I treated of in the
former parts” (153). Again, her fictional and actual worlds are
“agreeable,” or complementary. Blazing World, like Observations
upon Experimental Philosophy, is a meditation on the world in which
she writes. For her, these interconnections are only demonstrable
through the metaphor of travel, which is, of course, perfectly suit-
able to her topic.
The travel narrative itself provides a source of power for
Cavendish in two ways. First, as “authoress,” she realizes and utilizes
the heightened level of control that the genre offers: the traveler
controls her own tale by maintaining an almost unchallengeable
position. No one can genuinely question verisimilitude, since the
account is largely experiential and only seen through the window

5
This “pole-to-pole” relationship also illustrates a clear crossover between scientific
and travel-related discourses that I shall address later.
446 Anne M. Thell

that the traveler herself gives (which in most cases is difficult if

not impossible to verify). This narrative control is multiplied in
Blazing World, as the reader cannot dispute or verify anything
because it is an ostensibly imaginative realm (albeit one posi-
tioned to make rational comments on the real world). This places
Cavendish always-beyond our grasp by allowing commentary with-
out accountability. Second, the travel narrative as a genre con-
structs a powerful position “outside” of one’s own society, which
allows the distance of perspectivism and creates a space to cri-
tique one’s former world. This, too, is magnified in Blazing World
due to constant travel. As readers, we are always trying to keep up
with the continual motion from one place to another, one world
to another, even one soul to another—there is constant fluidity
or flux. This fluidity is heightened by the fact that the worlds
within Blazing World and Cavendish’s external world are continu-
ally, intentionally conflated: the physical and the imaginative, the
autobiographical and fictional, the textual and corporal— all are
elided so that her tale implicitly applies to all worlds.
Once Cavendish’s actual narrative begins, the same “pole-
to-pole” relationship appears in terms of her metaphoric (and
textual) voyage, which serves to link the “real” (the Empress’s origi-
nal home, which is correspondent with Cavendish’s real world)
and the “imaginary” (the Blazing World). The Lady was driven

to the very end or point of the Pole of that World, but even to another
Pole of another World, which joined close to it [. . .] at last, the Boat still
passing on, was forced into another World; for it is impossible to round
this Worlds Globe from Pole to Pole, so as we do from East to West;
because the Poles of the other World, joining to the Poles of this, do not
allow any further passage to surround the World that way, but if any one
arrives to either of these Poles, he is either forced to return, or to enter
into another World. (156)

The two worlds are connected through the reciprocal “pole-to-

pole” dynamic, which opens the possibility for endless mirroring:
the same phenomenon might occur at the extreme ends of both
of these worlds, allowing an infinite chain of pole-to-pole travel.
This mirroring again serves to highlight a reciprocal or mutually
reflective correspondence between worlds. Furthermore, the nau-
tical references call up the discursive authority of navigation—
the authority of the real world. In this way, the trope of discovery
 The Power of Transport 447

(and science) sanctions the Blazing World, while at the same

time causing further slippage between Cavendish’s actual and
imaginative worlds—they are different but not wholly separate,
obverse but not opposite. This “pole-to-pole” interface ostensibly
removes her imaginary world to make it less threatening to the
real, while at the same time firmly basing it in worldly rationality
and references. In addition, the founding of this new intellectual
territory is wrought through and authorized by the discourse of
discovery—as well as certain other discourses—that ensure its
validity in the real world.
In fact, it seems that for Cavendish concepts of narrative and
travel are linked on an even more fundamental level. She consid-
ers language a vehicle for her thoughts—the locomotion by
which her ideas travels outwards into the public realm, or the
mediation between inner and outer (which in Blazing World is
especially dizzying, as topically the narrative travels inwards only
to discuss and eventually pierce through to the outer world). In
this sense, her narrative is a voyage in more than one way:
language is travel. She says later in Blazing World: “[A]lthough
thoughts are the natural language of souls, yet by reason souls
cannot travel without Vehicles, they use such language as the
nature and propriety of their Vehicles require, and the Vehicles
of those two souls being made of the purest and finest sort of air,
and of a human shape” (220). This statement is difficult to parse,
as it does not quite work out logically (thoughts are the language
of souls, but souls cannot travel without vehicles, so they use such
language as their vehicles require . . .?). What she is getting at,
though, seems to be the idea that thoughts work as the ephem-
eral language of souls, but need “vehicles” of words to enter the
outer realm. The idea of language as “vehicle” was previously
instated by Cavendish in “A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding,
and Life” (published a decade earlier in 1656). She says:

I am forc’d many time to express [my thoughts] with the tongue before I
can write them with the pen [. . .] when some of those thoughts are sent
out in words, they give the rest more liberty to place themselves, in a more
methodicall order, marching more regularly with my pen, on the ground
of white paper, but [. . .] the brain being quicker in creating, than the
hand in writing, or the memory in retaining, many fancies are lost, by rea-
son they oftime out-run the pen, where I, to keep speed in the Race, write
so fast as I stay not so long as to write my letters plain . . . (56)
448 Anne M. Thell

This autobiographical passage defines language—both spoken

and written—as a type of carrier that allows Cavendish’s thoughts
to travel out of her mind. The idea of locomotion is fore-
grounded with terms such as “sent out in words,” “marching,”
and the “Race.”6 If language allows her thoughts to travel out-
wards, it mediates inner and outer. If the trope of travel permits
her to construct her words from an uncontested “outside” posi-
tion, it also allows her to speak from (ostensibly) outside inwards.
If imaginative travel allows a voyage into the self in words, it medi-
ates from inwards further in, and then out (words themselves vex
any simple definition of imaginative travel as inwards). More than
trying to unify any theory of terms, here, I only want to point out
that there is a certain play with subjective mediation—with the
very cusp of inner and outer—that is continually active in Blazing
World. Toying with subjective boundaries will come to further
prominence later in this essay, but for now, it is important to real-
ize that language and travel are both mediations between the sub-
jective and external, and thus her form (the travel narrative) and
her medium (language) correspond with both her topic (a jour-
ney) and her project (making subjectivity a valuable position
from which to critique the real world).
Blazing World is in many ways authorized through travel, in
terms of both its situation as a place “outside” (but directly
related to) society and its exploitation of the discourse of discov-
ery. Travel also provides a forum for a series of gender maneuvers
that are staged to “naturalize” the Empress’s coming to power.
We see these tactics immediately, as the voyage initiates as a quasi-
captivity narrative: the “Lady” is kidnapped by a man who is besot-
ted with her (although even here subversive power is insinuated,
as the sailor is enslaved by her beauty). The Lady, then, is posed as
completely powerless: a captive subject. Once kidnapped, however,

6
There is also a type of syntactic travel that is evident in Blazing World: Cavendish’s
infrequent full-stop punctuation—or dearth of periods—adds an ever-accelerating pro-
pulsion to her words. In addition, there is one last way in which Cavendish views language
as a “vehicle”: her frequent references to her writing as “paper bodies” or “progeny” invest-
ed with the power to “carry” her after her death. Cavendish says in “A True Relation” that
she has recorded her life to “divulge,” “lest after-ages should mistake, in not knowing I was
daughter to one Master Lucas of St. Johns neer Colchester in Essex, second Wife to the Lord
Marquis of Newcastle, for my Lord having had two Wives, I might easily have been mistaken,
especially if I should dye, and my Lord Marry again” (63).
 The Power of Transport 449

Providence (or more directly Cavendish) takes over by killing

the men in the “Icy Sea” and favoring “this virtuous Lady,” who “by
the light of her Beauty, the heat of her Youth, and Protection of
the Gods” (154) survives. Her special status is authorized through
her initial lack of agency (making her future conquers fate, not
ambition), through men (they must abdicate power since they are
immoral, she must accept power since she is moral), and through
Providence itself. Positioned where it is in the narrative, this
maneuver literally carries the Empress out of the “real” world’s
gender conventions and into newfound power in the Blazing
World. It is an acknowledgement of conventional standards, but
these standards are only erected in order to be overcome.
We see this savviness again when the king of the new world
swiftly abdicates his sovereignty. In fact, Cavendish uses precisely
the same dynamic: the Lady is originally taken as “a present to the
Emperor of [the Bear-men’s] world” (157). Again, a hostage sub-
ject becomes suddenly potent:

No sooner was the Lady brought before the Emperor, but he conceived
her to be some Goddess, and offered to worship her; which she refused,
telling him [. . .] that although she came out of another world, yet was she
but a mortal; at which the Emperor rejoycing, made her his Wife, and
gave her an absolute power to rule and govern all that World as she
pleased. But her subjects, who could hardly be perswaded to believe her
mortal, tender’d her all the veneration and worship due to a Deity. (162)

The incredible power invested in the Empress—that of a “Goddess,”

a “Deity,” and an absolute ruler—is mediated through the
Emperor. He recognizes her true worth, her beauty, and her abil-
ity to rule and incorporates her into the patriarchal (and here
aristocratic) economy of marriage as “Wife.” Only after she is
absorbed into this ordering system can she come into power; he
then overtly authorizes her by willingly handing over his power.
Even here, while the total abnegation of authority is strange and
somewhat suspicious—especially since he is ultimately displaced
and effaced from the narrative—the gesture serves to validate the
Empress’s power in the real world, the “complementary” world
from which Cavendish writes. Monarchical power is ingeniously
usurped, aptly demonstrated when the Empress immediately
appears bedizened as the Protectoress of her newly conquered
“Dominions” (162). Here the “oneness” of monarchical power—the
450 Anne M. Thell

absolute power of kings—merges with the discourse of domina-

tion and colonization to bolster her own power once she takes
over. Everything is self-begotten, but erected under the pretenses
of abnegated male authority.7
In fact, the discourse of domination, too, fuels and sanctions
the Empress’s conquest. The Empress’s mode of operation is
one of absolute acquisition, but this acquisition is also “natural-
ized” since it is an almost ubiquitous element of the genre: the
travel narrative. The “finder’s keepers” mentality of the Age of
Discovery figures large in Blazing World, and its power is har-
nessed throughout. As mentioned above, the Empress appears in
full regalia immediately after her accession. Notably, “[I]n her
left hand she held a Buckler, to signifie the Defence of her
Dominions. [. . .] In her right hand she carried a Spear made of
white Diamond, cut like the tail of a Blazing-star, which signified
that she was ready to assault those that proved her Enemies”
(162). This type of martial and dominative encoding enters
directly into the discourse of colonization, with the Empress
appearing not unlike engravings of Columbus. The image
appears so suddenly, though, after the Empress has taken what she
seeks to defend, there seems a near rupture in the narrative—a
break into raw ambition. Cavendish’s own prefatory words
resound here. She says: “For I am not Covetous, but as Ambitious
as ever any of my Sex was, is, or can be; which makes, that
though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet

7
This ascension is made even more bold when one realizes that the Emperor is quite
possibly God, or at the least a god-like figure. As the group traveled towards him, “At last [. . .]
they went towards Paradise, which was the seat of the Emperor; and coming in sight of it re-
joyced very much; the Lady could perceive nothing but high Rocks, which seemed to
touch the Skies” (Blazing World 160). The location is overtly named Paradise, the fortress
extends into the sky, and the men rejoice upon approach—this is no ordinary island-
nation. After entering a portal “like a Labyrinth” and winding through a river lined with
“several Cities, some of Marble, some of Alabaster, some of Agat, some of Amber. . .,” they
eventually approach “the Imperial City, named Paradise” (160). Finally, “the Palace it self
appear’d [. . .] like the Isle of a Church, a mile and a half long, and half a mile broad; the
roof was all arched, and rested upon Pillars” (161). All of these majestic details indicate
the realm’s heavenly status. While this status isn’t entirely consistent throughout the narra-
tive, the idea is reinstated several times, as when the Empress asks the Immaterial Spirits
whether Adam fled or was driven out of Paradise. They respond, “Out of this World [. . .]
you are now Emperess of, into the world you came from” (198). The Emperor of this
Edenic world would, of course, be God. In essence, then, God has just abdicated power to
our female protagonist.
 The Power of Transport 451

I endeavour to be Margaret the First” (153). This admission of

dominative ambitions presents further slippage between real and
imaginary—and between the “I”s of the Empress and Cavendish
herself. In terms of discursive power, this passage quickly trans-
forms the Empress from powerless to omnipotent: her juro divino
(note her newly acquired “Imperial Blood” [163]) is instituted
with greater ease than all of the conquests of the New World.
The manipulation of imperialist pursuits sanctions and bolsters
her rule.8
The thoroughness of the Empress’s conquest is made strik-
ingly clear. There is even a harmonious subjugation of various
“species” (which of course strongly implies racial subjugation),
yet another colonial fantasy:

[The] ordinary sort of men in that part of the World [. . .] were of several
Complexions; not white, black, tawny, olive- or ash-coloured; but some
appear’d of an Azure, some of a deep Purple, some of a Grass-green, some
of a Scarlet, some of an Orange-colour, &c. Which Colours and Complex-
ions, whether they were made by the bare reflection of light, without the
assistance of small particles, or by the help of well-ranged and order’d
Atomes [. . .] I am not able to determine. (163)

As an imperial force ruling over a rainbow of others even more

foreign than had yet been “conquered” by Europe, the Empress
displays her “spoils” and further reigns in the discursive power of
domination and discovery. Interestingly, we also see another type
of discursive power emerge here (one that has never actually
been separated from the discourse of dominion): “Atomes” and
“particles” reveal the scientific claims on the New World as “speci-
men.”9 Science and conquest share more than just metaphors, of
course, as these powerful modes so often immediately over-
lapped, especially in terms of experimentalism and discovery.
Cavendish combines science, travel, and colonization because she
recognizes their inextricability in the early modern construction
of power—and she seeks to harness them all.

8
This irony of this aristocratic, unitarian fantasy is that it inevitably produces factions:
there are those who rule—those of “Imperial Blood” (163)—and those who are ruled.
9
Interesting, since Cavendish “dropped atomism as a theory of matter in 1655, [but] re-
tained it as a metaphor for the body politic and for the mind throughout the course of her
life” (Battigelli 40). Here, the reference is perhaps a lighthearted play on scientific description.
452 Anne M. Thell

The extent to which the Blazing World is based on and traffics

in the New Science cannot be overemphasized. Its namesakes,
indeed, are the “Blazing-stars,” “which were such solid, firm and
shining bodies as the sun and moon” (167). There is also no
question that within this trope Cavendish has located another
source of power: knowledge production. The Empress immedi-
ately taps into this vein, having quickly “erected Schools, and
founded several Societies” (163). These schools and societies are
thus not only authorized by her, but authored by her. She
appoints her “men” to specific positions—“the Bear-men were to
be her Experimental Philosophers, the Bird-men her Astronomers,
the Fly-Worm and Fish-men her Natural Philosophers, the
Ape-men her Chymists . . .” (163)—and controls everything they
produce. The Empress’s brazen, combative badgering of scien-
tists belies her dominative spirit, but also exposes Cavendish’s
own frustration and impatience with the practitioners of the New
Science in her own world. The dialectic she constructs between
the scientists and the Empress functions in two ways: first, it seeks
to prove Cavendish’s own scientific ability in producing new
knowledge, or showcasing her scientific and philosophical ideas,
as there is in the Blazing World “much to be taken notice of by
[the real world’s] experimental Philosophers” (158). This again
proves that for her, “fancy”—or imaginative fiction—is a legiti-
mate way of producing new knowledge. Second, this dialectic
serves to critique or satirize the scientists at home. Both of these
features are predicated on travel, which provides a place “outside”
home from which to critique while also promising the discovery
of new data.10
The Empress’s interrogation of the scientists undoubtedly
provides Cavendish a forum from which to critique and satirize
the New Science and the Royal Society, with whom Cavendish is
clearly disillusioned (although this was written one year before
her 1667 visit).11 She fires one inquiry after another: Do sea ani-
mals have blood? What causes tides? Do offspring always resemble
their creators? How is “frost made upon the Earth?” (177). She

10
Both also center on her strange anthropomorphic men, who embody the experi-
mentalist viewpoint of the New Science and yet are also objects of experiment themselves,
as people found and described or anatomized through narrative.
11
Cavendish visited the Royal Society on May 30, 1667 (Paper Bodies 188).
 The Power of Transport 453

continues her questions for over 20 pages, often angered by the

responses, and frequently singling out technology as especially
problematic. This takes us back again to Blazing World’s compan-
ion piece, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. As Anna
Battigelli points out:

[A]lthough the former takes the form of scientific discourse and the latter
of romantic fantasy, both are philosophical texts aimed at contesting the
Royal Society’s experimental program by specifically targeting Hooke’s
celebration of microscopes and telescopes. Both volumes value rationalist
narrative over inductive observation. [A]ppending a work of fiction to
Observations was also part of a larger strategy aimed at highlighting the
inner life of the mind and its vagaries, which the experimentalists seemed
to overlook. (102)

Battigelli’s commentary helps to explain the mixed admiration

and condemnation that erupts in this section of the narrative.
Cavendish’s highly rationalist mindset was disturbed by the seem-
ing impracticability and ineffectuality of experimentalists, yet she
still displays the same urge to “uncover” and examine nature’s
secrets and still wants to participate in contemporary intellectual
debates. While the microscope and telescope clearly reference
Hooke, the instruments’ function of distorting (instead of clarify-
ing) might not only indict “inductive observation,” but also the
unnecessary exclusivity and ceremony of British scientific dis-
course. Her standpoint is thoroughly rationalist, but she also, as
Batigelli suggests, wishes to reestablish subjectivity as a valuable
critical position. This is especially interesting because of its pre-
science: experimental method was quickly distancing the subject
from the object of study, and would eventually call for a hermetic
seal between subject and object. Cavendish, by contrast, champi-
ons personal rationalism and enacts a science that is wholly sub-
jective or intuitive: the boundaries between subject/object are
especially blurred in Blazing World, as her experiments occur
within her own imaginative realm. Scientists might aim for objec-
tivity, seeking to escape the subjective mind, but by Cavendish’s
rationale, this is both undesirable and impossible.
In an ingenious authorial maneuver, the “subjectivity” that
the scientists seek to circumvent through external instruments is
simply displaced, reappearing in their discordant opinions. The
Empress says: “[T]hese Telescopes caused more differences and
454 Anne M. Thell

divisions amongst them, then ever they had before” (169). The
apparatuses do not provide one objective truth, but rather multi-
ply responses. The Empress grows angry “at their Telescopes, that
they could give no better Intelligence; for, said she, now I do
plainly perceive, that your Glasses are false Informers, and
instead of discovering the Truth, delude your senses” (170). They
are “false Informers” because they dangerously “delude” usually
trustworthy “senses”—the tools of rationalism. She orders them to
break the telescopes, but the Bear-men

exceedingly troubled, kneel’d down, and in the humblest manner peti-

tioned that they might not be broken; for, said they, we take more delight
in Artificial delusions, then in natural truths. Besides we shall want
imployments for our senses, and subject for arguments; for were there
nothing but truth, and no falsehood, there would be no occasion for to
dispute, and by this means we should want to aim and pleasure of our
endeavours in confuting and contradicting each other. (171)

This passage clearly satirizes what Cavendish considers the futile

debate and ineffectuality of the Royal Society, whose members enjoy
petty argument more than the pursuit of knowledge and “Artificial
delusions” more than “natural truths.” It also addresses power: the
all-male team of scientists must beg the Empress to allow their super-
ficial pursuit, which she honors as long as they don’t interfere with
“State” (171). This self-positioning situates the Empress’s (and Cav-
endish’s) own rationalist system of knowledge as higher, more genu-
ine, and more practical than that of the experimentalists, even
though it exists in a subjective realm. Regardless of Cavendish’s
extended rationalist critique, however, her extended engagement
with the scientists proves that she still wishes to participate in con-
temporary scientific debates and that she recognizes the subject’s
discursive power. Once again, discovery, imperialism, science, and
travel tropes are densely intertwined, and Cavendish harnesses their
collective power to fuel her own idiosyncratic, rationalist mode.
There is yet another locus of power that Cavendish exposes
and interweaves with the rest of these potent discourses. Religion
in the Blazing World is nothing more than an exercise in power—a
matter of dazzling and controlling the masses. The unitarianism
of the Blazing World extends to this area, as well: “[T]here was no
more but one Religion in all that World, nor no diversity of opin-
ions in that same Religion; for though there were several sorts of
 The Power of Transport 455

men, yet [they] do but unanimously acknowledg, worship and

adore the Onely, Omnipotent, and Eternal God” (164). Even the
admirable oneness already evident in the Blazing World’s reli-
gion, however, does not allow the Empress total dominion. The
“Onely God” must be displaced by the Empress herself. Instead of
holding conferences,

she considered by her self the manner of their Religion, and finding it
very defective, was troubled, that so wise and knowing a people should
have no more knowledge of the Divine Truth; Wherefore she consulted
with her own thoughts, whether it was possible to convert them all to her
own Religion, and to that end she resolved to build Churches. (191)

The Empress simply finds the current religion “defective,” since it

does not correspond to her own version of “Divine Truth,” and
decides to single-handedly perform a national conversion. Again
we see types of power bleeding into each other: colonization and
conversion, political unitarianism and imperialism—all are mani-
fest in this decision. The real issue: a true sovereign must control
everything that has the potential for power.12
The commingling of religion and other discourses of power
becomes overt when the Empress (conveniently) commands the
Worm-men to fetch her a special “Sun-stone” and “Star-stone”
(192), which she uses to build blindingly spectacular chapels.
One is “lined throughout with Diamonds,” with “Fire-stone [. . .]
placed upon the Diamond-lining” so that “the Chappel seemd to
be all in a flaming fire” (192). In a fascinating twist, the Empress
has manipulated science to create artifice, which has the power to
delude and dazzle. Thus, the colonial impulse and science fuel
her version of religion, which is really nothing but absolute con-
trol over her subjects. This maneuver again belies Cavendish’s
almost uncanny awareness of the multi-pronged construction of
power in her own world. She exposes the inner-workings of the
spectacle to her readers (not the Empress’s subjects) in the vein
of scientific inquiry. As the Empress preaches “Sermons of terror”
to the wicked in one chapel, and “Sermons of comfort” to repenters

12
This is highly reminiscent of Henrietta Maria’s “disastrous” attempts at imposing
religious conversion, and her stunningly magnificent chapel at Somerset House, which
was built to lure converters (Battigelli 80). Cavendish served in Henrietta’s court from
1643–1646 (Paper Bodies 36).
456 Anne M. Thell

in the other (192), we realize that she has suddenly become a

prophet, preacher, deity, and agent of mass control. This incredi-
ble act of domination is embodied with tremendous pageantry
when she appears in her own chapel:

the other Chappel where the Star-stone was [. . .] cast a great light [. . .]
and the Emperess appear’d like an Angel in it; and as that Chappel was an
embleme of Hell, so this was an embleme of Heaven. And thus the Emperess,
by Art, and her own ingenuity, did not onely convert the Blazing-world to
her own Religion, but kept them in a constant belief, without inforcement
of blood-shed. (193)

She “appear’d like an Angel” of truth within the “embleme of

Heaven,” a manifest deity that thereby performs a mass conver-
sion through miraculous spectacle. Yet this is all unabashedly
enforced through pure “Art” and “ingenuity.” In fact, the chica-
nery is offered up as proof of her own cleverness, albeit also a
strange admission that religion is merely a means of effective con-
trol. Although the Empress appears omnipotent to her subjects,
Cavendish again reveals to the reader the “real” workings behind
the “miracle,” as if to foreground her own ability in effectively
locating and exploiting sources of power—and her own function
as the Empress’s puppeteer.13
This tampering with religious power reappears when the
Empress decides to fabricate her own Cabbala, which introduces
the Duchess of Newcastle as scribe—a signal that the fragile division
between the real and imaginary is about to disintegrate completely.
While a grocery list of eponymous intellectuals are all deemed unfit-
ting, the Duchess is selected since “although she is not one of the
most learned, eloquent, witty and ingenious, yet is she a plain and
rational Writer, for the principle of her Writings, is Sense and
Reason” (208). This again roots the Blazing World in “Reason,”
rationality, and Cavendish’s own reality, intensifying the mirroring
and confusion of an already self-referential narrative. Although the
Duchess is chosen scribe, she can’t write “so intelligibly that any
Reader whatsoever may understand it, unless he be taught to know
my Characters” (209). “Secretaries” must learn and cipher her

13
In a rather hilarious side-note, she admits that “belief was a thing not to be forced or
pressed upon the people, but to be instilled into their minds by gentle perswasions” (Blazing
World 193).
 The Power of Transport 457

writing, which seems to defeat her purpose entirely. The Duchess’s

real function in the text, though, is manifold. Most importantly, this
is yet another way to incorporate a powerful female/self into the
Blazing World: the Duchess is an intellectual “authority”—especially
since we are supposed to conflate this woman with Cavendish-the-
author—a powerful advisor that slips into the story in the guise of
mere “scribe.” In addition, this “other” Duchess introduces an even
more dense overlap between the narrative and the external world.
Interestingly, Cavendish finds it necessary at this point to address
same-sex love, or “Platonick Lovers” (210), a concern that indirectly
addresses the ongoing narcissism without hitting on the core issue
of self-referentiality. A spirit informs the Duchess that “Husbands
have reason to be jealous of Platonick Lovers, for they are very dan-
gerous, as being not onely very intimate and close, but subtil and
insinuating” (209). It might be said that this type of “closeness” is a
constant feature of the text on every level: there is only a thin mem-
brane between friends, between Cavendish and her alter-egos,
between the real world and the Blazing World, etc. The thinness
that has been threatening to break all along is finally pierced with
the appearance of the Duchess, who so closely parallels Cavendish
that it is impossible to distinguish between fact and fiction.
The later passages of Blazing World thoroughly rupture any real
separation between realms through the blatant inclusion of spe-
cific autobiographical information,14 which stages drastic slippage
between the Blazing World, the Empress’s former world, the
Duchess’s world, and Cavendish’s world.15 In fact, the most dizzying
aspect is perhaps not the endless mirroring of the self, but instead
the fact that further one penetrates into this self-referential and
imaginative world—i.e., towards the end of the text—the closer one

14
Autobiographical slippage is especially frequent in terms of the recent Civil Wars.
E.g., even though the Blazing World is composed of diverse species, there is “no more but
one Emperor, to whom they all submitted with tee greatest duty and obedience, which
made them live in a continued peace and happiness, not acquainted with other foreign
wars, or home-bred insurrections” (160).
15
It is unclear whether or not the Empress’s original world is the same as that of the
Duchess. There are several comments, such as when the Duchess refers to the Empress’s
home as “your own Native Country,” and “the World you came from” (233), which suggest
they are not (Paper Bodies 233). Both of these “native” worlds, however, are constructed as
analogues to Cavendish’s real world (as both have overlapping current events and auto-
biographical references), and thus again, we see a disorienting plurality and mirroring
that serves to conflate the various worlds instead of separating them.
458 Anne M. Thell

becomes to the external world. The Duchess cannot conquer a

world of her own since “none is without Government” (212), and
therefore she and the Empress instead undertake “making and dis-
solving several worlds” together (215). The fluidity between worlds is
mirrored in the crossover of characters: “ambition” or a will to power
is evident in the Empress, the Duchess, and Cavendish (as clearly
stated in her own Preface and Epilogue).16 The two fictional women
then voyage to the Duchess’s real world, which gives occasion for the
Duchess—and Cavendish—to list the Duke’s virtues and his recent
losses. In fact, the lengthy dramatization of his dealings with “Truth,”
“Folly,” “Rashness,” and “Fortune” not only reaches into Cavendish’s
recent history for its topic, but also extends out of the narrative as a
bid for approbation for the real Duke of Newcastle. In addition,
since the Duke is the speaker of the prefatory poem, this figure takes
us before and outside the text. Although ostensibly played out to
finally offer him vindication, Cavendish’s staging of the Duke’s
ordeal is an attempt to gain the power she lacks in the outside world
by returning from the position of power she has just constructed in
the Blazing World. Or, in another sense, “to bring the external world
into accord with inner ideals” (Battigelli 82). She hopes to transfer
this alignment—already enforced in the Blazing World—into the
real world. The clear referencing of detailed autobiographical infor-
mation finalizes the permeability between text and life.
The attempt to channel power from the Blazing World in the
real world happens even more flamboyantly when war breaks out
in the Empress’s former world (calling to mind, of course, the
tumultuous recent events of Cavendish’s own life). This becomes
the occasion for the Empress (and Cavendish) to wield newly
acquired power in her former “real” world (a maneuver that is
masterminded by the Duchess), ostensibly stemming from “readi-
ness to serve [the Empress’s] Native Country” (231).17 That this

16
The Duchess’s admission encapsulates this best: “Truly said the Duchess to the
Emperess (for between dear friends there’s no concealment, they being like several part
of one united body) my Melancholy proceeds from an extreme ambition” (211). This mir-
rors Cavendish’s own words in her Preface and Epilogue.
17
This is yet another segment of the narrative where is almost impossible to keep the
Duchess, the Empress, and Cavendish straight. The Empress returns to a world similar to
Cavendish’s real world, wielding newfound power; the Duchess of Newcastle (the charac-
ter) masterminds her proceedings, after appearing from yet another analogue to Cavend-
ish’s world; and the actual mastermind of all of this, of course, is the real Duchess of
Newcastle, Cavendish-the-author.
 The Power of Transport 459

triumphant appearance comes late in the narrative is important: it is

predicated on an assumed distance and a return to the world from
an already validated, authenticated position of power. The Empress
saves (or conquers) her former world via dazzling spectacle, which of
course recalls her means of effecting religion in the Blazing World
and also harks back to the power of beauty. She appears in “a terrible
shew; for it appear’d as if all the Air and Sea had been of a flaming
Fire; and all that were upon the Sea [. . .] did verily believe, the time
of Judgment, or the Last day was come, which made them all fall
down, and Pray” (236). Amidst this apocalyptic display, she ascends

in a splendorous Light, surrounded with Fire [. . .] with Garments made

of the Star-stone, and was born or supported above the Water, upon the
Fish-mens heads and backs, to that she seemed to walk upon the face of
the Water, and the Bird- and Fish-men carried the Fire-stone, lighted both
in the Air, and above the Waters. Which sight, when her Country-men per-
ceived at a distance, their hearts began to tremble; but coming something
nearer, she left her Torches, and appeared onely in her Garment so
Light, like an Angel, or some Deity, and all kneeled down before her, and
worshipped her with all submission and reverence. (237)

In Christ-like majesty, the Empress elicits immediate adulation and

“submission.” Yet here again display is created though artifice:
science creates spectacle, which dazzles and hypnotizes. It might
even be said that at this point, all of the various powers she has
harnessed—travel, religion, science, the colonial impulse, and
patriarchal-displacement—converge in a scene of incredible domi-
nation. All the while, Cavendish calls attention to the Empress’s arti-
fice, by divulging that the Empress “would not have that of her
Accoustrements any thing else should be perceived” (237). This
again highlights the cleverness behind such “accoustrements” and
again implicitly claims that the effect of power is what matters, how-
ever artificial the means.18 The Empress announces that she will
indeed save the nation, and “All the return I desire, is but your
Grateful acknowledgment, and to declare my Power, Love and
Loyalty to my Native Country; for although I am now a great and
absolute Princess and Empress of a whole World, yet I acknowldge

18
The idea of artifice as a means of control corresponds to Cavendish’s art of fiction, as well.
Besides the inherent connection between fanciful fiction/artifice, it seems also that Cavendish is
seeking to dazzle her readers in much the same way the Empress dazzles her spectators.
460 Anne M. Thell

that once I was a Subject of this Kingdom” (238). This conquest is sit-
uated as heroic martyrdom, with the only return being an admission
of her “Power, Love, and Loyalty”—in short, the utter submission of
the “real” world, which couldn’t have been implemented or accepted
earlier in the narrative.
At this point, the Empress erects absolutism for the king—
“by which the King of the mentioned nations became absolute
Master of the Seas, and consequently of the World” (240)—and
thus this dominion is entirely mediated through herself. This
directly answers the powerlessness that initiated the narrative:
when a “Lady,” the Emperor gave the Empress his power. Here,
in a magnificent completion of Cavendish’s power cycle, the
Empress bequeaths her recently amassed power to her former
world’s king. Her return to the (relatively) real world after proving
herself in the Blazing World completes her conquest; the narrative
would be unfinished without addressing both worlds, since two
have been in dialogue all along. In this fully reciprocal ending,

[T]he Emperess did not onely save her Native Country, but made it the
absolute Monarchy of all that World; and both the effects of her Power
and her Beauty did kindle a great desire in all the greatest Princes to see
her. [. . .] The Emperess sent word, That she should be glad to grant their
Requests; but having no other place of reception for them, she desire that
they would be pleased to come into the open Seas with their Ships, and
make a Circle of a pretty large compass. (242)

Thus in one final triumphant gesture, the Empress is deified, wor-

shipped for both her power and her beauty, and in great theatri-
cal display, controls the gaze, the minds, and the freedom of the
entire world of men.19 Since the Empress, the Duchess, and
Cavendish have lost their individual contours, this final act of
control fixes both the male audience’s and the reader’s admira-
tion onto an amalgam of ascendant selfhood.

19
Beauty is often associated with power for Cavendish. She believes that Nature favors
women “in Giving us such Beauties, Features, Shapes, Gracefull Demeanor, and such
Insinuating and Inticing Attractives, as men are forc’d to Admire us, Love us, and be
Desirous of us, in so much as rather than not Have and Injoy us, they will Deliver to our
Disposals, their Power, Persons, and Lives [. . .] and what can we desire more, then to be
men’s Tyrants [. . .] and Goddesses?” (Orations 147). She complicates this stance many
times even within the Orations themselves by claiming that women are abject and “Dye like
Worms” (143), yet beauty remains a frequent source of power in her work.
 The Power of Transport 461

Strangely, after finally completing the magnificent cycle of

power transference, the Empress encounters problems in the
Blazing World. She needs Duchess’s assistance, who recommends
that she restore it to its original condition—and this works. This
abrupt negation of all the Empress has constructed up to this point
seems a total abnegation of her ingeniously gained and demon-
strated power. Some critics have argued that this is Cavendish’s
study in the impossibility of ruling by ideals or of maintaining
social order.20 However, more than anything else, I think this
bizarre back-paddling offers Cavendish a way out of her own text:
it is how she draws herself out of the incredible, theatrical display
of absolute dominion; it is how she gets out of the narrative, which
has perhaps become too similar to the real world, and out of her
character, which has become too similar to the author and too
powerful for her real audience. The Epilogue supports this read-
ing, as its haunting call for fame evidences that Cavendish’s voice
does indeed cross with the Duchess’s and the Empress’s and
reminds us that this work is meant to complement and comment
on the real world. She says here, “And in the formation of those
Worlds, I take more delight and glory, then ever Alexander of
Caesar did in conquering this terrestrial world” (251). The “glory”
of Cavendish’s “I” elides with the glory of the Empress in her con-
quests. Cavendish continues, “But I esteeming Peace before War,
Wit before Policy, Honesty before Beauty; instead of the figures of
Alexander, Caesar, Hector, Achilles, Nestor, Ulysses, Helen, &c.
chose rather the figure of Honest Margaret Newcastle, which now
I would not change for all this terrestrial World” (251). For the
creating of this world—the Blazing World—she chose “Honest
Margaret Newcastle,” which intentionally conflates the conquista-
dor of the narrative and herself. In fact, Cavendish and her envi-
ronment have never been absent from this world: she—and her
external world—have been part of this “imaginative” narrative
throughout. This claim signals one last stage in her power cycle:
the potency that has slipped away from the Empress at the end of
the narrative has exited the text altogether and slipped into the
voice of its creator in the Epilogue. External sources of power
have been located, interiorized, and exploited only so as to be fun-
neled back into Cavendish’s outside world and persona.

20
Namely, Anna Battigelli. Several others touch upon this, however.
462 Anne M. Thell

There is no question, in my mind, that Blazing World is a daz-

zling meditation on power. Although many consider it to be interi-
orized and exilic, we cannot ignore the text’s most urgent request:
constant comparison with the external world. The real world and
the text exist in a continual reciprocal dynamic: the text is a com-
mentary on and a companion to Cavendish’s contemporary world,
a fictional exercise built of purely rational “matter” that applies to
all (imaginative or external) realms. In too decisively disentan-
gling the various worlds and personas of this narrative universe,
one risks losing the purposeful, consistent, and meaningful eli-
sions between life and writing, autobiography and fiction, fact and
fancy, and mental and external space. This doesn’t make the
world less real, but instead invests art and subjectivity with the
power to produce real knowledge that is applicable to the external
world. The travel narrative is the forum for all of this, as the genre
provides Cavendish with a commingling of the subjective and
external in precisely the right ratios. Cavendish’s tactics in self-
authorization and self-fashioning are eerily brilliant; she has an
uncanny ability to locate and harness contemporary loci of con-
trol—the discourses of absolutism, monarchism, domination,
discovery, science, and patriarchy—in order to authorize, consoli-
date, and maintain power. In short, Cavendish effectively locates
the sources of power in her own society; creates a “symbiotic”
world where she can effectively control these sources, produce
new knowledge, and critique society; and then harnesses all for a
“naturalized” act of total domination, before slipping the
Empress’s power back out of the text into her own voice in a mag-
nificently intricate cycle. The only testament to such an enterprise,
perhaps, is that her “adventure of noble atchievments” has finally
graced her with “glorious Fame” (212).

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