Book Review: Margaret Cavendish

Review of Walters, Lisa, and Brandie R. Siegfried, eds. Margaret Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. xvii + 307 pp. ISBN (hardback): 978-1-108-49036-8.

By Marcus P. Adams, State University of New York at Albany

Banner photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Categorizing Margaret Cavendish’s thought is no easy task. Cavendish developed her philosophical system over time, but she produced a mountain of other literary works, from poems to plays and from science fiction to biography. Recognizing the breadth of Cavendish’s works, editors Walters and Siegfried assembled scholars from a range of disciplines to address the following themes: history of science, philosophy, literature, politics, and new directions. Since Margaret Cavendish is an anthology that treats different yet interconnected parts of her thought, this review highlights only some of the many contributions that the volume makes.

The chapter “Margaret Cavendish: Natural Philosopher and Feminist” by Carolyn Merchant begins the section on history of science. Merchant situates Cavendish’s forays into natural philosophy within a broader group of women contemporaries who contributed to this area. Lisa Sarasohn’s chapter “Margaret Cavendish Thinks about Sex” traces how Cavendish’s metaphysics provides space for anti-essentialist understanding of sex and gender and provides her with resources for thinking of these as continuous categories. As Sarasohn highlights, Cavendish’s views on sex and gender range from sometimes seeming to parrot views sympathetic to Galenic-Aristotelian accounts but then at other times emphasizing that there is infinite variety in nature. Sarasohn emphasizes that identity is an ambiguous notion for Cavendish, as illustrated with the case of Lady Happy in “The Convent of Pleasure” (pp. 48-49).

In “Margaret Cavendish and the Rhetoric and Aesthetics of the Microscopic Image in Seventeenth-Century England,” Stephen Clucas examines Cavendish’s criticisms of Hooke’s use of images. Clucas focuses on Hooke’s arguments that microscopic observations revealed true natures of natural objects by claiming that the microscope corrected deficiencies in the senses following the biblical fall. Similarly, Henry Power tried to bolster the use of images by emphasizing the beauty he claimed was revealed by them. Clucas situates Cavendish’s criticisms of these attempts by focusing on the unnaturalness of using the microscope—it failed to show internal motions of objects—and her claims that the instrument provides pictures of monstrosities (p. 61).

The section on philosophy opens with Jacqueline Broad and Maks Sipowicz’s chapter, “Cavendish’s Philosophy of the Passions,” which aims to provide a systematic account of Cavendish’s understanding of the passions. Taking Cavendish’s version of Neo-Stoic causality as their starting point, Broad and Sipowicz convincingly argue that Cavendish’s view of the passions was a genuine alternative to the Cartesian view. Rather than viewing passions as passive, Cavendish held that although external things are frequently antecedent causes for passions, they are merely the occasion for self-moving matter to act on its own. The picture of Cavendishian passions that emerges is a contrast with the Cartesian view: passions are entirely free actions (pp. 87–89) and are active rather than passive (p. 91). Not only does this chapter unearth a uniquely Cavendishian account of the passions, but it challenges a narrative told in the history of philosophy that with David Hume the passions were transformed from that which is to be suppressed to that which is a guide.

In “Cavendish’s Philosophical Genres in Philosophical and Physical Opinions and the Question of Hierarchy,” Karen Detlefsen addresses hierarchy generally, and related to gender in particular, by focusing on Cavendish’s ontology of matter. Detlefsen locates a potential source for hierarchy in natural philosophy within Cavendish’s account of differences among nature’s parts; although all parts are composed of matter, they are differentiated from one another by their different shapes and proportion of rational matter (pp. 117–119). Nevertheless, Cavendish seems to hold that differences among the parts of nature do not necessarily imply differences in their abilities or worth. Finding this tension in Cavendish’s main works, Detlefsen considers whether the prefaces of those works might shed light on Cavendish’s view.

Part 3, on Literature, begins with Brandie R. Siegfried’s chapter, “Of Webs and Wonder: The Atomic Vitalism of Margaret Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies,” which starts by noting Cavendish’s own insistence that her poetry was essential for understanding her natural philosophy. Siegfried identifies fancy as a vehicle for entertaining speculative philosophical thoughts in a more pleasurable mode. Cavendish, as Siegfried shows, understands fancy as a way for women to engage in reasoning, one that resists strict rule and method but instead proceeds “by choice” (pp. 133–134), akin to the multiple routes one can take in stitching or needlework. Instead of seeing philosophy as consisting only of method in a Cartesian framework, there are many ways to approach nature.

“Margaret Cavendish’s Prudence; or, Preservation and Transformation in Playes (1662) and Plays, Never Before Printed (1668)” by Lara Dodds examines how Cavendish re-used / configured material written before the Restoration in later works. Cavendish recognized that her plays would be criticized not only because she was a female author but also because they did not meet expectations, such as those regarding coordinated movements of actors (pp. 160–161). Dodd suggests that we understand Lady Prudence in Playes (1662) as exhibiting Aristotelian phronesis in rejecting various suitors and accepting a less than likely one, one whose external appearance belied his inner worth. Furthermore, Dodds sees prudence as part of Cavendish’s own identification of her actions; for example, she prudently publishes her work so her ideas can be read. While some of the characterizations of prudence mentioned seem like instances of phronesis, it is not obvious we need to see it as behind all of them (e.g., Cavendish’s description of keeping copies of her plays lest they be lost at sea like a set of them were after a shipwreck [pp. 168-169]). Sometimes Cavendishian “prudence” seems less than phronesis and more akin to the kind of prudence that her contemporary Hobbes identified as mere prediction of some future event based upon associations formed by past experiences.

Part 4 examines Cavendish’s politics. Mihoko Suzuki traces the theme of Cavendish’s experiences during the wars and her implied criticisms of Charles I in Natures Pictures, Hilda L. Smith treats the Orations and shows Cavendish’s concerns about power and gender, among others, and Joanne H. Wright argues that Sociable Letter #16 should be understood as showing anti-royalist tendencies. The final section of the book—Part 5, on “New Directions”—looks ahead to possible futures for Cavendish studies. Liza Blake examines the seemingly disconnected parts of Blazing World, something Cavendish herself mused about, by looking to the collation formula for the 1666 edition (alongside Observations) and other printing details. These text-critical details suggest that the structure of the printed edition differed from the originally intended one. Sarah Connell looks to Cavendish’s aim of “singularity” by subjecting her works to a digital analysis where Cavendish’s works were compared to others by looking at features like the structures of the texts and representations of female characters.

In sum, Margaret Cavendish fulfills its promise of tackling Cavendish in a truly impressive and interdisciplinary way. The editors are to be commended for this volume (note: editor Siegfried passed away before the book went to press). This review has touched only on some of the contributions that the volume makes; the book will serve well to drive future discussions of Cavendish’s multifaceted thought for scholars and students alike.