Cavendish
Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World is an embankment by the imagination upon human desire. Constrained by the physical limitations of this world, Cavendish’s ambition and love of thought carry her to the farthest reaches of her own imagination and to the creation of a new world. A world governed by her romancical illusions of reality; a world where desire and fulfillment, are the only reality. In the introduction, Cavendish relates to the reader a reason for her fiction. Human nature, always full of desires and ambitions, has these desires equally opposed to by a force that often overcomes, reality. Cavendish writes, “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 I endeavor to be Margaret the First; and although I have neither power, time nor occasion to conquer the world as Alexander and Caesar did; yet rather than not to be mistress of one, since Fortune and the Fates would give me none, . . .
The essence of her aspirations she summarizes when she is talking to the spirits about her desire for a world of her own; “for I had rather die in the adventure of noble achievements, than live in obscure and sluggish security;” (BW, 185) Rather than suppressing these inner desires, Cavendish did everything within her power to satisfy them. History is littered with philosophers who have pondered reality. In the world in which live, we still have dreams and hopes that we strive toward with the goal of actualization, but in the dream world, the world of our own creation, fulfillment happens as fast as we can envision. In Cavendish’s world, she explored the very depths of reality, both physical and metaphysical. But as famous as she became, whether liked or disliked, it would have taken nothing less than the entire world’s utter submission to her whims to appease her ambition. She once quoted, “There is little difference between man and beast, but what ambition and glory makes”; and had quoted of her, “though her philosophies are futile, and her plays intolerable, and her verses mainly dull, the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of authentic fire” (The Common Reader 77). Her ambition in life was only equaled by her courage to do or write whatever she wanted no matter what audiences she displeased. She asks if anyone can blame her for her endeavor in the introduction, and since everyone has fallen to the pleasure of dreams, none can. I have made a world of my own:” (BW, 124) Knowing full the limitations upon her, Cavendish seeks satisfaction for her ambition in her only escape, the imagination. Questions that can’t always be answered but at the same time demand attention. Insatiable and audacious, she may have been; but her inner strength, sense of romance, and ambition make her truly an astonishing figure in history. Not only living her fantasies out in her mind, she wrote them down for the entire world to know. Not desiring just happiness or meager comfort, she wants the world, and everything in it to conform to her will. Criticized on all accords, her inner fire for glory and fame kept her going.
Common topics in this essay:
Common Reader, Fortune Fates, Blazing World, Fifth Charles, world own, Alexander Caesar, bw 124, desire fulfillment, world world, human desire, |
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