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The Blazing New World

This research examines The Blazing New World, published in England in 1666 by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. The research will set forth the historical and cultural context in which the text was published and then discuss how the themes of the text epitomize Cavendish's conception of a feminine utopia.

Virtually alone of all the women writers whose poetry, drama, and prose achieved some currency in the 17th century in England, Margaret Cavendish put her name on her work. Cavendish was not a professional writer as the term is commonly understood; she was self-published, or more exactly enjoyed the patronage of her husband William, Duke of Newcastle. The closet dramas, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that were published under Cavendish's byline appear to have been lavishly printed and distributed (or sold) to a select aristocratic readership. In any case, the literacy rate of 17th-century England would have been limited.

But in part because Cavendish's reading audience was small when measured against the standards of 21st-century mass-market publishing, it can be more closely connected to and identified with the social milieu in which it functioned. And what must be understood about the social environment of Margaret Cavendish is that, despite being a titled English lady she was also an oppressed one--not so much because she was a woman in a man's world as because her entire world was dislocated by the politics of the English Civil War. As a Royalist who was so loyal to Charles I that she went into exile in France with his widowed queen, Cavendish was well positioned to observe a society in unaccustomed flux, the object of government oppression by the Interregnum government of Oliver Cromwell.

Far from radicalizing Cavendish's politics, political exile seems to have confirmed her in an aristocratic habit of mind. Yet because she experienced the reality of exile she could also position herself as something of a social...

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The Blazing New World. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:12, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1683139.html