Brave new worlds?, the gender politics of Margaret Cavendish's primary and secondary realms

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis tests whether the theory that estrangement allows reconceptions of gender politics holds in the liminal and secondary worlds of Margaret Cavendish, a writer deeply, if ambivalently, committed to Fancy. Her work is often subversive, but withdraws when the social order is threatened. In order to assess whether Cavendish's gender politics change in her secondary worlds, her primary-world work must first be examined. Here, Cavendish is contradictory on female nature, education, public authority, speech, cross-dressing, and marriage, reflecting her multiple and divided concept of subjectivity. She always remains committed to female chastity and obedience, however, and to social order. Relationships between women are also consistently problematic in her primary-world work. This does not completely change in her liminal worlds. The feminocentric imaginative worlds or new societies of 'The Convent of Pleasure, Lady Contemplation', and 'The Female Academy', all become unstable, only surviving if they carefully negotiate with the primary world. In 'Blazing World', the Empress reforms its misogynist religion and government, but change threatens this utopia's stability, and the Empress apparently withdraws her reforms. The 'Blazing World' finally becomes an ambivalent text on female rule and nature, despite the discursive and educational spaces created for women and the celebration of female friendship. In contrast, the more stable world of "Assaulted and Pursued Chastity" does not fundamentally attempt to challenge gender politics, although the text radically realigns gender and genre, destabilizes sex and gender (if only in terms of the protagonist), and women finally become good rulers. If subversiveness is kept within careful bounds, recuperation becomes unnecessary. Aemelia Lanyer, Rachel Speght, and Anne Bradstreet also experiment with the opportunities available for women in fantasy, but the primary world often destroys these liminal and secondary worlds, showing a feminine vulnerability to Fortune. In contrast, the pragmatic Aphra Behn dismisses secondary worlds. Reflecting the ephemerality of feminine fancy, Cavendish's secondary and liminal worlds only occasionally depart from the contradictions inherent in her gender politics in the primary world.Ph.D