Imagining A Feminist Monarch; An Examination of Margaret Cavendish\u27s The Blazing World

While it can be said that Margaret Cavendish believes in the idea of one unified monarchy, the vision of monarchy she creates in The Blazing World does not allow for the kind of blind, hypermasculinized political structures which allow patriarchal systems to exist. In order to make this argument I will be examining three primary and interconnected topics: Cavendish’s ideas about unified political ecosystems, the ways in which the Empress is able to hold absolute power without becoming a tyrant, and the contradiction between the Empress’s leadership in The Blazing World and her native world