Throughout the Empress’s dialogues with the scientists of the Blazing World, Cavendish employs satire to comment on the scientific, cultural, political, and philosophical ideas at play in her time. Her allusions to scientific and philosophical figures in these dialogues occasionally satirize specific people or ideas. For example, the Empress satirically expresses her distrust of the bear-men’s microscopes after they fail to work:
To which the Empress replied, that they might be glassy pearls, and yet not eyes, and that perhaps their microscopes did not truly inform them: but they smilingly answered her Majesty, that she did not know the virtue of those microscopes; for they did never delude, but rectify and inform their senses; nay, the world, said they, would be but blind without them, as it has been in former ages before those microscopes were invented.
Cavendish conveys the bear-men’s argument for the value of microscopes with a satirical edge. The Empress is skeptical of microscopes and believes that what one sees in the microscope may not be real. In response, the bear-men assert that the microscopes “did never delude” and that they would be “blind without them, as it has been in former ages before those microscopes were invented.” This element of satire aims to ridicule the bear-men for relying too heavily on technology that “blinds” them to other forms of sight and knowledge, in Cavendish’s perspective.
Cavendish had many strong opinions about scientific inventions of her time and often disagreed with others. This satirical comment about microscopes could be a reference to how Cavendish publicly feuded with the scientist Robert Hooke, who supported using microscopes. Cavendish’s satire of the bear-men’s microscopes indicates a direct satire of scientists like Hooke.
Furthermore, satire is a significant literary device in The Blazing World and in the utopia genre more broadly. Satire is a key element of utopian writing because writers of utopias often aim to comment on and criticize elements of their own world by exploring a fictional new world.
