Margaret Cavendish’s 17th-century tale The Blazing World follows a young Lady who becomes the all-powerful Empress of a fantastical parallel world, where everything from popular religion to the laws of nature is radically different—and better—than in our own. While frequently called utopian feminist literature, an early novel, and a work of science fiction, The Blazing World was actually published long before any of these genres formed—and it helped shape them in the first place. As Cavendish explains in her author’s note, she published the fanciful Blazing World alongside her more rigorous Observations upon Experimental Philosophy in order to show how fiction can help writers and readers alike explore philosophical ideas and enjoy themselves.
At the beginning of The Blazing World, a lustful merchant kidnaps the young Lady, hoping to make her marry him. As punishment, the gods blow the merchant’s ship toward the North Pole, where the Lady’s world meets “another Pole of another world.” The merchant and his crew freeze to death, but the Lady survives. She finds herself in this other world—the Blazing World—which is full of curious hybrid creatures who have the bodies of animals but walk, talk, and act like human beings. The bear-men, who live near the Blazing World’s icy North Pole, find the merchant’s ship and rescue the Lady. She is as unusual to the Blazing World’s inhabitants as they are to her, so they bring her to their Emperor, who lives in a palace in the gold-and-jewel-studded city of Paradise. The Emperor believes the Lady to be a goddess, and he graciously marries her and gives her “absolute power to rule and govern all that World as she please[s].”
The Lady, now the Empress, uses her power to learn everything that she can about the Blazing World. She learns that the world’s inhabitants all speak the same language, follow the same religion, and obey the same all-powerful Emperor. Each species group lives independently and follows a unique profession, but they coexist peacefully, without fighting over power. The gooselike bird-men, the kingdom’s astronomers, tell the Empress about the Blazing World’s sun, moon, and stars. The bear-men, who are experimental philosophers, use telescopes to test the bird-men’s hypotheses and microscopes to show the Empress tiny objects, like a fly’s eyes and a piece of charcoal. The fish-men and worm-men (natural philosophers) teach her about the Blazing World’s animals, and the ape-men (chemists) explain how basic elements make up everything in nature. But other groups (like the lice- and parrot-men) humiliate themselves when they present their shoddy work, and the Empress banishes them from her palace. She blames the Blazing World’s religion for their failures, so she decides to convert its people to her own. She builds two chapels, one out of the Blazing World’s shining star-stone and the other of its burning fire-stone.
Next, the Empress meets the immaterial spirits, who are the Blazing World’s most advanced theoretical philosophers. Since they have no physical bodies, the spirits can travel anywhere in an instant and learn anything they wish. The Empress asks the spirits to explain creation and the universe to her because she wishes to write a Cabbala, or a philosophical treatise about the nature of God, the soul, and the physical world. The spirits explain that the world is made up of self-moving matter, and the soul is really just the rational part of beings’ material bodies. But when the Empress asks about original sin, the spirits suddenly disappear—they get banished to the other side of the planet.
The Empress reconnects with the spirits and asks if one of them can come serve as a scribe to help with her Cabbala. They agree to send a “plain and rational” woman writer, the Duchess of Newcastle—or Margaret Cavendish, who advises the Empress to write her Cabbala as a fictional allegory. The two women become dear Platonic friends, and their souls frequently visit one another’s worlds. On a visit to the Blazing World, the Duchess admits that she wishes she could conquer a world for herself—but the spirits convince her that it’s better to rule a fictional “celestial world” than try to conquer a real one. Later, the Empress visits the Duchess’s world, where they visit a London theater, observe the English monarchy up close, and meet the Duchess Cavendish’s incredibly “wise, honest, witty, complaisant and noble” husband, the Duke of Newcastle, who has lost most of his vast estate in the English Civil War. The Duchess asks for the Empress’s help convincing Fortune to stop disfavoring her husband. Honesty and Prudence speak on the Duke’s behalf, but neither of them manages to convince Fortune, so the Duchess resolves to learn to accept Fortune’s folly. After the trial, the Empress notes that she has created divisions in the Blazing World by introducing a new religion and turning the different groups against one another. She resolves to return to the old system: “one sovereign, one religion, one law, and one language.”
In the second section of The Blazing World, the Empress learns that a war has broken out back in her native world, and her country is being devastated. The fish-men discover the icy passage between the two worlds, and the Empress decides to send an army to defend her native land. The giants, who are architects, develop a class of special golden ships that can travel underwater, and the Empress leads a fleet of them to the shores of her country, ESFI (England, Scotland, France, and Ireland). Wearing shining star-stone clothes and standing on the fish-men’s backs, so that she appears to be walking on water, the Empress gives an impassioned speech in defense of her country. Her people worship her as a goddess. Her army destroys the enemy ships besieging her country’s shores, then invades and burns down her enemies’ cities until they all pledge loyalty to the King of ESFI. The Empress returns to the Blazing World, where she discusses riches and theater with the Duchess. Finally, the Duchess Cavendish returns to her own world, where she tells everyone she can about the splendors of the Blazing World. In her brief Epilogue, Cavendish encourages her readers to imagine glorious fantasy worlds of their own.
