Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Blazing World, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fiction, Fancy, and Utopia
Gender Hierarchy and Women’s Freedom
Monarchy and Government
Philosophy, Science, and Religion
Love and Friendship
Summary
Analysis
A traveling merchant sailor falls in love with a wealthy young noblewoman in a foreign land. The Lady will never marry him because of his low status, so he abducts her. This angers the gods, who send a giant storm to sweep his ship towards the icy North Pole. The merchant and his crew freeze to death, but the gods save the young Lady. At the North Pole, this world meets with “another Pole of another world.” This other world orbits its own sun, but always remains perfectly parallel to our world. It also isn’t visible from our world because the sun blocks it out.
The Blazing World begins with a parody of medieval romance: instead of showing a hero court a noblewoman or save a damsel in distress, it shows the merchant brutally kidnap the Lady, who will become the story’s true hero. Cavendish uses this twist to hint that the tropes of romance fiction—like the strapping, virtuous man courting the passive, powerless woman—often actually function to justify patriarchy in the real world. In turn, this speaks to her deep interest in the purpose of fiction: if ordinary romances reinforce society’s gender inequality, then can women’s literature and science fiction help challenge it?
Themes
The boat crosses over into this other world, and it sails down a stream between two ice-covered landmasses. The young Lady sees a group of bear-like creatures that walk on two legs, like humans, and speak an unfamiliar language. The creatures approach the boat, carry the young Lady off it, and then sink it, with the sailors’ bodies onboard. The Lady is frightened, but the creatures actually treat her kindly. They carry her to their city, which is really a complex of underground caves. All the creatures in the city assemble to meet her, and the females take her to a special cave and care for her.
Cavendish’s protagonist enters a world that is parallel to her own, yet nevertheless belongs to the same universe. This Blazing World operates according to its own laws of nature, but still resembles our own in many fundamental ways. For instance, the bear-human hybrid creatures show that biology and reproduction function differently in the Blazing World, but they still live in the cold polar region, which shows that weather, ecology, and the basic physics of heat are likely the same in the Blazing World as in our own. Cavendish’s choices about what to change and what to leave the same in the Blazing World are significant, because they point to the elements of her own world that she hopes could be different.
Themes
The “bear-men” realize that the Lady isn’t used to the cold climate, so they take her to a warmer island, where the “fox-men” live. The bear-men and fox-men agree to bring the Lady to their Emperor. They take her across a river to the gooselike bird-men, across another to the satyrs, and then across a third to a kingdom of green-colored people. All of the groups get along and speak the same language.
The Blazing World is full of several human-animal hybrid species, none of which could possibly exist in the Lady’s world. In a sense, they are just like the different groups of people that populate Earth—only they collaborate and communicate effortlessly, instead of fighting over wealth, power, and status.
Themes
The bear-men, fox-men, bird-men, satyrs, and green people sail the Lady across the sea to the Emperor’s island. Their navigation techniques and knowledge of the sea are excellent, even though they don’t have the technology that seafarers use on Earth. Instead, they have giant engines that shoot out wind to flatten waves and propel their ships forward, and they make special formations to weather storms. Their ships are made of gold and leather, but light and seaworthy. Recognizing her hosts’ generosity, the Lady starts to calm down and learn their language.
While the Lady initially finds the Blazing World strange and threatening, its extraordinary technology shows her that it’s actually radically better than her own world. In turn, this otherworldly technology reflects Cavendish’s hope that human life and society can radically improve in the future. Of course, contemporary readers will note that modern ships are similar to the fantastical ones that Cavendish describes here (even if they aren’t made of leather or gold).
Themes
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The fleet reaches the Emperor’s land, which is ringed by steep cliffs. Another fleet of boats sets out from the shore to meet the Lady. The narrator explains that the Blazing World is harmonious and peaceful because everyone submits to the same Emperor. The fleet brings the Lady down a series of narrow, winding rivers to the fertile, beautiful area where the Emperor lives. On the way, they pass a number of cities made of precious stones.
The Blazing World is an absolute monarchy—or a kingdom in which the king has total power over everything. But, contrary to the modern assumption that dictatorship creates cruelty and unrest, the Blazing World is actually peaceful and unified. In fact, Cavendish clearly thinks that absolute monarchy is the best form of government. This makes sense in the context of her life as a noblewoman and staunch supporter of the English monarchy during the English Civil War.
Themes
Literary Devices
Paradise, the Emperor’s city, is built on canals and full of golden buildings in monumental classical architecture. The Emperor’s palace is at the top of a hill, ringed by a four-mile-long arch and guarded by guards at regularly-spaced gates. Inside the palace, the Emperor’s apartment is made of precious stones, including many different kinds of diamonds that don’t exist in our world.
The name “Paradise” and the Emperor’s extravagant, gated palace strongly suggest that the Blazing World is an allegory for Heaven (with the Emperor representing God). Yet this is only one of many ways to read the novel—for instance, the Blazing World could also represent the human mind, the future of society, the conquest of the Americas, or England if the monarchy had won the English Civil War. Rather than asking which interpretation is correct, readers ought to explore the significance and implications of each one.
Themes
Literary Devices
When the Emperor meets the Lady, he thinks that she is a goddess—but she explains that she isn’t. He marries her instead and gives her “absolute power to rule and govern all [the blazing] world.” Her royal subjects continue to worship her like a goddess. Once declared Empress, she wears clothing made of pearls and diamonds, which clearly identify her as royalty.
The Emperor mistakes the Lady for a goddess because she is just as striking and exotic to him as the Blazing World is to her. By turning the Lady into the Empress, Cavendish inverts more medieval social norms and literary tropes (in which men hold power and almost never willingly give it up to women). The book becomes a fantasy of female political empowerment, designed to explore the possibilities of a government run by and for women. In addition to shining a light on Cavendish’s own ambition, the book shows how fiction can function as a tool for planning and imagining different futures (such as more just social arrangements).
Themes
The Emperor and Empress have infinite gold and jewels, and they oversee an extensive barter economy. Their kingdom’s common people aren’t of any familiar complexion—instead, they’re various shades of green, purple, red, and orange. The blazing world is also full of numerous inhabitants of other “sorts, shapes, figures, dispositions, and humors.” This includes the bear-men and fox-men, but also many other groups, including the worm-men, lice-men, magpie-men, giants, and many others. Each group works in a profession fit for its species, and they all have highly advanced art, science, and institutions. For example, the bear-men are experimental philosophers, the bird-men are astronomers, the fox-men are politicians, and the giants are architects.
After becoming Empress, the Lady takes in the Blazing World as a whole. She learns that, not only do plenty of unusual hybrid creatures live there, but it also lacks all of the familiar creatures that she is accustomed to seeing on Earth. The Blazing World’s fantastical creatures challenge the categories that readers intuitively use to understand the world (most importantly, the division between humans and animals). But, despite being hybrids who don’t clearly fall into familiar categories, they also all have clearly defined places in their own world’s social, political, and intellectual order. In fact, the Blazing World’s society seems to be organized around knowledge, which reflects Cavendish’s intense interest in the early modern science of her time (and its potential to improve human society).
Themes
Literary Devices
The Empress asks the statesmen and priests to tell her about the kingdom’s government and religion. The statesmen explain that the kingdom has few laws because laws cause conflict, and that it’s an absolute monarchy because bodies (including kingdoms) naturally have one head. Just as the people worship just one God, they obey just one Emperor. While the subjects attend many different churches, the priests explain, they all worship the same God and say the same prayers. Men worship together in public, while women worship alone in private, and the priests and statesmen are eunuchs because marriage would distract them from their duties.
The statesmen’s explanation again reflects Cavendish’s belief that absolute monarchy is the best form of government: she thinks that people naturally respect and obey a benevolent king or queen, which creates social order. Similarly, the Blazing World’s religion is also unified, even if its practitioners are diverse. Thus, the Blazing World is a utopia specifically because it’s all united under a particular set of institutions and values—in other words, because it’s ruled by a single global empire with total power. This is a significant comment on real-world politics, given that England was building an overseas colonial empire during Cavendish’s time, and that Cavendish was deeply committed to the English monarchy.
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Literary Devices
Next, the architects tell the Empress that the kingdom’s houses are built low to protect them from the elements, with thick walls to help them regulate temperature, and with arches and pillars to make them sturdy and beautiful.
The Blazing World’s architecture makes sense according to the laws of physics and resembles that of some real-world societies, but it is very different from that of the places where Cavendish lived her life (England, France, and the Spanish Netherlands). In other words, it is a rational but utopian solution to real-world problems—which again shows how Cavendish’s fictional world can help her readers improve the real world.
Themes
The bird-men (who are astronomers) tell the Empress about their world’s splendid sun and sparkling moon, which are both made of stone. They don’t yet know if the sun generates heat because it’s burning, or because its motion creates light. They debate whether air densities explain the sun and moon’s changing appearances and positions. They agree that motes (floating particles lit up by the sun) are tiny living creatures. They also know about many other “blazing stars” besides the sun and moon, which is why they call their world the Blazing World.
Having learned about her new society, the Empress now decides to learn everything she can about nature in the Blazing World. She will spend much of the rest of the book immersed in this quest for knowledge, which reflects Cavendish’s own lifelong involvement in English scientific circles. In fact, these scientists were just starting to develop modern scientific principles and experimental methods at the time. The bird-men’s theories about the stars echo major scientific debates that Cavendish participated in.
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Literary Devices
The bird-men offer various theories about how heat and air density create wind, and they declare that snow is a frothy mixture of water and fire from the moon. Meanwhile, the fish-men have discovered that ice is made of water mixed with vapor from the seas. The bird-men debate how hot, cold, and clouds mix to create thunder and lightning.
To modern readers, the bird-men and fish-men’s explanations may seem to range from accurate to outlandish. But Cavendish still depicts them as serious scientists doing their best to explain complex phenomena through the best available hypotheses. Nature may function very differently in the Blazing World than it does in our own world, but the scientific method remains basically the same.
Themes
The Empress asks the bear-men (natural philosophers) to test the bird-men’s theories with their telescopes, but the bear-men all disagree about the motions of the sun and earth, the number and size of the stars, and more. She sends the bear-men to the pole that connected to her original world, and they report seeing three blazing stars there—two bright and one dim. But they can’t agree whether they have seen three different stars, or just the same star in different positions. The Empress orders the bear-men to break their telescopes, which have only deceived them. But the bear-men humbly plead with her to let them keep the telescopes, which delight them, and she agrees.
The bear-men’s experiments reveal Cavendish’s scientific empiricism—or her belief that the surest route to knowledge is through observing the external world. At the same time, the bear-men’s experiments turn out to be absurd and unsuccessful. To understand why, it’s helpful to know that Cavendish frequently clashed with scientists whose experiments she considered useless and misguided (such as Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle). Thus, while Cavendish clearly believes in science and experimentation, she also makes a point to mock science that goes wrong and confuses instead of clarifying.
Themes
The bear-men thank the Empress by taking out a microscope and showing her several extraordinary small objects, like a fly’s composite eyes, the pores in a piece of charcoal, a poisonous nettle, a flea, and a louse. She asks if they can also magnify large objects—they look at a whale through the microscope, but it's too large. Instead, at the Empress’s command, they create a reverse microscope that makes the whale look tiny. They also try to make a looking glass that will let them see vacuums, but they fail.
The Empress’s conflict with the bear-men over microscopes also represents a real episode from Cavendish’s life. When prominent scientists showed her tiny objects under a microscope, she became very interested in microscopy and bought a microscope of her own. Later, she feuded with the Royal Society of London over whether microscope results were reliable. Early microscopes often didn’t work well, and Cavendish didn’t think that seeing the outside of a small object could tell scientists anything meaningful about the object’s true nature inside. Thus, while she clearly admires microscopes’ potential as scientific tools, she is also skeptical of scientists who rely too heavily on them.
Themes
Literary Devices
Next, the fish-men and worm-men tell the Empress about animals in the sea and on land. The fish-men discuss the salt in the sea, which they claim causes waves, and the circulatory systems of different sea-creatures. The worm-men tell her that, like sea-creatures, some insects have blood and others don’t. They conclude that animals’ blood doesn’t actually carry their spirits. They explain that some animals can live both on land and in the water because they’re part fish and part flesh. This is possible because nature has adapted their respiratory systems to their unique habitats.
The fish-men and worm-men, who are natural philosophers (biologists and earth scientists), combine the bodies of animals with the minds of humans capable of analyzing the environments where they live. Regardless of whether their hypotheses accurately explain the Blazing World’s natural environment, they still demonstrate how science as a method can expand people’s knowledge and power in any world. Meanwhile, their discussion of animals and their spirits foreshadows the Empress’s conversations about mind and body with the immaterial spirits in the next section of the book.
Themes
The Empress asks about reproduction, and the worm- and fish-men also explain that, in some animals, the offspring look just like the parent, but in others, the offspring takes a different form—like the way cheese gives birth to maggots. They also explain that different animals perceive the world differently—although it’s difficult to understand how. Finally, they agree with the fish- and bird-men’s theory that salt mixes with water to create ice and snow—but the Empress wonders what happens to the salt when ice melts back into water.
This conversation about reproduction and perception shows that the Empress is interested in the origins of life and the kinds of minds that different life forms have. This points to the more philosophical concerns to which her scientific questioning eventually leads her—including the origins of the world and what kinds of perception and reason are reliable.
Themes
The worm- and fish-men debate whether springs shrink and grow over time because of underground water flows, or because of particles in the water. They argue that spring water is fresh because of heat deep in the earth, and that different amounts of heat produce different minerals, which accounts for their unequal distribution around the planet. For instance, gold appears in moderately (but not extremely) hot zones inside the planet.
The worm- and fish-men’s knowledge of the Blazing World’s geology and hydrology suggests that it is very similar to the Earth in many fundamental ways. This again shows that Cavendish’s speculation about the Blazing World is a way to test out her own scientific hypotheses about Earth. The worm- and fish-men’s science is imperfect, but the Blazing World’s superabundance of gold and jewels shows that it’s clearly more successful than science on Earth.
Themes
The Empress asks the ape-men (who are chemists) to test the hypothesis that moderate heat creates gold, and they speculate whether it’s possible to make different metals artificially. The ape-men also report that, unlike with animals, they can’t predict the movements of vegetables and minerals. The Empress suggests using the bear-men’s microscopes to look closer. The bear-men say they can’t see inside the Earth, where there’s no light, but the worm-men note that they can perceive other creatures inside the Earth—although microscopes won’t help them.
The ape-men’s claims about the motion of animals show that they are investigating the fundamental question of what differentiates living from nonliving matter. Again, this foreshadows the conversations about the nature of life and the universe that the Empress will soon have with the spirits who visit her. And the bear-men and worm-men’s debate over how to learn about minerals inside the Earth again points to Cavendish’s focus on epistemology—or the different methods that scientists and other thinkers can use to learn about the nature of the world.
Themes
The Empress asks the worm-men whether minerals are colorless, but the worm-men say that everything has to have a color, because otherwise it would be nothing at all. In fact, by nature every physical thing must have a color, shape, place, weight, and so on. Their wise discourse impresses the Empress, who asks whether there is anything without qualities inside the Earth. They explain that seeds, while small and imperceptible, multiply and grow into larger organisms by mixing with other substances. But if the Empress wants to know about non-beings, the worm-men say, she has to ask the immaterial spirits. The Empress asks where forms come from, and they respond that “nature is eternal and infinite,” so forms have always existed. The worm-men also tell the Empress about how different species work together to create mixed species, like weeds—which kill worms.
These topics of discussion turn the conversation towards the philosophical question of what determines something’s identity. On the one hand, the idea that nothing can exist without qualities like color is significant because it means that many of things’ important, essential traits depend on their physical bodies, and not on some deeper inner nature or soul. On the other hand, the existence of seeds and immaterial spirits suggests that the essence of life could be a nonphysical soul, which directs the motion and development of matter. Forms, or the basic ideas and structures that repeatedly appear in nature, are also an important dimension of this problem: they may be eternal blueprints that have always existed in nature (as philosophers like Plato suggest), or they may simply be the result of different physical things repeatedly behaving in similar ways.
Themes
Literary Devices
The Empress next meets with the ape-men, who explain how they have found that all natural bodies are made of a few basic elements. Some think these basic elements are air, water, earth, and fire, but others disagree. The Empress replies that, in her view, nature is all “one infinite self-moving body” which is “divided into infinite [constantly-changing] parts.” Rather than trying to figure out the basic elements of nature, the Empress says, the ape-men should do experiments that actually benefit other people.
The Empress’s conversation with the ape-men, like all of her other dialogues in this section of the book, is really about the meaning of science. The ape-men want to find the fundamental building blocks of all matter, just like modern scientists who have organized them into the periodic table. But the Empress believes that focusing on the interconnections between things in nature is an easier and more useful way to explain the world than breaking nature down into separate, disconnected component parts. In other words, the Empress defines nature through its totality, whereas the ape-men define it through its parts.
Themes
The ape-men tell the Empress how the imperial people live for hundreds of years, without seeming to age. They use a special natural gum from the desert that makes them vomit out toxins and shed their skin. If wrapped in a cloth for nine months afterward, they are reborn with the body and strength of a 20-year-old. They also only drink water from limestone and eat fowl. The Empress is amazed—she has heard legends of the philosopher’s stone, which cures diseases, but never a way to reverse aging.
The ape-men have done practical experiments to benefit other people. These experiments are Cavendish’s interpretation of scientists’ and alchemists’ longtime search for rejuvenation technologies. And they again show how Cavendish uses her fantasy world to explore the meaning of Western culture’s aspirations to scientific and cultural power. The ruling imperial people’s alchemy not only makes them young—it also allows them to continue living and ruling forever, which creates a more stable system of government over time. Thus, Cavendish’s fantasies about superior technology are really just a means to fulfill her political fantasies about creating an invincible absolute monarchy.
Themes
The Empress next assembles the anatomists, herbalists, and satyrs (who are followers of the ancient Greek physician Galen). The herbalists describe how their herbs cure people, which means that these herbs must have reason and wisdom. The Empress asks the anatomists to dissect monsters for her, but they refuse, as doing so won’t prevent nature from making more monsters. Next, the Galenic physicians explain how a highly infectious kind of internal gangrene causes the plague. They still haven’t reached consensus about whether the plague spreads because small particles jump from person to person, or because one person’s particles start imitating the motion of an infected person’s.
Like the ape-men, the anatomists, herbalists, and Galenic physicians offer practical scientific insights, not theoretical ones. They do not know for a fact what makes up herbs, monsters, or the plague, but they do know what role each can and should play in human society. Modern readers will know that understanding the inner nature of medicines, animals, and diseases can help sciences use and fight them. But, in the 17th century, Cavendish did not seem to think that this was as important a goal as merely identifying problems and solutions.
Themes
The Empress talks with several other groups. The spider-men (mathematicians) show her their designs of lines and shapes, but the Empress doesn’t understand them. The lice-men (geometricians) try to weigh air, but the Empress finds this ridiculous and forces them to stop practicing.
Cavendish’s Empress continues to sort the meaningful sciences from the meaningless ones. In addition to reflecting her interest in the practical technological applications of science, preference for natural science over pure mathematics also shows what kind of scientific method the Empress values. Specifically, she believes that empirically observing the world is a surer way to understand it than analyzing it theoretically.
Themes
The magpie-, parrot-, and jackdaw-men (orators and logicians) are next, but one of the parrot-men gets confused during a complicated speech and publicly humiliates himself. The Empress tells the orators to focus less on eloquence and more on ideas. Next, the logicians present her with several syllogisms about the wisdom of politicians and knaves, beasts and philosophers. The Empress stops them and tells the logicians that, while reason is noble and valuable, they are misusing it and wasting their time. The logicians reply that their art is necessary for understanding the perfection in nature, but the Empress says that most of nature is imperfect—besides God—and she never wants to see the logicians again.
The Empress sees the value in the orators and logicians’ arts, but only when they are applied to meaningful real-world challenges. Like the mathematicians and geometricians, the orators and logicians err in believing that their skills are in the abstract. For instance, the parrot-man tries to show off his ability to persuade, without believing in any cause, and the logicians care more about the abstract beauty of logic than the actual world where they live. Instead, the Empress argues that these arts and sciences are not valuable in themselves, but only as tools in service of the natural sciences. Thus, Cavendish suggests that biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy hold the real truth about the universe, not math, logic, and philosophy.
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The Empress concludes that all the people in this world have a defective religion, as they have no knowledge of God. She decides to build churches and convert everyone to her own religion. She teaches a large cohort of women the basics of her faith, and they gradually convert everyone in the kingdom, which makes the Empress a beloved leader. Still, she starts to worry that her people will forget the nature of God, so she looks for ways to reinforce their faith.
The Empress decides to transform the Blazing World’s religion after talking with the logicians, who seem to think that human rationality is perfect enough to worship instead of God. The Empress’s conversion mission strongly resembles Europe’s colonial missions around the world, which wedded the quest for power and wealth with a religious imperative to convert non-Europeans to Christianity.
Themes
The bird-men tell the Empress about a mountain that burns because a rock inside it bursts into flame when it’s wet. She has the worm-men bring her the rock. She also asks the bird-men to bring her part of the sun—and while they can’t, they offer to bring her a piece of a different star instead. The Empress builds two chapels, one of wet fire-stone and one of star-stone. In the dark night, both chapels emit a brilliant light and rotate slowly in opposite directions. The Empress preaches about sin and terror in the hellish fire-stone chapel, and repentance and salvation in the heavenly star-stone chapel. Using her chapels, the Empress get the Blazing World’s inhabitants to continue believing in her religion, without coercion or violence.
The Empress uses the Blazing World’s miraculous natural phenomena to convince its people to worship her God instead of their own. Controlling the Blazing World’s religion also helps the Empress maintain political control over its people. Notably, however, this is only possible because of the world’s advanced technology for mining the mountain and the stars. Thus, Cavendish suggests that science and technology give people power, and this power is the cornerstone of religion and good governance. The fire- and star-stone make such an impression on the kingdom’s people simply because of their extraordinary, blinding light. Thus, in addition to again suggesting that people’s senses control their thinking and decisions more than their intellect, the persuasive power of the Empress’s chapels also suggests that religion may only serve to unite people by manipulating them.
Themes
Next, the Empress starts to wonder about the state of her own original world. She decides that the only way to learn about it is by sending immaterial spirits to find out. The worm-men tell her that there are no such spirits underground, but the fly-men affirm that there are in the air, and they set up a meeting between the spirits and the Empress. The spirits tell the Empress about her homeland, friends, and acquaintances. She asks them about Cabbalist philosophy, and they tell her about how the writer Ben Jonson mocked the Cabbalists in his play The Alchemist. The Empress remembers seeing the play, and she asks the spirits whom the different characters represent. But the spirits have forgotten.
The immaterial spirits’ arrival is a significant development because, thus far, Cavendish has primarily focused on the physical world and sought to understand it through science. In fact, it’s not entirely clear whether her worldview is consistent with the existence of immaterial spirits at all. Yet these spirits also offer her the only way to bridge the gap between her original world and her new one. Her interest in Cabbala, or the mystical interpretation of the relationship between God, the physical universe, and human beings, shows that she has moved beyond science and into the realm of philosophy. Specifically, she is starting to ask questions that natural science cannot answer.
Themes
The Empress is surprised to learn that spirits have memories and can forget, but the spirits explain that they wouldn’t be able to know anything about the present without memory. The Empress points out that the spirits can predict the future without knowing it, so they should be able to describe the past without memory. But they explain that, in reality, they only predict the future based on their detailed knowledge of the present and past.
This conversation is really about psychology—and specifically the way the mind stores and processes information. Clearly, the spirits are not all-knowing deities. Instead, their minds are different from human ones, and their wisdom is greater, only because they are not constrained by physical bodies (so they can go anywhere they want and learn anything they wish). In this sense, they embody the ideal conditions for knowing about the world, but this knowledge is still based on their senses, and not on any supernatural insight into hidden truths.
Themes
The Empress continues asking the spirits about the Cabbala. She asks how many parts it has—usually two, respond the spirits. She asks what kind it is—and the spirits say it’s a mix of traditional and scriptural, as well as of literal, philosophical, and moral. She asks whether it comes from human reason or divine inspiration, and the spirits respond that many Cabbalists claim to be divinely inspired, but it’s impossible to know whether or not this is true. The spirits also note that Cabbalas are based on faith, not reason—and many human philosophers tend to confuse the two. Only philosophers who study mysticism and divinity, rather than sense and reason, are true Cabbalists.
The Empress’s questions about the Cabbala might seem confusing or irrelevant to modern readers. However, she’s really asking a simple and important question: how can people answer the greater questions that science can’t answer, like what created the world and what God is like? She offers some possible solutions, including looking to scripture, seeking out mystical or divine inspiration, and philosophical deduction. But the spirits clearly reject this last option, which makes the same mistakes as the logicians: it wrongly assumes that human reason is perfect and infallible.
Themes
The Empress next asks whether God is made of Ideas or Cabbala. The spirits respond that God can’t be made of anything, because he’s God, and he’s perfect beyond the understanding of any living being. They go on to tell her that the Cabbala isn’t made of numbers, and it isn’t sinful to be ignorant of the Cabbala, because God is merciful. They explain that the theological Cabbala is superior to the natural one because it’s based on faith instead of reason, and that this faith comes from God’s “divine saving grace.” Although faith and reason are different, the spirits clarify, people can still have both reasoned opinions about the world and faith in God. But they cannot directly know God through reason—after all, people have all sorts of contradictory beliefs about God.
Readers can think of the next long section of the Empress’s conversation with the spirits as Cavendish’s attempt to test out her philosophical ideas about the nature of the universe. She asks what the world would actually look like if her ideas are true, and then she asks whether this world could actually function coherently. The spirits’ lecture clarifies that reason is the right tool for understanding the world, while faith is the right tool for understanding God. In other words, they use philosophy to define where scientific inquiry must end and religious faith must begin. This means that there’s no contradiction in the Empress dedicating her life to scientific inquiry, yet also setting up a new religion for the Blazing World, which is based on faith.
Themes
Next, the Empress asks the spirits whether they are what make physical beings move, and they say no—in fact, spirits can only move because the physical bodies they inhabit do. Yet the spirits can move fast over long distances when they inhabit bodies made of a special, pure, extremely light kind of matter. Since they have no bodies, the spirits have no direct knowledge of nature—instead, their knowledge is supernatural. But it's not perfect and universal, since only God can have such knowledge. Because the spirits don’t have any physical parts, the Empress agrees that they were right to say that bodies move them, and not vice-versa.
This obscure conversation about whether spirits move bodies or bodies move spirits is really Cavendish’s way of addressing a major philosophical debate about where the true essence of a person (or other being) really lies. Many philosophers traditionally think of people’s true identities as their souls, and their bodies as mere vessels for the souls. The spirits partially support this view by noting that they can enter different bodies. But they also partially reject it when they emphasize that bodies move them. Similarly, they note than they can only understand the physical world by attaching themselves to a body and then experiencing the world through that body’s senses. Thus, while Cavendish accepts the division between body and spirit, she thinks that bodies are much more important—and spirits much less so—than her philosophical contemporaries do.
Themes
The bodies the spirits inhabit are formed of many different kinds of matter, but the spirits themselves don’t have any inherent body. They can’t be compared to water or fire, which are material. They never leave physical vehicles, although these vehicles can change in form.
Cavendish describes the spirit (or soul, or mind) as an immaterial force that enters a physical body and takes up residence in it. This view is similar to that of philosophers who believe that all individuals are the unity of an immaterial soul and a material body. But these philosophers generally think that the individual’s essence is really their soul, and the body is merely a vessel. Cavendish rejects this conclusion. Instead, she thinks that, if the soul is really immaterial, it really can’t do anything without the body. This means that the body is far more than a mere empty vessel—instead, it’s the vehicle that drives around the helpless, motionless soul.
Themes
The Empress asks the spirits if people are “little world[s],” and they say yes—so are flies, worms, and other animals. She asks if humans’ ancestors were just as wise, and the spirits say yes. She asks whether Paradise is a place in the world, or a world in itself, and the spirits respond that Paradise is right here, at the place where her palace is located in the imperial city. The Empress asks if all the animals could speak at the beginning of the world, and the spirits say that only the hybrid creatures like the worm-men and bear-men could.
The Empress’s conversations with the spirits turn from the nature of mind and body to the origins of the world and the relationship between the different worlds that she has experienced. Cavendish uses this portion of the conversation to establish that the Blazing World absolutely could exist. It’s logically consistent with all of her own philosophical beliefs about the nature of the world, and once those fundamental principles are set in stone, the Blazing World is just as viable as our own world. Thus, Cavendish encourages her readers to see that many seemingly essential features of their world could actually be totally different, and the fundamental nature of reality would not have to change at all.
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Literary Devices
The Empress asks the spirits whether they were the ones who drove Adam out of Paradise, and they say no. She asks where Adam went, and they explain that he left the world where she is now for the world where she originally came from. The Empress concludes that the Cabbalists are wrong to think of Paradise as a purely immaterial world, when it’s clearly “a world of living, material creatures.” The Empress asks if the Devil was in the serpent who tempted Eve, and they say yes. Next, she asks if light is the same thing as Heaven, and the spirits explain that the real Heaven is far beyond the mere region that contains the stars.
Cavendish again connects her work to the Christian creation story by showing the spirits declare that Paradise is really the Blazing World. Of course, this also lends validity to the interpretation that the Lady actually died on the merchant’s ship at the beginning of the book and has gone to Paradise. Cavendish suggests that this Paradise is not a mystical spirit-world populated only by people’s souls—instead, it’s a real, physical place where they get new bodies and live out eternity.
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The spirits also tell the Empress that matter was not all liquid at the beginning of the universe, and it’s impossible to know if the universe was truly made in six days. The spirits reject the Cabbalists’ fanciful speculations about the deeper meanings of numbers, like the idea that six represents marriage and seven represents God. In fact, it’s impossible to represent God, who is perfect and unknowable, because numbers are imperfect. The Empress and the spirits agree that it’s therefore useless to describe the creation of the world through numbers, although numbers can grow to infinity, just like the universe, which has grown out from God’s infinite power.
The spirits encourage the Empress to start thinking of religious doctrines about the creation of the world as metaphors, rather than literal truths. Since human reason and language are imperfect, they suggest, Scripture can never perfectly express the truth of God and creation. Indeed, just like people cannot fully grasp infinity, they cannot fully grasp God—but they can try, despite knowing they will always fall short. Thus, Scripture is just an imperfect attempt to describe God’s indescribable perfection—it’s like looking at God’s reflection off of a rippling pool of water. Scripture makes it possible to get an imperfect glimpse of God, Cavendish concludes, but it will never represent God fully or accurately.
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The spirits clarify many more of the Empress’s doubts. The Empress asks whether the stars and planets come from the heavens, or from the ether. The spirits respond that, instead, the Empress should be asking where the heavens and ether come from in the first place. This would be the true origin of the stars and planets.
Understanding the true origin of the universe requires learning where the very first physical thing came from—and not just the planet where we happen to live and the stars that we happen to see. By pointing this out, the spirits show the Empress that the answer to this question is more far-flung than she thought—which implies that she must find it through faith and divine inspiration, not science and reason.
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The Empress asks the spirits about what Plato’s followers call “three principles of man”—the intellect, the soul, and the soul’s effects on the body. The spirits respond that these principles are meaningless, because human reason cannot understand them. The spirits say that there are no true atheists, and they again explain that they are immaterial, but inhabit material forms, including air itself. They explain that there is no world of spirits, since a world must be material and spirits are not. When the Empress asks when spirits were created, the spirits admit that they don’t know, and they argue that the answer simply doesn’t matter because it wouldn’t help mortals at all.
Cavendish uses this conversation to clearly distinguish her philosophy, which views the world as primarily material, from the more conventional ideas popularized by philosophers like Plato, who believed that there is a material world of things and an immaterial world of ideas. The spirits also admit that they can’t answer certain questions—and in doing so, they emphasize how many things are impossible to understand, which means that philosophical knowledge has certain inherent limits. Thus, the Empress must grapple with the fact that, despite being all-powerful in the Blazing World, there are many things that she will simply never know, because nobody ever can.
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The spirits tell the Empress that the mortal soul isn’t the same thing as an immaterial spirit, and that it doesn’t matter where Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory are—just that they exist. The Empress asks whether the soul can have a shape (no) and whether spirits can be naked (no, because they don’t have bodies). The spirits also don’t know when human souls were created, but they do believe that souls immediately join new bodies after their original bodies die. They also don’t know if “all matter [is] soulified.” But they do know that, while two immaterial souls cannot share the same body, multiple material souls can—after all, nature is just one enormous material body made of numerous smaller ones.
The difference between the soul and the spirit might seem like a meaningless technicality, but actually it’s the key to understanding Cavendish’s view of the world. Philosophers have long suggested that humans and animals are conscious because, unlike other things in the world, they have special, immaterial souls (or minds). Cavendish agrees, but she thinks that the soul is made of matter. Thus, like earlier philosophers, she still views people as the union of a soul and a body—she just thinks that the soul happens to be physical. Despite her belief that fantasizing can be a useful alternative to acting in the real world, then, Cavendish actually thinks that fantasy is a real, physical object. Modern readers might find this easier to understand by thinking of the Blazing World as a physical thing in the sense that it's made of a series of electrical signals in Cavendish’s brain.
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The spirits explain that everything physical in the world has three parts: the inanimate part (or body), the sensitive part (or life), and the rational part (or soul). While divine souls and spirits have life without bodies, souls need bodies. The Empress compares the soul to the sun and the body to the moon, but the spirits say it’s the other way around: the body is like the sun and the spirit the moon, because the body gives the spirit its motion (like the sun gives the moon its light).
Cavendish’s metaphor about the sun and moon may help readers understand her unusual view of the nature of life. But it shouldn’t be misinterpreted as meaning that the body contains the essence of a person’s identity and personality, any more than the soul does. Whereas most philosophers thought that the soul controls the body’s movements, Cavendish thinks that the body controls the soul’s because it moves on its own, while the soul just sits around inside.
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Literary Devices
When the Empress asks whether the serpent tempted Eve because of an evil spirit, the spirits reply that spirits cannot commit evil, so instead, the Empress asks whether supernatural evil exists. The spirits say that it might exist, but it can never be as evil as God is good. The Empress asks whether animals have evil spirits, and the spirits say that animals sometimes do evil things to get food, but are generally less cruel to each other than people are. In fact, beings with good and evil spirits tend to mix together.
The Empress returns to a subject she has already asked about: the nature of humankind’s original sin. In fact, it’s reasonable to view her as a stand-in for Eve in the Bible—after all, she is in Paradise, seeking absolute knowledge about the nature of the universe and God. In this way, Cavendish could be seen as criticizing and reinterpreting the traditional version of the story, which holds that Eve caused the fall of man by defying God and eating from the tree of knowledge. Instead, the Empress seems to save the world and her people through knowledge.
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The spirits explain that Heaven is made of light, but not fire, and that the bodies that souls occupy don’t affect whether the souls are happy or not. They don’t know if animals’ souls leave the material world, and they conclude that “natural lives, forms and matter” always stay together in the material world.
The spirits’ speculation about the soul’s journey after death again suggests that the Blazing World may really be the afterlife. Their comment about “lives, forms and matter” again reinforces Cavendish’s theory that living beings are entirely material—including the soul, spirit, or life-force, which is usually imagined as immaterial instead.
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The Empress asks whether the first humans ate better food than the beasts who lived around them, but the spirits respond that the humans and beasts would have all sought out the best natural food that they could find. She asks whether the first man named all the species of fish, and the spirits say no, because he lived on land. Of course, he did name birds (who are “partly airy, and partly earthy creatures”) and all the other animals. The Empress asks about whether the animals that exist now are different from those that existed in the past, and the spirits say yes—but the overall number is the same. They explain that not all the original animals went on Noah’s Ark, but “the principal kinds” did.
The Empress’s curiosity about the natural evolution of humans and animals may seem irrelevant to the rest of her conversation with the spirits. But it’s really just another way of asking about the Blazing World’s origins. Specifically, her questions about the first man are ways of investigating the history and origins of science. Similarly, her questions about the Blazing World’s animals in the past and present are an attempt to understand where its peculiar human-animal hybrids came from.
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The spirits affirm that humans became miserable because they disobeyed God, but they declare that they don’t know why, and they ask the Empress not to keep inquiring about the topic. The Empress apologizes for her curiosity, but the spirits declare that it’s natural to seek knowledge. The Empress declares that she wants to make her own Jews’ Cabbala, and then the spirits suddenly disappear. This frightens the Empress, who briefly falls into a trance. When she emerges, she starts to wonder why the spirits disappeared. She thinks that perhaps she tired them out with her questions, but she concludes that, actually, they made a mistake in their answers and were being punished for it.
There are numerous ways to interpret the spirits’ sudden disappearance, as Cavendish never gives any definitive explanation of it. In one sense, the Empress ironically repeats the story of Adam and Eve through her unhealthy curiosity about original sin and the meaning of everything. The only difference is that she gets the spirits banished from Paradise, instead of herself. Under this interpretation, the spirits’ disappearance would mean that humans shouldn’t try to understand God and the meaning of the universe, since they simply can’t. Alternatively, if readers agree with the Empress that the spirits’ answers were the problem, they can reasonably question any of the claims the spirits have made so far—and replace them with ideas of their own. In this way, Cavendish preserves her readers’ power to creatively interpret her philosophy however they wish.
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The Empress tells the worm-men and fly-men that she feels deeply guilty about accidentally getting the spirits banished to the abyss deep within the Earth. The worm-men tell her that the depths of the earth are not so bad a place to live, and she feels slightly better. But she asks the worm-men and fly-men to find the spirits, and they go off looking. The worm- and fly-men soon return and report that the spirits are at the opposite point on the planet from the Empress, and are happy to help with her Cabbala.
Regardless of what the spirits’ banishment means, Cavendish uses it as a plot device to transition from the Empress’s philosophical dialogues to the book’s next phase, in which she meets and befriends the Duchess. While the spirits do not actually end up banished to the abyss, the Empress’s fear suggests that this abyss represents Hell (the counterpart to the Emperor and Empress’s city of Paradise). Finally, the spirits’ banishment shows that, even though the Emperor has given the Empress absolute power over the Blazing World, there are still unfathomable forces beyond her control.
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The spirits offer to send the Empress one of their own as a scribe, and she agrees. They ask whose body she wants the scribe to inhabit. She requests a famous ancient writer, like Plato or Aristotle, but the spirits tell her that such men wouldn’t be willing to write down ideas they don’t agree with. She asks for a more recent well-known writer instead, like Descartes or Galileo, but the spirits insist that these men would refuse to be scribes for a woman. Instead, the spirits propose a lady scribe, the “plain and rational” Duchess of Newcastle, and the Empress agrees.
When the Empress calls for famous philosophers as scribes, the spirits’ responses—that they would be too proud or misogynistic to work with her—point to the serious obstacles that Cavendish faced in her life. Philosophers, scientists, and men in general didn’t take her work seriously because of her gender and lack of formal education. This context is crucial for understanding this book’s fantasy form and unconventional approach to philosophy. Of course, the Duchess of Newcastle is Cavendish herself. By pointing out male philosophers’ biases and having the spirits choose her as the Empress’s scribe, Cavendish insists that her readers should judge all thinkers by their personal and intellectual qualities alone.
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The Duchess of Newcastle appears to the Empress and apologizes for her poor handwriting, but the Empress declares that one of her secretaries will learn to transcribe it. The Duchess proposes that the Empress consult “some famous Jew,” like Moses, to help with her “Jews’ Cabbala,” but the Empress says that she trusts the spirits. However, the Duchess insists that the “spirits are as ignorant as mortals” about many things, and she advises the Empress to leave the work of scriptural interpretation to experts.
When Cavendish appears as a character in her own book, The Blazing World becomes a work of metafiction—or literature that emphasizes the fact that it is a work of fiction created by an author. Of course, this scene raises the question of whether The Blazing World is supposed to be the Duchess Cavendish’s work or the Empress’s Cabbala—meaning that it contains the Empress’s philosophical interpretation of the meaning of the universe. However, in reality, it seems to be both: while Cavendish has imagined the Empress into existence in the first place, the last several dozen pages of the book have contained the Empress’s philosophy, transcribed by Cavendish.
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The Empress agrees with the Duchess and decides to write a “philosophical Cabbala,” but the Duchess tells her that the Cabbala must go beyond what can be known with reason. So the Empress proposes a “moral Cabbala” instead, but the Duchess says that morality is nothing more than “to fear God, and to love [one’s] neighbor.” The Empress suggests a “political Cabbala,” but the Duchess says that government is merely based on reward and punishment, so it doesn’t need a Cabbala.
Each different kind of Cabbala represents a particular kind of methodology, or approach to developing knowledge. Thus, when the Empress decides which kind of Cabbala to write, she is really making a definitive decision about which way of understanding the world she believes to be best. She rejects philosophy because, as the spirits have shown her, reason alone cannot answer the most fundamental questions (like what created the world and what God is like). Meanwhile, the Empress also rejects morality and politics because they don’t need detailed interpretation. Living morally and governing well depend entirely on reason, which means that asking about them won’t help the Empress understand the true secrets of the universe.
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Instead, the Duchess proposes that the Empress “make a poetical or romancical Cabbala, wherein you can use metaphors, allegories, similitudes, etc. and interpret them as you please.” The Empress agrees and thanks the Duchess, whom she declares her favorite person in the world. She spends some time with the Duchess, then sends her back to her world, but asks her to visit from time to time. They become so close that they turn into Platonic lovers.
The Empress’s “poetical or romancical Cabbala” is likely this very book, which uses the Empress’s journey to the Blazing World as a metaphor for Cavendish’s worldview. Cavendish uses the Empress’s rise to power to communicate her faith in absolute monarchy, and the Empress’s endless conversations with the animal-men and spirits in order to present her unique philosophy that the world is made of rational, self-moving matter. Finally, the concept of Platonic love is based on Plato’s vision of love and virtue in the dialogue Symposium, but it only became a popular idea during Cavendish’s life, in the very royal court where she spent her youth. It refers specifically to loving someone because of their virtue and goodness.
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On one of her visits to the Empress, the Duchess is visibly upset. She admits that this is because of her “extreme ambition”—she wants to be a princess. But the Empress tells the Duchess that she already outranks princesses, since Dukes and Duchesses are the highest rank that common subjects can achieve. But the Duchess complains that Dukes and Duchesses can never become Emperors and Empresses. The Empress offers to ask the immaterial spirits to help the Duchess become the Empress of her own world. The spirits appear to her.
The Duchess’s speech allows Cavendish to express her frustrations with the gender roles of her time. Because she could not meaningfully wield political power, her best chance to articulate and spread her ideas was by turning herself into a fictional character. Of course, her desire to rule her own world explains why she has created the Empress as the Blazing World’s all-powerful ruler. Even though modern readers may think that England’s tyrannous monarchy was responsible for oppressing women, Cavendish doesn’t agree. Instead, she views absolute monarchy as the solution to women’s oppression.
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The spirits explain that there are an endless number of different worlds, and the Empress asks if the Duchess can become an Empress in one of them. The spirits respond that all the worlds already have their own people and governments. The Empress insists that it must be possible to conquer one of them, but the spirits recommend against conquest, which inevitably makes rulers “more feared than loved” and gets them deposed. The Duchess insists that she wants to give up her boring life for a life of fame and adventure.
By learning about all of the other worlds, the Empress and Duchess realize that the Empress is actually much less powerful than she feels. She only rules over one world, and there are infinite people who rule infinite other worlds and thus are just as powerful as her. As a result, she starts to see absolute power differently: a truly powerful monarch must rule many worlds, not just their own. Put differently, they have to build an inter-world empire. In turn, this observation raises important questions about Cavendish’s political philosophy. Will rulers inevitably keep seeking more power, until they inevitably overextend themselves and collapse? Does this make absolute monarchy, Cavendish’s preferred form of government, inherently unstable in the long term?
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The spirits recommend that, instead of trying to rule over a “terrestrial world,” the Duchess should create her own “celestial world” through imagination. Unlike in a terrestrial world, where monarchs constantly struggle to keep and exercise power, celestial monarchs have total control over every aspect of their worlds. While terrestrial monarchs can’t see most of their worlds or share in their subjects’ pleasures, celestial monarchs can. The Duchess is convinced: she will imagine an immaterial world instead of trying to conquer a material one. In fact, the Empress declares that she wants to do the same.
“Celestial world” is just another term for fantasy, so in this passage, the Duchess is really talking about the virtues of imagination—or fiction. If it’s impossible to build and maintain a sustainable absolute monarchy in the “terrestrial world,” then imagination is the best solution to the human hunger for power. In this way, Cavendish presents one basic defense of science fiction, a genre that she arguably invented in The Blazing World.
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The spirits leave, and the Duchess and Empress go about creating their celestial worlds. The Duchess tries basing her world on a series of philosophers—Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Epicurus, Aristotle, Descartes, and Hobbes—but all of these imaginary worlds fall apart. Instead, she tries to build one based on her own ideas, full of “rational self-moving matter.” Its perfection, variety, and beauty “cannot possibly be expressed by words,” and neither can the pleasure she takes in building it.
The Duchess’s first worlds fail because Cavendish thinks all these previous philosophers’ views were incomplete or inconsistent. Her own world is based on the theory of “rational self-moving matter”—the same theory that the Empress and the immaterial spirits agreed upon in their conversation. In this view, bodies and souls are both made of matter that is capable of motion on its own—and so life can exist without needing to depend on some special, divine, or immaterial ingredient to breathe life into inert things. This perfect, beautiful world of self-moving matter is clearly the Blazing World. Thus, Cavendish is really talking about the process through which she wrote this book.
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Meanwhile, the Empress tries and fails to build several worlds of her own. The Duchess shows her world to the Empress, who is so impressed that she wishes she could live in it. But instead, the Duchess helps the Empress build a better world of her own. The Empress imagines a world full of various creatures, effective laws, and beautiful art. After all, she has nothing else to do, because the Blazing World is already so perfect and harmonious.
The Empress and Duchess imagine other worlds together. Put differently, they are writing utopian fiction, and their relationship shows how fiction can inspire and entertain both the people who create it and the people who read it. Cavendish’s readers may never know if the Blazing World is the Empress’s world, the Duchess’s, or a mix of both. This is doubly true because the Empress imagines her own perfect world from within the Blazing World. Still, it has the ideal creatures, art, and political system that she describes. One way to interpret this scene is that the Blazing World is Cavendish’s utopia, but everyone else (including the Empress) might envision their own perfect world differently.
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The Empress wants to learn about the Duchess’s world, where many different governments live by many different laws. The Duchess warns her that this other world is full of division and conflict, but the Empress persists. She asks the spirits to temporarily replace her soul with an “honest and ingenious [female] spirit” while she goes to visit the Duchess’s world. They agree.
Cavendish describes her own world, which is distinct from both the Blazing World and the Empress’s native world, in order to elaborate on her political theory. If the Blazing World is peaceful because a single Emperor rules it with absolute power and there are no laws or factions, then Cavendish clearly thinks that the real world is full of conflict and suffering because no single ruler has managed to bring everything under his or her sole control.
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The Empress’s and Duchess’s souls travel together to the Duchess’s native world. The Empress sees how, even though humans belong to many different nations and groups, they are all ambitious, dishonest, and selfish. She appreciates the nations’ desire to expand, but wonders why they are willing to sacrifice so many lives to fight over a little bit of territory. On the other hand, the Empress also resents her own boring, peaceful world. She and the Duchess agree that the best world would find a healthy middle ground between total peace and constant conflict.
By visiting the Duchess’s world, the Empress refines her thinking about how the perfect world would work. This shows that people’s ideas of utopia can evolve over time, based on their knowledge and experiences. Specifically, the Empress realizes that the Blazing World’s absolute monarchy is too harmonious, and growth requires a certain level of conflict and competition. This suggests that, despite Cavendish’s love for absolute monarchy as a form of government, she may also recognize its shortcomings. On the other hand, the events of the rest of the book suggest that she would also be willing to sacrifice many lives for a bit more power.
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The Duchess and Empress go looking for the best nation in the Duchess’s world. The Empress praises the Sultan of Turkey, but the Duchess points out that he can’t change the Islamic laws that his government is bound to follow. The Duchess shows the Empress her own country, England, where the government is smaller but stronger and wiser than Turkey’s, so the people are happier than anywhere else. The Empress sees Londoners go into a theater and decides to follow them. She enjoys the play, but she remarks that the actors seemed too unnatural and wonders why writers keep creating new plays out of the same old stories.
Through the Duchess and Empress’s adventure, Cavendish argues that Turkey and England are among the best societies on Earth because their rulers are the most autocratic. Indeed, according to the Duchess’s comments about England, Cavendish thinks that a ruler’s degree of power over the territory they rule is more important to their governing success than the actual amount of territory that they rule. Finally, the Empress’s comments about theater suggest that Cavendish sees much other 17th-century literature as unoriginal and unrelatable. Of course, she tries to overcome both of these issues by telling an entirely new kind of story and merging her personality as a writer with her character in the book.
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Next, the Duchess takes the Empress to meet the royal family at court, and the Empress declares that the King and Queen are the most affable, majestic, and divine monarchs she has ever seen. The Duchess is distraught because she misses her husband, and after court, she takes the Empress to meet him. The narrator interrupts to explain that the Duchess’s and Empress’s souls are occupying material bodies made of “the purest and finest sort of air, and of a human shape,” so nobody else can see or hear them.
Cavendish defends the English monarchy by praising its leaders’ personal virtues. Her family’s political and financial stake in the monarchy certainly influenced her view, but this scene isn’t mere flattery. Instead, Cavendish sincerely believed that England’s leaders were benevolent, and that this destined England for greatness. Meanwhile, her description of the Duchess and Empress’s souls reflects the eccentric philosophy of mind and body that the immaterial spirits explained to the Empress.
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The Empress and Duchess reach Welbeck, the Duke’s estate in the Nottinghamshire woods. The Empress is impressed by the estate and forest, and the Duchess explains that most of the rest of England’s palaces and forests were destroyed in the Civil War—including the other half of her husband’s estate. The Duchess shows the Empress the Duke’s modest house, and when the Duke walks inside, her airy spirit-vehicle starts to joyously spin around. The Duchess and Empress watch the Duke expertly ride horses and practice sword fighting. But the Duchess worries that the Duke is overexerting himself, so her soul briefly enters his body to see if he’s alright. The Empress’s soul follows.
Cavendish uses this passage to proclaim her love for her husband and show off his virtue—much like he did for her in his introductory poem to the book. Similarly, she also wants to explain his misfortunes to her readers: in the English Civil War, Parliament defeated the monarchy and took away the property of noblemen like the Duke. Clearly, Cavendish ties her family’s personal misfortune to her country’s foolish decision to abandon absolute monarchy, and she hopes to convince her readers that the monarchy is at once more just, more effective, and more merciful to unlucky noblemen like her husband.
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The Duchess, Empress, and Duke’s souls are all in the Duke’s body. The Empress adores the Duke’s “wise, honest, witty, complaisant and noble” soul, and the Duchess briefly grows jealous, until she realizes that the Empress’s admiration for the Duke is really a kind of Platonic love. The Duke’s soul sings songs, gives speeches, and plays games to entertain the Empress.
Cavendish uses this unusual scene, in which three souls meet in one body, to clarify the distinction between physical and Platonic love. The Empress loves the Duke’s soul because of his virtue, and this is the essence of Platonic love—which needs no physical or sexual component.
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A spirit visits and informs the Empress that she should return to the Blazing World, since her soul is deeply missing the Emperor’s. She agrees to return, but before she goes, the Duchess asks her for a favor: to broker a deal between the Duke and Fortune, who has been unkind to him. But the Empress worries that she won’t be able to find a fair advocate for the Duke, or an impartial judge to hear the case. She asks the Duchess to accompany her to the Blazing World, so that they can try to get the Duke a fair hearing. The Duchess agrees, and the Duke decides to send “two friends, Prudence and Honesty, to plead [his] cause.”
From the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages, Fortune was conventionally depicted as a fickle goddess. Cavendish continues this tradition. Just as she uses the Empress’s rule to imagine fulfilling her fantasies of absolute power over the world, she uses Fortune’s trial to fulfill her fantasy of actually achieving justice for her beloved husband. Of course, modern societies attempt to give people fair trials through democracy and equal laws, but Cavendish doesn’t believe in either. Instead, she believes in absolute monarchy, under which the only way to get a fair trial is by convincing the monarch to create one. The Duchess does so because she’s close friends with the Empress, but readers can only guess how—or whether—everyone else can receive a fair trial in Cavendish’s imaginary Blazing World monarchy.
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The Empress and the Duchess return to the Blazing World along with Prudence and Honesty. The spirits go looking for Fortune, but they tell the Duchess that Fortune is too fickle to hear their case. After a long struggle, they convince Truth to judge their dispute.
Cavendish insists that her husband was in the right by showing Prudence and Honesty defend him against Fortune before the judge of Truth. Even if the Duke never got his estate back in the real world, Cavendish’s fictional trial could still shape his legacy and preserve his reputation. Thus, just as she chose to rule and do science in the fantasy Blazing World because she could not in the real world, she exonerates her husband in fiction because she lacks the power to do so in fact.
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In her opening speech, Fortune asks why the Duke’s soul has not come to plead his own case. She declares that the Duke “hath always been my enemy” because he has scorned her for her inconstancy, while preferring Honesty and Prudence over her. Next, the Duchess speaks to defend her husband. She says that he is a respectful gentleman who reasonably decided to side with Honesty and Prudence, instead of trusting Fortune with his valuable reputation. Rather than making peace with him, Fortune actively battled against him, ruining his estate and reputation. But the Duke never stopped respecting Fortune, the Duchess reports, and he asks for his friendship in the future.
Fortune’s case against the Duke is entirely personal: she mistreats him because she is bitter about not receiving his personal favor and envious of those who do. Thus, Fortune rules like a tyrannous monarch: she uses her power however she wishes, without regard for ethics or justice. This is ironic because Cavendish advocates for exactly the same system of government: she believes that rulers should have absolute power and be able to do whatever they wish. Clearly, whether such a form of government works depends entirely on the virtue of the person running it.
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Next, Folly and Rashness fight to speak on behalf of Fortune, and Fortune chooses Rashness. Rashness declares that the Duchess continues to insult Fortune by preferring Honesty and Prudence, and she threatens that this will ruin Fortune’s reputation. Rashness recommends that Fortune “fling as many misfortunes and neglects [as possible] on the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle.”
The vices support Fortune’s case against the virtuous Duke. It’s clear that Truth will not really be judging the case—instead, Fortune will do whatever she pleases, whether or not it aligns with truth and virtue. Thus, Cavendish shows that good and evil both have power in the world, and that the only way people can choose one over the other is in their fantasies.
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Then, Prudence declares that she wants to heal the rift between Fortune and the Duke, but Honesty interrupts and declares that everyone should speak “plainly and truly.” Honesty raised the Duke like her foster-son and introduced him to all the other virtues, including Gratitude, Charity, Justice, Honor, and Experience. Honesty claims that Fortune is the Duke’s only enemy, and only because the Duke was too honest to flatter her. But he also never despised her—instead, he treated her with humility, respect, and honor.
While Prudence and Honesty are both virtues, they don’t necessarily get along—instead, Prudence often requires telling less than the whole truth, and Honesty is often imprudent. By showing Honesty win out over Prudence, Cavendish gets out the whole truth about her husband’s legacy—even if she makes it likely that he will lose his trial. Again, while this technique may be unremarkable in fiction today, it was very innovative in Cavendish’s time. It again shows her commitment to using fiction to change the real world (and vice versa). After all, writing was probably the most powerful tool available to Cavendish in her lifetime.
Themes
Fortune hates Honesty’s speech, and she disappears in a fury. Honesty tells the Duchess that she is wrong to care so much about “Fortune’s favors” and trying to interfere with the gods’ decisions. The Empress asks what Prudence thinks, and Prudence replies that Honesty has gone too far. The Empress lets the Duchess return to her world, on the condition that she return to visit the Blazing World from time to time.
Fortune cannot stand the honest truth, and she clearly will not be changing her behavior toward the Duke. Cavendish concludes that people can fantasize about winning justice, but in the real world, they must simply accept fate—even when it is deeply unjust. Evil might easily win out in the real world, but the Empress and Duchess’s friendship shows how people can fight this tendency by consciously identifying and promoting virtue in their relationships.
Themes
But just before the Duchess leaves, the Empress asks for her advice about how to govern the Blazing World. Since the Empress changed the religion and form of government, the different groups, like the worm-men and bear-men, have started to fight. The Empress even fears a rebellion. To return the Blazing World to its former state of peace, the Duchess suggests recreating the old system of “one sovereign, one religion, one law, and one language” and eliminating all the specialist factions (the philosopher bear-men, astronomer bird-men, and so on). Education causes conflict, the Duchess argues, because some people always think they know better than others.
While it may be easy for readers to miss, the Empress has changed the Blazing World by introducing her own religion and shutting down many of the native groups’ professions (like logic and geometry). The Blazing World has not changed very much, and it is by no means democratic or pluralistic. Still, the Empress and Duchess agree that it has to be more autocratic in order to remain peaceful. This shows how deeply Cavendish believes in absolute monarchy and the repression of dissent. At the same time, the Empress’s failure to improve the Blazing World also ironically shows how arrogant rulers often create conflicts by seeking to control too much.
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Literary Devices
The Empress agrees to follow the Duchess’s advice, but she worries that it would seem disgraceful to undo the laws that she created. On the contrary, the Duchess says: if the Empress changes the laws back, she will really be demonstrating wisdom and honor. This will help her achieve “glorious fame in this world, and an eternal glory hereafter.” The Empress’s and Duchess’s souls share “an immaterial kiss, and shed immaterial tears.” They part, but they always remain true Platonic friends.
The Empress’s willingness to change the laws shows that she truly is a worthy, benevolent ruler. Meanwhile, the Empress and Duchess’s Platonic friendship shows how women could find guidance, power, and companionship in one another, during an era when they had little political or social power. But since the Duchess is just Cavendish, her Platonic love with the Empress also represents Cavendish’s deep personal investment in the fiction she has written.
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