Margaret Cavendish – The Blazing World

In this text, driven by her desire to be in control of a world and solve the world’s ills by conforming it to one language, religion, and culture, Cavendish creates not only one world, the Blazing World, but infinite worlds that exist alongside Earth. The story starts with the Empress being kidnapped by a man and taken in a boat towards the North Pole in a ship, but the men all die and she lives. The Empress is rescued by the bear-men who take her to the fox-men, who in turn take her to the Emperor as a gift. He, of course, marries her and makes her Empress over the whole world.

She uses the beginning of her reign and the majority of the book, to question the different populations and societies of the Blazing World. Each group, from bear-men to worm-men have different specialties and inform their new Empress as best they can. A good deal of her questioning centers around government, religion, and language as a means to try and understand the best form of government. Cavendish seems to be imparting her own bias here and her personal narrative can be read against the text with the backdrop of the English Civil War and the exile of her husband.

In many ways the entrance of the Duchess, a version of Cavendish, can be seen as way to deflect issues of religion (ie; the cabbala the Empress wants to write first as a Jewish cabbala) into the realm of the literary. By first making this move of the cabbala being an “imaginative” cabbala and then later following this up with the “perfect” world of the Duchess which has one religion.

This can be seen as a work of Utopia fiction then, but one that is fixated on forms of knowledge production, dissemination, and the ability for women to move in these spaces. Rather than other works of Utopian fiction, such as More’s Utopia, for example, the conversations the Empress has and information she has gathered allow her to actually change the government of the Blazing World. Htholoday, in Utopia, is an observer rather than a holder of power, but here the Empress worries about her subjects and desires to do what she think is best for them (as didactic as that may be).

Some of my own personal interests in the text surround the ways nature is seen, both in the animal-men who dominate so much of the text with their conversations about forms of knowledge, and also in the ideas of Paradise as a real place.

The Enchanted Island – John Dryden

In Dryden’s version of The Tempest, the comedic return and coupling off is made more prominent in the addition of a sister, Dorinda, and another male child, Hippolito. Even Ariel, the spirit, is paired off in the end with Milcha. The plot follows the same sequence as The Tempest, but there are some interesting additions. The conversations between Dorinda and Miranda are interesting, and by contrast, Dorinda seems more wanton in her desire for men because Miranda’s courtship with Ferdinando is supervised by Prospero, whereas in Dorinda and Hippolito’s case, Prospero stays away.

There is less talk about Sycorax the mother because of the addition of Sycorax the sister of Caliban. I’m not sure why there’s a sister, except that it provides a female coupling for the clownish troupe of Trinculo and company.

One thing that seems like a significant change is how nature is used in the play. In Shakespeare, there’s a strong division between the natural and unnatural (meaning monsters and spirits). But in Dryden, there’s a triple division between natural, unnatural, and supernatural. Sometimes the unnatural and natural become overlapped in the case of Caliban, and sometimes the supernatural and natural become overlapped, in the case of Prospero. This type of fluidity makes for an interesting play and world. There’s also a question about knowledge and knowledge production in Dorinda and Miranda. In spite of all of Prospero’s old world knowledge and his books, Dorinda and Miranda compare everything to the natural world. Comparison is their main method of understanding, and so men are often seen as types of animals, potentially dangerous as lions and bears. Prospero enhances these thoughts, in order to work out his plots, but if we think of the text (Dryden and Shakespeare) as New World oriented and Prospero as a type of colonizer, what do we make of his teaching Caliban language etc. but in neglecting his daughter’s education? Caliban seems to know more about the outside world than Prospero’s own daughters. Is this merely a gender bias or can we think about it as something more political?

Men and women coupling off is also presented as natural, and much like other plays in the Restoration seen as a way to promote good “breeding”. How can we think about breeding in an ecocritical way? Does this change our idea of marriage? There’s definitely still a religious understanding of marriage in the play, but the concept of “peopling” an island seems more like a natural desire than a religious one.