In my book, Rain Dodging, I introduce you to a handful of early feminist warriors. Here’s one:
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, born 1623, died suddenly at only age 50, the year Mary of Modena, the subject of my book, and James II married, but she is important as a precursor to the female writers that followed during Mary’s time. According to Professor Myra Reynolds, the Duchess of Newcastle was the most talked-of learned lady of the Restoration period (1660-1688). As with Mary of Modena, when Margaret was young, her mother was a widow with a substantial fortune. In her Autobiography, the Duchess of Newcastle describes a family life of splendor and luxury. Early on, though taught only the basics of reading and writing, Margaret wanted to be known as both a wit and a beauty. She was determined to excel in literature. She yearned to be famous.
Margaret’s family were devoted Royalists, eventually exiling to Oxford with the royal family when the civil war broke out in England in 1640. Margaret became a maid-of-honor to Charles I’s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, eventually fleeing with the queen and her court to France. Cavendish remained a Maid of Honor for two more years until she married William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, later made Duke. The couple was able to return to England and the Duke’s ruined estates, Welbeck Abbey—now restored—in North Nottinghamshire, 100 miles north of London.
When Margaret returned to England, she wrote her first book, Poems and Fancies, 1653, a collection of poems epistles, and prose. She wrote that woman’s intelligence was equal to a man’s, therefore women learned as easily. Cavendish argued that the only difference between them was that men had more opportunities to educate themselves. This caused a sensation, as you can imagine. Critics thought her “mad, conceited, and ridiculous” and ridiculed both her writing and the outrageous and original costumes she wore in public. She enjoyed inventing herself through fashion. She disliked wearing the same fashions as other women. She aimed to be unique in her dress, thoughts, and behavior.
My kind of girl!
Cavendish expected criticism for her memoir, A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life, and responded by declaring that she was as justified in writing her memoirs as men were. She delighted in writing, connecting it to her desire for contemplation and solitude. Cavendish was capable of bold feminist statements: “Women live like bats or owls, labor like beasts, and die like worms.” She became an “intellectually androgynous feminist” in her fight for publishing and in the gender discrimination she faced. Cavendish published twenty-two works during her lifetime. She wrote one of the first works of science fiction The Blazing World (1666). Cavendish was one of the most original thinkers of the age.Her modern reputation is of a truly remarkable woman. The Duchess is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Here’s to you, ‘Mad Marge’ Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.
*Seen here in an undated seventeenth-century illustration. (Credit Bettman / Getty)
Reynolds Reynolds, Myra. The Learned Lady in England 1650-1760. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1920. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/reynolds/ learned/learned.html.
Sullivan, Sandra Dean. Representaions of Mary of Modena, Duchess, Queen Consort and Exile:
Images and Texts. Volume I: Text. (unpub Ph.D. 487129 Thesis, University College London, 2008).
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1349620/1/487129_VOL1.pdfb8i
