August 12, 2025 • 39 mins
In 'A Room of One's Own,' Virginia Woolf writes of Margaret Cavendish's reputation: "Evidentally the crazy Duchess became a bogey to frighten clever girls with." Dismisses as mad in her own time, and untalented later, Cavendish remains something of an enigma, a strange proto-feminist, proto-science fiction writer who remained entirely untamed.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. If you've
been listening to the show for a while, you're probably
wondering why it's taken me so long to discuss any
royal from the Kingdom of sv. Really, the truth is,
(00:21):
I'm embarrassed. It's been a real oversight on my part,
and I'm taking full responsibility and rectifying it immediately. Just kidding.
I can't take this bit any further, mainly because the
notion of England and France under a single monarchy is
too absurd. That's what the Kingdom of sv is. It's
an acronym for England, Scotland, France and Ireland, and it
(00:46):
is in fact a fictional land in the sixteen sixty
six Proto science fiction novel The Blazing World. In the
young novel, a young woman from sv E is kidnapped
onto a boat by a spurned lover. This act angers
(01:06):
the gods, who blow the boat to the North Pole
and spare only the young woman from hypothermia. From there,
the ship floats into a parallel land called the Blazing World,
a utopia populated by human animal hybrids who believe the
young woman is a goddess. This new Empress, a student
(01:27):
of the natural sciences and philosophy, uses her powers to
open schools and form societies of learning, consulting with various
human animal specialists. For example, the parrotmen are orators and magicians,
and the foxmen are politicians and spider Man Unfortunately, more
(01:49):
arachnid than superhero are mathematicians. This woman empress decides to
create her own religion, but she knows she'll need a
scribe to aid her. She asks the spirit to call
upon the souls of ancients like Aristotle and Plato, but
they reply that those writers are too wedded to their
(02:10):
own opinions to be scribes for someone else. Then the
empress requests a famous modern for her writer, like Galileo
or Discarte, but the spirits say that those men are
far too conceded to be scribes for a woman, and
so instead they offer quote, there's a lady, the Duchess
(02:31):
of Newcastle, which although she is not one of the
most learned, eloquent, witty, and ingenious, yet she is a
plain and rational writer. For the principle of her writings
is sense and reason. And she will, without question be
ready to do you all the service she can. Incredibly
(02:52):
complimentary and a little effusive, especially considering that the Duchess
of Newcastle also happened to be the the author of
that book, The Blazing World. The Blazing World was jointly
published with the real Duchess's nonfiction work Observations upon Experimental Philosophy.
(03:14):
The author saw them as companions. Though these genres of
the two books were quite literally worlds apart. The Duchess
believed that the fictional Blazing World reflected scientific and philosophical
ideas from the real world. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle,
was undoubtedly a trailblazer in both worlds. As a science
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minded writer, she was the very first woman to attend
a meeting of the Royal Society, which wouldn't admit women
as members until nineteen forty five. She published more than
a dozen original texts under her own name in a
time when doing so was still practically unheard of, becoming
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the first known woman to publish a collected volume of
dramatic works in her own time and throughout modern history.
Margaret's transgressive approach to not only publishing but life as
a woman in the seventeenth century has borne the weight
of both renown and criticism. If you know Cavendish's name
(04:22):
but are struggling to place exactly where you know her from,
it's possible you've read Virginia Wolf's A Room of One's Own.
In that book, Wolfe writes, quote, what a vision of
loneliness and riot. The thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind,
as if some giant cucumber had spread itself over all
(04:44):
the roses and carnations in the garden and choked them
to death. What a waste that the woman who wrote
the best bred women are those whose minds are civilist,
should have frittered her time away scribbling nonsense and plunging
give her deeper into obscurity and folly till the people
crowded around her coach when she issued out end quote.
(05:09):
Considering what a cultural juggernaut A Room of One's Own
has been and remains in the canon of women's literature,
you won't be surprised to learn it is difficult for
modern scholarship of Cavendish's life and work to separate itself
from Wolfe's colorful analysis. But today as we learn about
(05:30):
the life and times of the Duchess of Newcastle. I
invite you to consider that perhaps Margaret with someone who
may have read that infamous cucumber description as a compliment.
I'm Danish forts and this is noble blood. Margaret Lucas
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was born in Essex in sixteen twenty three. She was
the youngest daughter of Thomas Lucas, an unde titled but
wealthy country landowner, and Elizabeth Layton, a londoner. Margaret's parents
had a rough start. Margaret's older brother was conceived out
of wedlock, and the scandal of that was made worse
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when Thomas was exiled that same year for dueling with
a young courtier. He was not pardoned for years. His
son was six by the time they first met. The
fallout from all of that drama meant Margaret grew up
disconnected from court life and London social scene, despite the
Lucases previous years spent building favor as a new money family.
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Thomas ultimately died when Margaret was only two, leaving Elizabeth
not only responsible for eight children, but for managing the
family estate, the massive Lucas Manor, located on the grounds
of Saint John's Abbey in Colchester. Being the youngest of eight,
having a single mother, and living on a vast estate
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meant that Margaret had a certain amount of freedom growing up.
As far as her education went. She had, as she
later accounted, tutors for quote singing, dancing, reading, writing, music
and the like. By and the like, Margaret means other
traditionally feminine pursuits. However, she goes on to note, quote,
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my mother cared not so much for our dancing and
fiddling as that we should be bred virtuously. Considering these
circumstances and consequence of Margaret's mother's first pregnancy, you can
probably guess why Margaret's mother prioritized virtue above all else
in her daughters. This might be the part in a
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typical episode where I would move on to another topic
fast forward through Margaret's life, But Margaret's education, or rather
lack thereof, has become a central point in her biography
thanks to a room of one's own. Wolfe's criticism of
Margaret's quote overgrown prose isn't an indictment of her talent,
(08:12):
but rather an indictment of a culture that doesn't prioritize
women's education. Quote what could bind, tame or civilize for
human use that wild, generous, untutored intelligence, Wolfe asked. Without schooling,
Wolfe argued, Margaret's intelligence quote poured itself out Higgley pigglety
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in torrents of rhyme and prose, poetry and philosophy. The
future Duchess had a different view of things. She once wrote,
learning is artificial, but wit is natural. Margaret was born
in the cultural era of James the First, who notoriously
feared educated women. When asked if his daughter should receive
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a classical education, the king responded, quote to make women learned,
and Fox's tame has the same effect, to make them
more cunning. In the absence of a uniquely progressive father,
women with the natural wit Margaret defend, had to rely
on that wit alone. It's fascinating to me that Wolfe
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and James both chose the verb tame in their ideologically
opposite arguments. I'll let you construct your own analysis on that,
but tame is definitely not a word Margaret would ever
use to describe herself. She was significantly younger than her
other siblings, most of them marrying before she hit her preteens,
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so she picked up the favored pastime of many only children.
Creating worlds for herself, she lived in her imagination, later
reflecting that she was quote addicted from childhood to contem
rather than conversation, to solitariness rather than society, to melancholy
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rather than mirth, to write with the pen than to
work with a needle. Her first writing works were what
she called baby books, which she made out of paper
and filled with illegible scribbles. Margaret may not have had
a formal education, but she did have luck, the luck
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of being born into a wealthy family, the luck of
being born with a natural curiosity, and the luck of
having a mother who let her explore her passions freely,
so long as those passions didn't involve boys. At the
same time, Margaret herself felt that she was cursed. From
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her youngest to her eldest years, she suffered debilitating social
anxiety alongside what she described as melancholy, but we might
recognize today as a depressive disorder. If she was not
in the presence of her mother or one of her
siblings in public, she could barely function. She particularly adored
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her sister Catherine, but from that adoration stemmed more anxiety
when she stayed with Catherine and Catherine's husband. Margaret would
often wake her eldest sister if she thought she was
breathing too quietly for fear she had died in her sleep,
and Margaret would inspect Catherine's food for safety before meals.
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Margaret was clearly suffering from intense anxiety, even paranoia, but
many of the young woman's fears about losing her family
would tragically manifest as the country entered wartime. Sixteen forty
two marked the beginning of the English Civil War between
the Royalists and Parliamentarians, with Margaret's family strictly on the
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side of the former. The first major incident to affect
the Lucas family was part of what historians now refer
to as the Stour Valley Riots, a series of attacks
against Royalists and suspected Catholics. In the midnight hours of
August twenty second, sixteen forty two, Margaret's elder brother, Sir
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John Lucas, was busy preparing his horses and weapons to
be sent to the Royalist forces. Unfortunately for John, his
preparations had not been subtle, and townsfolk had suspected his
plans for some time. A group of local parliamentarians had
been designated to watch the Lucas family home that night,
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and their stakeout ultimately escalated to ransacking the manor on
the grounds of Saint John's Abbey. In addition to the
kinds of destruction you'd expect, records show the family coffins
were stabbed through with swords. Just to give you an
idea how unpopular the Lucases and Royalists were. Where was
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a nineteen year old Margaret during this fateful night? We
don't exactly know. Documentation is unclear, and there's no mention
of the riots in the Duchess's later autobiography. That's not
to say Margaret shied away from the subject of war.
Her writing dives into discussing it both philosophically and materially.
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One quote from her autobiography reads, quote, this unnatural war
came like a whirlwind which felled down my siblings' houses,
where some were crushed to death, as my youngest brother
Sir Charles Lucas and my brother Sir Thomas Lucas. Yes,
the war would ultimately claim the lives of two of
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Margaret's three brothers, while her mother and one of her
sisters would also die during that same period. Before those
fateful days, however, most of the family relocated to London,
where they, as Royalists, were in the minority. In the
summer of sixteen forty three, Parliamentary led London was actively
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preparing for war. At the same time, Margaret was making
a dangerous and notably illegal journey. Her fifty plus mile
trek took her from London to Oxford, where she was
going to go to the front lines to join the
Royalist army and meet Queen Henrietta Maria. Upon hearing that
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the Queen did not have, in her words, the same
number of maids of honor she was used to have,
the horror, Margaret begged her family to let her go
to Henrietta Maria's side. Margaret's mother and siblings were understandably
reluctant to a after all, Margaret shut down in social
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situations without them, but Margaret was so persistent that they relented.
When Margaret predictably begged her family to return, finding that
her anxiety was in fact debilitating, her family made her
stay like the English Court was sleep away camp that
she was committed to attending. Margaret's decision to join in
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spite of her limitations was representative of an underlying drive
that would motivate her for the rest of her life.
Margaret's shy, bookish disposition was accompanied by an intense desire
to learn and observe, as well as the kind of
self importance you'd find in a wealthy youngest daughter. In
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the absence of a university system that valued women, the
kind that Wolf advocated for, Court was Margaret's only option
to spread her wings in young adulthood. If you asked her, However,
Margaret's decision was purely born out of her sense of
duty as a good Royalist daughter. As a royalist, Margaret
(16:08):
almost certainly idolized Queen Henrietta. Maria. The Queen was a
heavily publicized figure at that time, the subject of many
headlines for her trip to Holland to pawn the crown
jewels for war funds. When she returned, she toured the
country with the King's army, where she was known to,
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as one account put it, ride astride her horse without
the effeminacy of a woman, and to live with her
soldiers as if they were her brethren, as is expected.
Parliamentarian newspapers focused on building resentment toward her supposed gender
transgressions instead of her politics. Quote this kingdom is woefully
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ruined one read by a conjugal conspiracy by a plot
in matrimony. Henrietta Maria, in response to their claims, called
herself the she Majesty General Lissima, which as far as
I know, is still up for grabs as a drag name.
(17:15):
In Margaret's sixteen sixty two play Bell in Campo, Margaret
writes of a general's wife, Lady Victoria, who assembles a
troop of wives to accompany their husbands to the front lines.
Lady Victoria is described as the general, less instructuresque, ruler
and commanderess, and her troop of women even don Amazonian
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armor to fight, ultimately winning a battle where the men fail.
Lady Victoria delivers a speech condemning the quote masculine sex
who believe that women quote are only fit to breed
and bring forth children, and contradicts the idea that women
have quote no ingenuity for inventions, nor subtle wit for politicians,
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nor judgment for counselors, nor secrecy for trust, nor method
for keeping the peace, nor courage to make war. It's
not hard to imagine from whom Margaret was drawing inspiration
for Victoria in that proto feminist piece of fiction. By
the time Margaret arrived at the Queen's side in Oxford, however,
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the Queen wasn't exactly living in the barracks. Instead, she
was residing in Merton College, where her rooms had been
redecorated to model the royal household. As a maid of honor,
Margaret's job would be to be quote in presence. What
did that mean in practice? A lot of standing around.
(18:49):
She would arrive at the Queen's presence chamber at eleven
each morning and sit on the sidelines until Henrietta Maria
wished for entertainment or needed news relayed. This continued all
day until supper time, when the maids retired to their
own chambers. To make sure strict household rules were followed,
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Margaret and her fellow maids were under constant surveillance by
the appointed Mother of Maids, who was to report them
to the Lord Chamberlain for any transgressions. This was undoubtedly
an oppressive environment for Margaret, who was used to her solitude.
She later described herself in those early years at court
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as like one that had no foundation to stand on,
and she apparently was so afraid of saying or doing
the wrong thing that she opted for near constant silence.
In spite of her shyness, or perhaps because of it.
Margaret was also known for designing her own clothes to
her personal tastes, which often made her stand out for
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better or worse in such a conform armist environment. They
would also contribute to her later reputation as the quote
crazy Duchess. Things began to rapidly change at Court in
the summer of sixteen forty four. Henrietta Marie was at
that time then heavily pregnant and began to fear for
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her safety and the safety of her unborn child in Oxford,
so she and her court began a journey to leave England.
After escaping in disguise, the group made it to Falmouth,
where a ship was ready to take them to France.
They set sail, but they were quickly pursued by cannon
fire from a parliamentary ship. Henrietta Maria, like Margaret's lady Victoria,
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decisively took charge of the situation. Margaret and her fellow
ladies cried in horror when the queen told the captain
that in the event that escape became impossible, he was
to blow up the ship rather than let her be
taken alive. Things did not become that dire, but as
soon as they were clear of the political threat, nature's
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cruel neutrality offered another, as a terrible storm nearly destroyed
the Chip. Storms would ultimately become a repeated motif in
Margaret's fiction, The Blazing World begins with one, and in
a sixteen fifty six poem, Margaret tells the story of
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a woman who is shipwrecked in the Kingdom of Sensuality,
where she is sold into prostitution, shoots her would be solicitor,
and cross dresses to escape by boat. That woman's second
journey at sea brings another storm fortune, Margaret writes, irritated
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the gods against them, making the clouds and seas to
meet them, Showers to beat them, winds to toss them,
thunder to affront them, lightning to amaze them. This description
is evocative, but her own experience with a tempest is
another traumatic event that Margaret avoids recounting in her memoir.
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We don't know how Margaret felt during this actually haerlleoss journey,
but through her prose we can see storms become a
source of both fear and awe, both a metaphor for
trauma and a reflection of life's painful realities. The ship
ultimately arrived in France, where Margaret would remain until sixteen
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fifty one. If she felt isolated in the English court,
the experience was magnified tenfold upon her arrival in the
French court, where she could not speak the language fluently
and where she was a sea away from her family.
Despite all of that, Margaret managed to find a bright
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spot in a dark place. In sixteen forty five, Margaret
and her ever boored fellow ladies witnessed an exciting spectacle
when one of the King's Lords of the Privy Council
arrived at the French court in a lavish carriage pulled
by nine horses. This dramatic man was William Cavendish, the
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Marquis of Newcastle, and he would marry Margaret before the
year was out. William was a prominent, respected literary and
scientific patron. History has given a name the Wellbeck Academy
to the intellectual circle that he curated. He hosted many
gatherings at Wellbeck, the Cavendish family seat, for the likes
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of the playwright Ben Jonson, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the
naturalist Robert Payne, and many more. However, William did not
have a stellar reputation at the time of his flamboyant arrival,
which was in reality an elaborate display of supposed wealth
designed to trick creditors into lending him more money. His
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name currently bore the weight of his rather disastrous loss
as a commander in the Battle of marston Moor, which
was a loss so spectacular that he opted for a
self imposed exile. The writer and politician Sir Philip Warwick
wrote that Cavendish was a generous, loyal man, but his
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failing was that he had a tincture of a romantic
spirit and had the misfortune to be somewhat of a poet.
That apparently made him a lousy general, but a wonderful
match for our Margaret. Their attraction was quick and mutual.
In Margaret's own words, William pleased to take some particular
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notice of me and express more than an ordinary affection
for me. More than ordinary may be an understatement. Between
April and December of sixteen forty five, aka the beginning
of their courtship to their marriage, Margaret wrote William at
least twenty one love letters. In response, he wrote her
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over seventy poems. That's more than one every two days.
Their match was surprising due to, in part, the difference
in their statutes, a thirty ish year age gap, and
Margaret's earlier declaration that she generally shunned men's company as
(25:42):
much as she could. Friends tried to keep them apart,
Margaret's friends cautioning her that William had a reputation as
a casanova. William's friend reminding him of the out of
wedlock circumstances of Margaret's eldest brother's birth and the scandal
that still hung over the family name. But their protests
(26:03):
were all in vain. It was love in their courtship.
Margaret was hindered by her own anxiety, but William understood
her true nature and continued to pen passionate, sometimes excessively
passionate poems. I simply cannot continue this episode without reading
you a couplet from a poem he wrote about the
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couple's age gap, quote, no man can love more, or
Love's higher, old and dry wood makes the best fire.
If I have to sit with that innuendo, so do you.
Margaret's letters to William are also the first pieces of
writing we have from her. They were not just declarations
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of love, but observations of life at court and reflections
of her own state of mind. Suppose me now, in
a very melancholy humor, she writes to William, for I
see all things subject to alteration and change, and our
hopes as if they had taken opium. But I should
be lost to those things if I did not meet
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some of yours to restore me to myself again. Even
in a simple letter at a low point, we can
see Margaret's clever grasp of language. I find the description
of hopes as if they had taken opium as a
particularly evocative metaphor for the bleakness of depression. We also
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see how she had quickly come to rely on William
to alleviate those dark thoughts in place of her mother
and siblings across the sea. As a listener of the show,
you may be waiting for the other shoe to drop,
knowing how often unhappiness plagues marriages among nobility. But this
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is a rare noble blood love story with a happy ending.
Their marriage was both long, last day and mutually supportive.
William's unconditional support of his wife was more important than
ever when it came to the issue of having children,
or rather not having children. It appears the couple did
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initially try, but after two years with no success, William
sought a doctor for advice. The doctor essentially told William
that Margaret's intense melancholy, which was believed at the time
to be the result of an excess of black bile
in the body, would make pregnancy and birth incredibly difficult
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and likely result in losing the child. William already had children,
more importantly, heirs from his first marriage, but he was
disappointed to learn he would not have more with Margaret.
Margaret was only disappointed on William's behalf, but noted that
her apparent infertility quote never lessened his love and affection
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for me. Not only did Margaret accept the reality that
she would never become a mother, she fully embraced it.
In her writing. She repeatedly explains how the absence of
children and chores of quote housewifery as she described it,
allowed her to devote her time to her true babies
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her books. In her sixteen sixty four collection of fictional
Correspondence Sociable Letters, Margaret even proposes the idea that having
children is gainless for women. Sons carry on the legacy
of the father, while daughters will be quote ingrafted into
the stock of another family. Margaret takes this second notion
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even further, daughters are to be accounted as movable goods
or furniture. It would be easy to write that off
as cynicism after her own experience, but even if there
is some defensiveness present, there's no denying the fact that
she's putting to paper ideas that wouldn't be part of
mainstream feminist conversations or debates for centuries to come. Following
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their first few years of married life in Paris, the
couple moved to Antwerp in the late sixteen forties, where
they rented the house of the famous Flemish painter Peter
Paul Rubens from his widow. Their desire to live in
an artistic home apparently outranked their desire to live in
a well staffed home. Money was tight, with William still
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in debt, so they let go of most of their
servants upon the move. What was a childless couple in
a cultured home to do but create a space for
intellectual gatherings. William, as we know, had the connections to
do so. One dinner even hosted his friend Hobbes and
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his philosophical rival Descartes at the same table. I can imagine,
and the atmosphere felt like talking politics with the family
at Thanksgiving. A fixture in the home during this time
was William's brother Charles. He either lived with or nearby
to the couple during these years and became an important
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person in Margaret's life. The Cavendish brothers devoted time to
giving Margaret the education that she was not afforded in
her childhood. William, to his credit, had provided his own
daughters from his first marriage with a rare formidable education.
From her husband, Margaret learned about politics and history, and
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became well acquainted with Hobbes's work on society and government.
From her brother in law, she learned about science. Charles
was a mathematician and was working on his own experiments
in the new age of scientific discovery. He was a
good teacher. He brought Margaret a model of the Copernican
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planetary system, so she could visualize the movements and translated
theories about atoms that were only available at the time
in Latin. He also gave Margaret access to his experiment's
first hand, which was her first time using a microscope.
It would become a repeated point in later writings that
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Margaret now somewhat famously did not endorse the instrument that
she called the artificial informer, believing that it quote more
deludes than informs. One of her disavowals of the microscope
found in sixteen sixty six's Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, focuses
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on the recent discovery that flies possessed clusters that contained
about fourteen thousand eyes. We know today that that figure
is a misconception, but flies do in fact have come
pound eyes made up of hundreds of smaller photoreceptors. Margaret's
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natural philosophy was grounded in the principles of reason and rationality,
which she believed nature functions according to. In that case,
what sense would it make that flies have thousands of
eyes but can't see as well as humans do with two?
In her words, quote, if two eyes be stronger than
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a thousand, then nature is to be blamed. That she
gives such a number of eyes to so little a creature.
But nature is wiser than we or any creatures able
to conceive, and surely she would not work to no
purpose or in vain. But there appears as much wisdom
in the fabric and structure of her works as there
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is variety in them. Margaret speaks of nature with a romantic,
even religious reverence. Today we understand that her perspective lacks nuanced,
but her work is also cautious of a very relevant subject,
the hubris of man. While this work comes from a
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writer much more certain in her convictions. It was during
this period of education around sixteen fifty that Margaret began
writing formally, experimenting with essays, allegories, and more. In writing,
Margaret found not only a way to understand the world
as she always longed to, but peace of mind in
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a way she had never experienced. In her words, quote,
my mind is become an absolute monarch, ruling alone, my
thoughts as a peaceable commonwealth, and my life an expert
soldier which my Lord meaning William Settled, composed and instructed.
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This description tells us as much about Margaret's state of
mind as it does her politics. Only a royalist could
describe alleviation from their depression as a benevolent monarch enforcing peace.
Putting aside the political implications for a second, however, this
statement is also telling when juxtaposed against the perception of
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Margaret's work popularized by Virginia Woolf. The quote crazy duchess
who had become a bogey to frighten clever girls with, was,
in fact, by her own analysis, at her most composed
when writing she should have had a microscope put in
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her hand, wolf declared she should have been taught to
look at the stars and reason scientifically. Her wits were
turned with solitude and freedom. No one checked her, no
one taught her. We know that this was actually untrue.
Margaret did have a microscope in her hand. She just
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didn't like what she saw. She had teachers invested in
her education, just not formal ones, and just not when
she was exclusively young. Perhaps the truth is more simple
than what Wolfe tries to argue. Margaret had more passion
for the written word than talent for it. To pursue
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that passion formally for a woman of her time, was
a remarkable feat in itself. While Margaret had found her passion,
her career would not begin until she returned to England
in sixteen fifty three. Shoppers in London bookstores could find
a rare site a book openly written by a woman.
(36:47):
If they opened the cover of Poems and Fancies, they
would be greeted with a title page in large print
written by the right Honorable the Lady Margaret, Countess of Newcastle.
As Wolf remarked in a room of one's own, any
woman who published under her own name risked being thought
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a monster. Margaret agreed, if I am condemned, she reflected,
I shall be annihilated. That's part one of our episode
on Margaret Cavendish. But keep listening after a brief break
to hear a little bit more about Virginia Wolf's take
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on the Crazy Duchess. Wolfe's opinions on Margaret's work were
highly critical, yes, but also carried an undercurrent of admiration
in the common reader. Wolf approaches Cavendish's work with a
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different perspective. Quote though her philosophies are futile and her
plays intolerable, the vast bull of the Duchess is levined
by a vein of authentic fire. One cannot help following
the lure of her erratic and lovable personality as it
meanders and twinkles through page after page. Her simplicity is
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so open, her intelligence so active, her sympathy with fairies
and animals so true and tender. She has the freakishness
of an elf, the irresponsibility of some non human creature,
its heartlessness, and its charm. While these compliments are arguably
not very complimentary and surely double edged, there is something
(38:39):
genuinely earnest to them. Perhaps Wolff had some cavendish her
after all. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and
Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted
(39:00):
by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by
Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hit and Julia Melaney.
The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
supervising producer rima il Kaali and executive producers Aaron Manke,
Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(39:24):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. If you've
been listening to the show for a while, you're probably
wondering why it's taken me so long to discuss any
royal from the Kingdom of sv. Really, the truth is,
(00:21):
I'm embarrassed. It's been a real oversight on my part,
and I'm taking full responsibility and rectifying it immediately. Just kidding.
I can't take this bit any further, mainly because the
notion of England and France under a single monarchy is
too absurd. That's what the Kingdom of sv is. It's
an acronym for England, Scotland, France and Ireland, and it
(00:46):
is in fact a fictional land in the sixteen sixty
six Proto science fiction novel The Blazing World. In the
young novel, a young woman from sv E is kidnapped
onto a boat by a spurned lover. This act angers
(01:06):
the gods, who blow the boat to the North Pole
and spare only the young woman from hypothermia. From there,
the ship floats into a parallel land called the Blazing World,
a utopia populated by human animal hybrids who believe the
young woman is a goddess. This new Empress, a student
(01:27):
of the natural sciences and philosophy, uses her powers to
open schools and form societies of learning, consulting with various
human animal specialists. For example, the parrotmen are orators and magicians,
and the foxmen are politicians and spider Man Unfortunately, more
(01:49):
arachnid than superhero are mathematicians. This woman empress decides to
create her own religion, but she knows she'll need a
scribe to aid her. She asks the spirit to call
upon the souls of ancients like Aristotle and Plato, but
they reply that those writers are too wedded to their
(02:10):
own opinions to be scribes for someone else. Then the
empress requests a famous modern for her writer, like Galileo
or Discarte, but the spirits say that those men are
far too conceded to be scribes for a woman, and
so instead they offer quote, there's a lady, the Duchess
(02:31):
of Newcastle, which although she is not one of the
most learned, eloquent, witty, and ingenious, yet she is a
plain and rational writer. For the principle of her writings
is sense and reason. And she will, without question be
ready to do you all the service she can. Incredibly
(02:52):
complimentary and a little effusive, especially considering that the Duchess
of Newcastle also happened to be the the author of
that book, The Blazing World. The Blazing World was jointly
published with the real Duchess's nonfiction work Observations upon Experimental Philosophy.
(03:14):
The author saw them as companions. Though these genres of
the two books were quite literally worlds apart. The Duchess
believed that the fictional Blazing World reflected scientific and philosophical
ideas from the real world. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle,
was undoubtedly a trailblazer in both worlds. As a science
(03:40):
minded writer, she was the very first woman to attend
a meeting of the Royal Society, which wouldn't admit women
as members until nineteen forty five. She published more than
a dozen original texts under her own name in a
time when doing so was still practically unheard of, becoming
(04:00):
the first known woman to publish a collected volume of
dramatic works in her own time and throughout modern history.
Margaret's transgressive approach to not only publishing but life as
a woman in the seventeenth century has borne the weight
of both renown and criticism. If you know Cavendish's name
(04:22):
but are struggling to place exactly where you know her from,
it's possible you've read Virginia Wolf's A Room of One's Own.
In that book, Wolfe writes, quote, what a vision of
loneliness and riot. The thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind,
as if some giant cucumber had spread itself over all
(04:44):
the roses and carnations in the garden and choked them
to death. What a waste that the woman who wrote
the best bred women are those whose minds are civilist,
should have frittered her time away scribbling nonsense and plunging
give her deeper into obscurity and folly till the people
crowded around her coach when she issued out end quote.
(05:09):
Considering what a cultural juggernaut A Room of One's Own
has been and remains in the canon of women's literature,
you won't be surprised to learn it is difficult for
modern scholarship of Cavendish's life and work to separate itself
from Wolfe's colorful analysis. But today as we learn about
(05:30):
the life and times of the Duchess of Newcastle. I
invite you to consider that perhaps Margaret with someone who
may have read that infamous cucumber description as a compliment.
I'm Danish forts and this is noble blood. Margaret Lucas
(05:53):
was born in Essex in sixteen twenty three. She was
the youngest daughter of Thomas Lucas, an unde titled but
wealthy country landowner, and Elizabeth Layton, a londoner. Margaret's parents
had a rough start. Margaret's older brother was conceived out
of wedlock, and the scandal of that was made worse
(06:14):
when Thomas was exiled that same year for dueling with
a young courtier. He was not pardoned for years. His
son was six by the time they first met. The
fallout from all of that drama meant Margaret grew up
disconnected from court life and London social scene, despite the
Lucases previous years spent building favor as a new money family.
(06:39):
Thomas ultimately died when Margaret was only two, leaving Elizabeth
not only responsible for eight children, but for managing the
family estate, the massive Lucas Manor, located on the grounds
of Saint John's Abbey in Colchester. Being the youngest of eight,
having a single mother, and living on a vast estate
(07:03):
meant that Margaret had a certain amount of freedom growing up.
As far as her education went. She had, as she
later accounted, tutors for quote singing, dancing, reading, writing, music
and the like. By and the like, Margaret means other
traditionally feminine pursuits. However, she goes on to note, quote,
(07:26):
my mother cared not so much for our dancing and
fiddling as that we should be bred virtuously. Considering these
circumstances and consequence of Margaret's mother's first pregnancy, you can
probably guess why Margaret's mother prioritized virtue above all else
in her daughters. This might be the part in a
(07:48):
typical episode where I would move on to another topic
fast forward through Margaret's life, But Margaret's education, or rather
lack thereof, has become a central point in her biography
thanks to a room of one's own. Wolfe's criticism of
Margaret's quote overgrown prose isn't an indictment of her talent,
(08:12):
but rather an indictment of a culture that doesn't prioritize
women's education. Quote what could bind, tame or civilize for
human use that wild, generous, untutored intelligence, Wolfe asked. Without schooling,
Wolfe argued, Margaret's intelligence quote poured itself out Higgley pigglety
(08:34):
in torrents of rhyme and prose, poetry and philosophy. The
future Duchess had a different view of things. She once wrote,
learning is artificial, but wit is natural. Margaret was born
in the cultural era of James the First, who notoriously
feared educated women. When asked if his daughter should receive
(08:57):
a classical education, the king responded, quote to make women learned,
and Fox's tame has the same effect, to make them
more cunning. In the absence of a uniquely progressive father,
women with the natural wit Margaret defend, had to rely
on that wit alone. It's fascinating to me that Wolfe
(09:21):
and James both chose the verb tame in their ideologically
opposite arguments. I'll let you construct your own analysis on that,
but tame is definitely not a word Margaret would ever
use to describe herself. She was significantly younger than her
other siblings, most of them marrying before she hit her preteens,
(09:44):
so she picked up the favored pastime of many only children.
Creating worlds for herself, she lived in her imagination, later
reflecting that she was quote addicted from childhood to contem
rather than conversation, to solitariness rather than society, to melancholy
(10:07):
rather than mirth, to write with the pen than to
work with a needle. Her first writing works were what
she called baby books, which she made out of paper
and filled with illegible scribbles. Margaret may not have had
a formal education, but she did have luck, the luck
(10:27):
of being born into a wealthy family, the luck of
being born with a natural curiosity, and the luck of
having a mother who let her explore her passions freely,
so long as those passions didn't involve boys. At the
same time, Margaret herself felt that she was cursed. From
(10:50):
her youngest to her eldest years, she suffered debilitating social
anxiety alongside what she described as melancholy, but we might
recognize today as a depressive disorder. If she was not
in the presence of her mother or one of her
siblings in public, she could barely function. She particularly adored
(11:13):
her sister Catherine, but from that adoration stemmed more anxiety
when she stayed with Catherine and Catherine's husband. Margaret would
often wake her eldest sister if she thought she was
breathing too quietly for fear she had died in her sleep,
and Margaret would inspect Catherine's food for safety before meals.
(11:36):
Margaret was clearly suffering from intense anxiety, even paranoia, but
many of the young woman's fears about losing her family
would tragically manifest as the country entered wartime. Sixteen forty
two marked the beginning of the English Civil War between
the Royalists and Parliamentarians, with Margaret's family strictly on the
(12:01):
side of the former. The first major incident to affect
the Lucas family was part of what historians now refer
to as the Stour Valley Riots, a series of attacks
against Royalists and suspected Catholics. In the midnight hours of
August twenty second, sixteen forty two, Margaret's elder brother, Sir
(12:24):
John Lucas, was busy preparing his horses and weapons to
be sent to the Royalist forces. Unfortunately for John, his
preparations had not been subtle, and townsfolk had suspected his
plans for some time. A group of local parliamentarians had
been designated to watch the Lucas family home that night,
(12:48):
and their stakeout ultimately escalated to ransacking the manor on
the grounds of Saint John's Abbey. In addition to the
kinds of destruction you'd expect, records show the family coffins
were stabbed through with swords. Just to give you an
idea how unpopular the Lucases and Royalists were. Where was
(13:11):
a nineteen year old Margaret during this fateful night? We
don't exactly know. Documentation is unclear, and there's no mention
of the riots in the Duchess's later autobiography. That's not
to say Margaret shied away from the subject of war.
Her writing dives into discussing it both philosophically and materially.
(13:33):
One quote from her autobiography reads, quote, this unnatural war
came like a whirlwind which felled down my siblings' houses,
where some were crushed to death, as my youngest brother
Sir Charles Lucas and my brother Sir Thomas Lucas. Yes,
the war would ultimately claim the lives of two of
(13:56):
Margaret's three brothers, while her mother and one of her
sisters would also die during that same period. Before those
fateful days, however, most of the family relocated to London,
where they, as Royalists, were in the minority. In the
summer of sixteen forty three, Parliamentary led London was actively
(14:20):
preparing for war. At the same time, Margaret was making
a dangerous and notably illegal journey. Her fifty plus mile
trek took her from London to Oxford, where she was
going to go to the front lines to join the
Royalist army and meet Queen Henrietta Maria. Upon hearing that
(14:42):
the Queen did not have, in her words, the same
number of maids of honor she was used to have,
the horror, Margaret begged her family to let her go
to Henrietta Maria's side. Margaret's mother and siblings were understandably
reluctant to a after all, Margaret shut down in social
(15:03):
situations without them, but Margaret was so persistent that they relented.
When Margaret predictably begged her family to return, finding that
her anxiety was in fact debilitating, her family made her
stay like the English Court was sleep away camp that
she was committed to attending. Margaret's decision to join in
(15:25):
spite of her limitations was representative of an underlying drive
that would motivate her for the rest of her life.
Margaret's shy, bookish disposition was accompanied by an intense desire
to learn and observe, as well as the kind of
self importance you'd find in a wealthy youngest daughter. In
(15:46):
the absence of a university system that valued women, the
kind that Wolf advocated for, Court was Margaret's only option
to spread her wings in young adulthood. If you asked her, However,
Margaret's decision was purely born out of her sense of
duty as a good Royalist daughter. As a royalist, Margaret
(16:08):
almost certainly idolized Queen Henrietta. Maria. The Queen was a
heavily publicized figure at that time, the subject of many
headlines for her trip to Holland to pawn the crown
jewels for war funds. When she returned, she toured the
country with the King's army, where she was known to,
(16:29):
as one account put it, ride astride her horse without
the effeminacy of a woman, and to live with her
soldiers as if they were her brethren, as is expected.
Parliamentarian newspapers focused on building resentment toward her supposed gender
transgressions instead of her politics. Quote this kingdom is woefully
(16:55):
ruined one read by a conjugal conspiracy by a plot
in matrimony. Henrietta Maria, in response to their claims, called
herself the she Majesty General Lissima, which as far as
I know, is still up for grabs as a drag name.
(17:15):
In Margaret's sixteen sixty two play Bell in Campo, Margaret
writes of a general's wife, Lady Victoria, who assembles a
troop of wives to accompany their husbands to the front lines.
Lady Victoria is described as the general, less instructuresque, ruler
and commanderess, and her troop of women even don Amazonian
(17:39):
armor to fight, ultimately winning a battle where the men fail.
Lady Victoria delivers a speech condemning the quote masculine sex
who believe that women quote are only fit to breed
and bring forth children, and contradicts the idea that women
have quote no ingenuity for inventions, nor subtle wit for politicians,
(18:03):
nor judgment for counselors, nor secrecy for trust, nor method
for keeping the peace, nor courage to make war. It's
not hard to imagine from whom Margaret was drawing inspiration
for Victoria in that proto feminist piece of fiction. By
the time Margaret arrived at the Queen's side in Oxford, however,
(18:25):
the Queen wasn't exactly living in the barracks. Instead, she
was residing in Merton College, where her rooms had been
redecorated to model the royal household. As a maid of honor,
Margaret's job would be to be quote in presence. What
did that mean in practice? A lot of standing around.
(18:49):
She would arrive at the Queen's presence chamber at eleven
each morning and sit on the sidelines until Henrietta Maria
wished for entertainment or needed news relayed. This continued all
day until supper time, when the maids retired to their
own chambers. To make sure strict household rules were followed,
(19:12):
Margaret and her fellow maids were under constant surveillance by
the appointed Mother of Maids, who was to report them
to the Lord Chamberlain for any transgressions. This was undoubtedly
an oppressive environment for Margaret, who was used to her solitude.
She later described herself in those early years at court
(19:33):
as like one that had no foundation to stand on,
and she apparently was so afraid of saying or doing
the wrong thing that she opted for near constant silence.
In spite of her shyness, or perhaps because of it.
Margaret was also known for designing her own clothes to
her personal tastes, which often made her stand out for
(19:57):
better or worse in such a conform armist environment. They
would also contribute to her later reputation as the quote
crazy Duchess. Things began to rapidly change at Court in
the summer of sixteen forty four. Henrietta Marie was at
that time then heavily pregnant and began to fear for
(20:20):
her safety and the safety of her unborn child in Oxford,
so she and her court began a journey to leave England.
After escaping in disguise, the group made it to Falmouth,
where a ship was ready to take them to France.
They set sail, but they were quickly pursued by cannon
fire from a parliamentary ship. Henrietta Maria, like Margaret's lady Victoria,
(20:46):
decisively took charge of the situation. Margaret and her fellow
ladies cried in horror when the queen told the captain
that in the event that escape became impossible, he was
to blow up the ship rather than let her be
taken alive. Things did not become that dire, but as
soon as they were clear of the political threat, nature's
(21:09):
cruel neutrality offered another, as a terrible storm nearly destroyed
the Chip. Storms would ultimately become a repeated motif in
Margaret's fiction, The Blazing World begins with one, and in
a sixteen fifty six poem, Margaret tells the story of
(21:30):
a woman who is shipwrecked in the Kingdom of Sensuality,
where she is sold into prostitution, shoots her would be solicitor,
and cross dresses to escape by boat. That woman's second
journey at sea brings another storm fortune, Margaret writes, irritated
(21:51):
the gods against them, making the clouds and seas to
meet them, Showers to beat them, winds to toss them,
thunder to affront them, lightning to amaze them. This description
is evocative, but her own experience with a tempest is
another traumatic event that Margaret avoids recounting in her memoir.
(22:13):
We don't know how Margaret felt during this actually haerlleoss journey,
but through her prose we can see storms become a
source of both fear and awe, both a metaphor for
trauma and a reflection of life's painful realities. The ship
ultimately arrived in France, where Margaret would remain until sixteen
(22:37):
fifty one. If she felt isolated in the English court,
the experience was magnified tenfold upon her arrival in the
French court, where she could not speak the language fluently
and where she was a sea away from her family.
Despite all of that, Margaret managed to find a bright
(22:59):
spot in a dark place. In sixteen forty five, Margaret
and her ever boored fellow ladies witnessed an exciting spectacle
when one of the King's Lords of the Privy Council
arrived at the French court in a lavish carriage pulled
by nine horses. This dramatic man was William Cavendish, the
(23:21):
Marquis of Newcastle, and he would marry Margaret before the
year was out. William was a prominent, respected literary and
scientific patron. History has given a name the Wellbeck Academy
to the intellectual circle that he curated. He hosted many
gatherings at Wellbeck, the Cavendish family seat, for the likes
(23:45):
of the playwright Ben Jonson, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the
naturalist Robert Payne, and many more. However, William did not
have a stellar reputation at the time of his flamboyant arrival,
which was in reality an elaborate display of supposed wealth
designed to trick creditors into lending him more money. His
(24:09):
name currently bore the weight of his rather disastrous loss
as a commander in the Battle of marston Moor, which
was a loss so spectacular that he opted for a
self imposed exile. The writer and politician Sir Philip Warwick
wrote that Cavendish was a generous, loyal man, but his
(24:32):
failing was that he had a tincture of a romantic
spirit and had the misfortune to be somewhat of a poet.
That apparently made him a lousy general, but a wonderful
match for our Margaret. Their attraction was quick and mutual.
In Margaret's own words, William pleased to take some particular
(24:57):
notice of me and express more than an ordinary affection
for me. More than ordinary may be an understatement. Between
April and December of sixteen forty five, aka the beginning
of their courtship to their marriage, Margaret wrote William at
least twenty one love letters. In response, he wrote her
(25:21):
over seventy poems. That's more than one every two days.
Their match was surprising due to, in part, the difference
in their statutes, a thirty ish year age gap, and
Margaret's earlier declaration that she generally shunned men's company as
(25:42):
much as she could. Friends tried to keep them apart,
Margaret's friends cautioning her that William had a reputation as
a casanova. William's friend reminding him of the out of
wedlock circumstances of Margaret's eldest brother's birth and the scandal
that still hung over the family name. But their protests
(26:03):
were all in vain. It was love in their courtship.
Margaret was hindered by her own anxiety, but William understood
her true nature and continued to pen passionate, sometimes excessively
passionate poems. I simply cannot continue this episode without reading
you a couplet from a poem he wrote about the
(26:26):
couple's age gap, quote, no man can love more, or
Love's higher, old and dry wood makes the best fire.
If I have to sit with that innuendo, so do you.
Margaret's letters to William are also the first pieces of
writing we have from her. They were not just declarations
(26:48):
of love, but observations of life at court and reflections
of her own state of mind. Suppose me now, in
a very melancholy humor, she writes to William, for I
see all things subject to alteration and change, and our
hopes as if they had taken opium. But I should
be lost to those things if I did not meet
(27:11):
some of yours to restore me to myself again. Even
in a simple letter at a low point, we can
see Margaret's clever grasp of language. I find the description
of hopes as if they had taken opium as a
particularly evocative metaphor for the bleakness of depression. We also
(27:31):
see how she had quickly come to rely on William
to alleviate those dark thoughts in place of her mother
and siblings across the sea. As a listener of the show,
you may be waiting for the other shoe to drop,
knowing how often unhappiness plagues marriages among nobility. But this
(27:52):
is a rare noble blood love story with a happy ending.
Their marriage was both long, last day and mutually supportive.
William's unconditional support of his wife was more important than
ever when it came to the issue of having children,
or rather not having children. It appears the couple did
(28:14):
initially try, but after two years with no success, William
sought a doctor for advice. The doctor essentially told William
that Margaret's intense melancholy, which was believed at the time
to be the result of an excess of black bile
in the body, would make pregnancy and birth incredibly difficult
(28:36):
and likely result in losing the child. William already had children,
more importantly, heirs from his first marriage, but he was
disappointed to learn he would not have more with Margaret.
Margaret was only disappointed on William's behalf, but noted that
her apparent infertility quote never lessened his love and affection
(28:59):
for me. Not only did Margaret accept the reality that
she would never become a mother, she fully embraced it.
In her writing. She repeatedly explains how the absence of
children and chores of quote housewifery as she described it,
allowed her to devote her time to her true babies
(29:19):
her books. In her sixteen sixty four collection of fictional
Correspondence Sociable Letters, Margaret even proposes the idea that having
children is gainless for women. Sons carry on the legacy
of the father, while daughters will be quote ingrafted into
the stock of another family. Margaret takes this second notion
(29:43):
even further, daughters are to be accounted as movable goods
or furniture. It would be easy to write that off
as cynicism after her own experience, but even if there
is some defensiveness present, there's no denying the fact that
she's putting to paper ideas that wouldn't be part of
mainstream feminist conversations or debates for centuries to come. Following
(30:10):
their first few years of married life in Paris, the
couple moved to Antwerp in the late sixteen forties, where
they rented the house of the famous Flemish painter Peter
Paul Rubens from his widow. Their desire to live in
an artistic home apparently outranked their desire to live in
a well staffed home. Money was tight, with William still
(30:34):
in debt, so they let go of most of their
servants upon the move. What was a childless couple in
a cultured home to do but create a space for
intellectual gatherings. William, as we know, had the connections to
do so. One dinner even hosted his friend Hobbes and
(30:54):
his philosophical rival Descartes at the same table. I can imagine,
and the atmosphere felt like talking politics with the family
at Thanksgiving. A fixture in the home during this time
was William's brother Charles. He either lived with or nearby
to the couple during these years and became an important
(31:16):
person in Margaret's life. The Cavendish brothers devoted time to
giving Margaret the education that she was not afforded in
her childhood. William, to his credit, had provided his own
daughters from his first marriage with a rare formidable education.
From her husband, Margaret learned about politics and history, and
(31:38):
became well acquainted with Hobbes's work on society and government.
From her brother in law, she learned about science. Charles
was a mathematician and was working on his own experiments
in the new age of scientific discovery. He was a
good teacher. He brought Margaret a model of the Copernican
(31:59):
planetary system, so she could visualize the movements and translated
theories about atoms that were only available at the time
in Latin. He also gave Margaret access to his experiment's
first hand, which was her first time using a microscope.
It would become a repeated point in later writings that
(32:21):
Margaret now somewhat famously did not endorse the instrument that
she called the artificial informer, believing that it quote more
deludes than informs. One of her disavowals of the microscope
found in sixteen sixty six's Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, focuses
(32:45):
on the recent discovery that flies possessed clusters that contained
about fourteen thousand eyes. We know today that that figure
is a misconception, but flies do in fact have come
pound eyes made up of hundreds of smaller photoreceptors. Margaret's
(33:06):
natural philosophy was grounded in the principles of reason and rationality,
which she believed nature functions according to. In that case,
what sense would it make that flies have thousands of
eyes but can't see as well as humans do with two?
In her words, quote, if two eyes be stronger than
(33:29):
a thousand, then nature is to be blamed. That she
gives such a number of eyes to so little a creature.
But nature is wiser than we or any creatures able
to conceive, and surely she would not work to no
purpose or in vain. But there appears as much wisdom
in the fabric and structure of her works as there
(33:52):
is variety in them. Margaret speaks of nature with a romantic,
even religious reverence. Today we understand that her perspective lacks nuanced,
but her work is also cautious of a very relevant subject,
the hubris of man. While this work comes from a
(34:12):
writer much more certain in her convictions. It was during
this period of education around sixteen fifty that Margaret began
writing formally, experimenting with essays, allegories, and more. In writing,
Margaret found not only a way to understand the world
as she always longed to, but peace of mind in
(34:35):
a way she had never experienced. In her words, quote,
my mind is become an absolute monarch, ruling alone, my
thoughts as a peaceable commonwealth, and my life an expert
soldier which my Lord meaning William Settled, composed and instructed.
(34:55):
This description tells us as much about Margaret's state of
mind as it does her politics. Only a royalist could
describe alleviation from their depression as a benevolent monarch enforcing peace.
Putting aside the political implications for a second, however, this
statement is also telling when juxtaposed against the perception of
(35:20):
Margaret's work popularized by Virginia Woolf. The quote crazy duchess
who had become a bogey to frighten clever girls with, was,
in fact, by her own analysis, at her most composed
when writing she should have had a microscope put in
(35:40):
her hand, wolf declared she should have been taught to
look at the stars and reason scientifically. Her wits were
turned with solitude and freedom. No one checked her, no
one taught her. We know that this was actually untrue.
Margaret did have a microscope in her hand. She just
(36:01):
didn't like what she saw. She had teachers invested in
her education, just not formal ones, and just not when
she was exclusively young. Perhaps the truth is more simple
than what Wolfe tries to argue. Margaret had more passion
for the written word than talent for it. To pursue
(36:22):
that passion formally for a woman of her time, was
a remarkable feat in itself. While Margaret had found her passion,
her career would not begin until she returned to England
in sixteen fifty three. Shoppers in London bookstores could find
a rare site a book openly written by a woman.
(36:47):
If they opened the cover of Poems and Fancies, they
would be greeted with a title page in large print
written by the right Honorable the Lady Margaret, Countess of Newcastle.
As Wolf remarked in a room of one's own, any
woman who published under her own name risked being thought
(37:10):
a monster. Margaret agreed, if I am condemned, she reflected,
I shall be annihilated. That's part one of our episode
on Margaret Cavendish. But keep listening after a brief break
to hear a little bit more about Virginia Wolf's take
(37:31):
on the Crazy Duchess. Wolfe's opinions on Margaret's work were
highly critical, yes, but also carried an undercurrent of admiration
in the common reader. Wolf approaches Cavendish's work with a
(37:52):
different perspective. Quote though her philosophies are futile and her
plays intolerable, the vast bull of the Duchess is levined
by a vein of authentic fire. One cannot help following
the lure of her erratic and lovable personality as it
meanders and twinkles through page after page. Her simplicity is
(38:15):
so open, her intelligence so active, her sympathy with fairies
and animals so true and tender. She has the freakishness
of an elf, the irresponsibility of some non human creature,
its heartlessness, and its charm. While these compliments are arguably
not very complimentary and surely double edged, there is something
(38:39):
genuinely earnest to them. Perhaps Wolff had some cavendish her
after all. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and
Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted
(39:00):
by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by
Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hit and Julia Melaney.
The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
supervising producer rima il Kaali and executive producers Aaron Manke,
Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(39:24):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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