A Description of the Blazing World ed. by Sara H. Mendelson (review)

Margaret Cavendish was one of the most prolific authors in early modern print. While The Blazing World is her most canonical work and is increasingly appearing in graduate and undergraduate curricula, it is a text that is steeped in early modern intellectual thought and ideas, requiring contextualization to render it accessible to students. As Cavendish herself explains, the Blazing World should be read in relation to her scientific theories since it was published with her philosophical treatise, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (1666). Sara H. Mendelson’s new edition of The Blazing World, therefore, is an excellent and welcome resource for students and scholars as it provides an in-depth analysis of the scientific, political, literary and historical influences upon this remarkable text. While Susan James’s 2008 edition, published by Cambridge University Press, is very helpful for considering Cavendish’s political thought, and Kate Lilley’s 1992 Penguin Classics edition was instrumental in pioneering Cavendish studies, no previous edition of The Blazing World has provided such a comprehensive reading of its cultural and intellectual context. Mendelson builds from and expands her previous edition of The Blazing World (Broadview Press, 2000), discussing the text in relation to scientists and philosophers such as Fontenelle, Henry More, Pierre Gassendi, and Francis Bacon, as well as members of the Royal Society. The edition explores how the text raises early modern philosophical questions and concerns regarding the plurality of worlds and the problems with optical instruments with respect to the production of knowledge In particular, the introduction helpfully situates the text in relation to the beliefs of political philosophers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, as well as historical figures and events such as the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–67). Although Cavendish was one of most secular early modern thinkers in print, Mendelson also investigates the spiritual and religious ideas that run through the narrative of The Blazing World. For example, she considers how the Immaterial Spirits challenge the Neoplatonic and cabbalistic philosophy of Henry More and his theories of spirit. In addition, Mendelson’s notes to the text point out which ideas would have been regarded as particularly controversial and unorthodox within early modern culture.

Tracing the difficulties a woman would have encountered in pursuing science, in the introduction Mendelson reveals how prevailing views of gender are challenged throughout The Blazing World—not only by the all-powerful Empress, who leads scientific communities and conquers worlds, but also via the natural philosophy that is espoused throughout the text. As Mendelson notes, it is significant that The Blazing World is the first science fiction story written and published by a woman (21), particularly since it provides a gendered critique of the New Science as it was emerging. Even so, the introduction asserts that Cavendish insisted “on traditional gender roles for the female populace of her imaginary world” (34). Although the introduction is excellent, it would have nonetheless been interesting to hear more about how “traditional gender roles” are reconciled with the Empress’s radical innovations pertaining to women’s religious roles, where she created “a Congregation of Women, whereof she intended to be the head her self ” (100).

While the edition is an outstanding resource for situating the text in its cultural context, the introduction also explores genre and structure in fascinating ways. Cavendish draws upon “romance, science fiction, travelogue, fantasy, satire, philosophical dialogue, surveys of contemporary science and philosophy, biblical criticism, expositions of Cavendish’s own scientific theories, political philosophy, biography, blazons and spectacles, and orations and set pieces” (21). Mendelson thus argues that Cavendish plays with the “boundaries of generic convention far beyond their natural limits until each section becomes transmuted into something new and strange” (26). Indeed, Mendelson provides much insight into the “tripartite structure which is then replicated on different levels,” including the narrative involving three distinct worlds and “a trio of protagonists, each of them an idealized avatar of the ‘real’ Margaret Cavendish...