Contradictions in Cavendish: An exploration of gender obstacles in "Of the Style of this Book"

Abstract

Throughout the seventeenth century, Lady Margaret Cavendish published extensively across literary categories in a print culture controlled and dominated by men. This research explores what would regularly be an act of hubris and privilege in her time if not for her contradictory stance in her poem "Of the Style of this Book" from her book Poems and Fancies. In the piece, she openly apologizes for her lack of attention to form and tendency towards whims called "fancies;" however, through careful choices in her language and structure, she concurrently rejects and defends her work and further her right to publish as a woman, creating intentional confusion about her intentions as social protection. That is, Cavendish hides herself behind layers of ambiguity in order to safely hold two equally radical but contradictory identities. Through an analysis of her non-conventional adjectival use, gender presentation, the social and physical status of exile, and influence on later literary periods, researchers scrutinize Cavendish's unique impact on future women writers' freedom to publish and overall freedom to influence literature and other traditionally masculine spaces.