The Blazing World

This section has many close historical connections with real English politics and military campaigns. First, the success of the Duchess’s advice to revert to a unified political and religious system, which echoes William Cavendish’s actual advice to King Charles II during the Restoration, underscores Cavendish’s overall argument for absolute monarchy as the ideal form of government. The fictional world’s peace and unity suggests that Cavendish expected peace and unity within England after the Interregnum’s rule by parliament ended. Second, the attack on the Empress’s old country parallels the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665. Just as the real war between England and the Netherlands was a conflict over control of the sea and trade routes, so the fictional war also centers on these issues. Cavendish’s use of contemporary political details further underscores her purpose in advocating for a different way of governing—all power consolidated in a single person.

The Empress then becomes the paragon of such a ruler. She is adept both at the optics of power and its actual use. First, she plays into ESFI’s perception of her as a goddess, approaching the attacking army at night on the backs of fish-men with fire stones. To those watching, “it appear’d as if all the Air and Sea had been of a flaming Fire” (145). The effect is overwhelming: “all that were upon the Sea, or near it, did verily believe, the time of Judgment, or the Last Day was come, which made them all fall down, and Pray” (145). The Empress’s entrance is an allusion to Jesus walking on water, suggests that she too might be divine. Her former countrymen thus see her as a savior, while ESFI’s enemies quake with fear—a fear that is justified when she uses the fire stones rain destruction on the attackers.

The powerful rhetoric of the Empress’s speech also confirms her as the perfect ruler. The Empress declares to her former countrymen that to make ESFI “the most powerful Nation of this World, […] I have chosen rather to quit my own Tranquility, Riches and Pleasure, than suffer you to be ruined and destroyed” (150). Her self-sacrifice for her country is an indicator of her power. As a benevolent ruler, all she asks for is their “grateful acknowledgment, and to declare my Power, Love and Loyalty to my Native Country” (150). This relationship is positioned as symbiotic, allowing both ruler and citizens to prosper. The Empress’s rhetoric recalls that of Queen Elizabeth I—a strong monarch who held absolute power while England was stable and prosperous. However, the Empress also has much in common with Cavendish’s contemporary King Charles II, whose claim to the thrones of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland Cavendish references when describing the “Hereditary Rights” (155) of the king of ESFI. Like Charles, ESFI’s king needs his loyal supporters to regain his throne. The Empress desires to make her old country the “absolute Monarchy of all that world” (154), just like Cavendish desires England to be an absolute monarchy with global power.

As previously, Cavendish’s utopia features an idealized collaboration between men and women. The Emperor gives his full support to the Empress’s political goals; moreover, he is happy to take advice on military planning from the Duchess, another woman, when stumped. Similarly, the Duke and Duchess are shown to be each other’s ardent advocates publicly, and to be deeply fond of one another as well—as is made clear the many times the Duchess misses her husband and longs to be with him. Similarly, when offered war plunder, the Duchess rejects “any more wealth then what her Lord and Husband had before the Civil Wars” (156)—she wants to restore his estates, not expand them. Most interestingly, Cavendish’s utopia offers the Duchess the opportunity for the kind of fame Cavendish herself craved: When the Duchess reveals her desire “for the Elixir that grows in the midst of the Golden Sands, for to preserve Life and Health” (157), no one criticizes this kind of ambition on the part of a woman.

The underwater ship is one of the elements critics point to when they call the text a work of science fiction. The machine’s description draws on Sir Francis Bacon’s utopian novel New Atlantis, in which his technocrats invent a ship that sails underwater. Cavendish makes this literary allusion a part of her world, as the Empress “told [the giants] how some in her own World had been so ingenious, and contrived Ships that could swim under Water” (145)—an explanation that enables the architects to reproduce these vehicles through imagination alone. Even though the giants “had never heard of that Invention” (145), they create one with no other practical information.

The Empress’s explanation of greed echoes the grim view of human nature taken by English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. In his 1651 work Leviathan, Hobbes declared the need for a strong central authority to prevent civil war due to people’s typical base instincts. According to Hobbes, humans are by nature selfish and destructive. Similarly, the Empress opines that “the more Riches they have, the more Covetous they are, for their Covetousness is Infinite” (156). Hobbes’s only solution is a social contract people and a strong government: Citizens give up some rights to gain protection, while their sovereign, whose power is derived from the people’s ascent, must control all aspects of society—civil, military, judicial, and religious. Cavendish illustrates this theory in the Empress’s peaceful rule of the Blazing World, the discord that emerges when she briefly offers new religious and legal options, and the restoration of unity once these changes are undone.

Cavendish takes a chance to directly address her own critics. The Empress asks the Duchess “the reason why she did take such delight when she was joyned to her body, in being singular both in Accoustrements, Behaviour an Discourse” (157). Many men criticized and mocked Cavendish for her odd dress and strange behavior, including the men who saw her appearance at the Royal Society. The express expresses their beliefs when she states, “If you were not a great Lady, [...] you would never pass in the World for a wise Lady; for the World would say your natural Humours, Actions and Fortunes of Mankind, are not done by the Rules of Art (159-160). While Cavendish acknowledges the privileges of her title, she has the Duchess reject the idea of the social rules of the age as “she did not at all regard the censure of this or any other age concerning vanities” (160). Instead, she knows that “neither this present, nor any of the future ages can or will truly say that I am not Vertuous and Chast” (160). While not conforming to the social graces of her day, the Duchess insists on living a moral life. Her ability to write about evil characters further proves her wit and doesn’t ruin her character. This discussion gives Cavendish the opportunity to address criticism of her as a female writer and scientist.

Cavendish ends with a self-congratulatory moment, as the idealized Empress and Emperor prefer her “Natural” plays to the “Artificial” (160) ones then popular in the real world’s conventions. Although she did not have success on the stage in life, Cavendish could create it for herself in fiction.

The text ends with the Duchess nostalgically reflecting on her time in the Blazing World—a way for Cavendish to suggest that it should serve as a model for the real one.