The Blazing World

“But your creating Fancy, thought it fit

To make your World of Nothing, but pure Wit.

Your Blazing-world, beyond the Stars mounts higher,

Enlightens all with a Coelestial Fier.”

By including her well-respected husband’s words as a prefatory poem, Cavendish buttresses the authority of her writing. William Cavendish praises his wife’s imagination and intelligence, encouraging readers to view her ideas as genius and revolutionary before they have even read a word of the main text.

“And this is the reason, why I added this Piece of Fancy to my Philosophical Observations, and joined them as two Worlds at the end of their Poles.”

Cavendish explains why she has included both her nonfiction and her fiction works in one volume through the metaphor of two planets joined at the pole, foreshadowing the connection between her imagined worlds. By using this imagery, Cavendish primes her audience to consider the value of connecting two different spheres of thought: male versus female, scientific versus imagined, and now versus the future.

“I should desire only so much as might suffice to repair my Noble Lord and Husband's Losses: For, I am not Covetous, but as Ambitious as ever any of my Sex was, is, or can be; which makes, that though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet, I endeavour to be Margaret the First: and although I have neither power, time nor occasion to conquer the world as Alexander and Cesar did; yet, rather than not to be Mistress of one, since Fortune and the Fates would give me none, I have made a World of my own.”

Cavendish openly declares her ambitions, just as the Duchess does later when first talking with the Empress. By boldly discussing her aspirations and thirst for fame, Cavendish breaks the societal rules and expectations for women of her day. She also connects her writing imagination with the conquests of great military commanders, foreshadowing the war for absolute rule in ESFI in Part 2.