The Blazing World

The animal-men come in many different forms, have many different skin tones, and come from the land, sea, sky, and underground. Yet despite these differences, they are ideal citizens: “they saluted and spake to each other very courteously; for there was but one language in all that World: nor no more but one Emperor, to whom they all submitted with the greatest duty and obedience” (67). Unlike the inhabitants warring in the Empress’s old world or the Duchess’s divisive and conflict-ridden one, the animal-men “live in a continued Peace and Happiness” (67).

At the same time, Cavendish uses different species of animal-men to satirize the Royal Society’s scientific and philosophical ideas, particularly the empirical approach championed by Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon, often called the father of empiricism, believed that scientific knowledge should be based only upon inductive reasoning—using specific observations to recognize a pattern and come to a scientific conclusion—and careful observation. The Empress often criticizes the animal-men’s scientific methods, which tend to fail in foolish ways, reflecting Cavendish’s complicated views of emerging scientific theory and her indignation at having been excluded from the Royal Society—and from 17th century intellectual circles more generally—because of her gender. The Empress’s scientific and philosophical conversations with the animal-men, in which she often corrects, teaches, and challenges them, illustrate that women, like the Empress and Cavendish herself, can engage in traditionally masculine scholarship.