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Dana Schwartz
Production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Erin Menke. Listener discretion advised. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you're probably wondering why it's taken me so long to discuss any royal from the Kingdom of Esphrit. Really, the truth is, I'm embarrassed. It's been a real oversight on my part and I'm taking full responsibility and rectifying it immediately. Just kidding. I can't take this bit any further, mainly because the notion of England and France under a single monarchy is too absurd. That's what the Kingdom of ESPY is. It's an acronym for England, Scotland, France and Ireland, and it is in fact a fictional land in the 1666 Proto Science fiction novel the Blazing World. In the young novel, a young woman from Espi? Esfi is kidnapped onto a boat by a spurned lover. This act angers the gods, who blow the boat to the North Pole and spare only the young woman from hypothermia. From there, the ship floats into a parallel land called the Blazing World, a utopia populated by human animal hybrids who believe the young woman is a goddess. This new Empress, a student of the natural sciences and philosophy, uses her powers to open schools and form societies of learning, consulting with various human animal specialists. For example, the parrot men are orators and logicians, and the fox men are politicians and spider men. Unfortunately, more arachnid than superhero are mathematicians. This woman Empress decides to create her own religion, but she knows she'll need a scribe to aid her. She asks the spirit to call upon the souls of ancients like Aristotle and Plato, but they reply that those writers are too wedded to their own opinions to be scribes for someone else. Then the Empress requests a famous modern for her writer, like Galileo or Descartes, but the spirits say that those men are far too conceited to be scribes for a woman, and so instead they offer There's a lady, the Duchess of Newcastle, which, although she is not one of the most learned, eloquent, witty, and ingenious, yet she is a plain and rational writer, for the principle of her writings is sense and reason, and she will without Question. Be ready to do you all the service she can. Incredibly complimentary and a little effusive, especially considering that the Duchess of Newcastle also happened to be the author of that book, the Blazing World. The Blazing World was jointly published with the Real Duchess nonfiction work Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. The author saw them as companions. Though the genres of the two books were quite literally worlds apart, the Duchess believed that the fictional Blazing World reflected scientific and philosophical ideas from the real world. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was undoubtedly a trailblazer in both worlds. As a science minded writer, she was the very first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society, which wouldn't admit women as members until 1945. She published more than a dozen original texts under her own name in a time when doing so was still practically unheard of, becoming the first known woman to publish a collected volume of dramatic works in her own time and throughout modern history. Margaret's transgressive approach to not only publishing, but life as a woman in the 17th century has borne the weight of both renown and criticism. If you know Cavendish's name but are struggling to place exactly where you know her from, it's possible you've read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. In that book, Woolf writes, what a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind, as if some giant cucumber had spread itself over all the roses and carnations in the garden and choked them to death. What a waste that the woman who wrote the best bred women are, those whose minds are civilest should have frittered her time away, scribbling nonsense and plunging ever deeper into obscurity and folly till the people crowded round her coach when she issued out. Considering what a cultural juggernaut A Room of One's Own has been and remains in the canon of women's literature, you won't be surprised to learn it is difficult for modern scholarship of Cavendish's life and work to separate itself from Wolf's colorful analysis. But today, as we learn about the life and times of the Duchess of Newcastle, I invite you to consider that perhaps Margaret was someone who may have read that infamous cucumber description as a compliment. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is Noble Blood. Margaret Lucas was born in Essex in 1623. She was the youngest daughter of Thomas Lucas, an untitled but wealthy country landowner, and Elizabeth Layton, a Londoner. Margaret's parents had a rough start. Margaret's older brother was conceived out of wedlock and the scandal of that was made worse when Thomas was exiled that same same year for dueling with a young courtier. He was not pardoned for years. His son was 6 by the time they first met. The fallout from all of that drama meant Margaret grew up disconnected from court life and London social scene. Despite the Lucases previous years spent building favor as a new money family, Thomas ultimately died when Margaret was only two, leaving Elizabeth not only responsible for eight children, but for managing the family estate, the massive Lucas Manor, located on the grounds of St John's Abbey in Colchester. Being the youngest of eight, having a single mother and living on a vast estate meant that Margaret had a certain amount of freedom growing up. As far as her education went, she had, as she later recounted, tutors for singing, dancing, reading, writing, music and the like. By and the like, Margaret means other traditionally feminine pursuits. However, she goes on to note, my mother cared not so much for our dancing and fiddling as that we should be bred virtuously. Considering these circumstances and consequence of Margaret's mother's first pregnancy, you can probably guess why Margaret's mother prioritized virtue above all else in her daughters. This might be the part in a typical episode where I would move on to another topic. Fast forward through Margaret's life, but Margaret's education, or rather lack thereof, has become a central point in her biography, thanks to A Room of One's Own. Woolf's criticism of Margaret's overgrown prose isn't an indictment of her talent, but rather an indictment of a culture that doesn't prioritize women's education. What could bind tame or civilize for human use that wild, generous, untutored intelligence? Wolf asked. Without schooling, wolf argued, Margaret's intelligence poured itself out higgledy piggledy in torrent of rhyme and prose, poetry and philosophy. The future duchess had a different view of things. She once wrote, learning is artificial, but wit is natural. Margaret was born in the cultural era of James I, who notoriously feared educated women. When asked if his daughter should receive a classical education, the king responded, to make women learned and foxes tame has the same effect to make them more cunning. In the absence of a uniquely progressive father, women with the natural wit, Margaret defends, had to rely on that wit alone. It's fascinating to me that Woolf and James both chose the verb tame in their ideologically opposite arguments. I'll let you construct your own analyses on that. But tame is definitely not a word Margaret would ever use to describe herself. She was significantly younger than her other siblings, most of them marrying before she hit her preteens, so she picked up the favored pastime of many only children, creating worlds for herself. She lived in her imagination, later reflecting that she was quote addicted from childhood to contemplation rather than conversation, to solitariness rather than society, to melancholy rather than mirth. To write with the pen than to work with a needle. Her first writing works were what she called baby books, which she made out of paper and filled with illegible scribbles. Margaret may not have had a formal education, but she did have luck. The luck of being born into a wealthy family, the luck of being born with a natural curiosity, and the luck of having a mother who let her explore her passions freely, so long as those passions didn't involve boys. At the same time, Margaret herself felt that she was cursed. From her youngest to her eldest years, she suffered debilitating social anxiety alongside what she described as melancholy. But we might recognize today as a depressive disorder. If she was not in the presence of her mother or one of her siblings in public, she could barely function. She particularly adored her sister Catherine. But from that adoration stemmed more anxiety. When she stayed with Catherine and Catherine's husband, Margaret would often wake her eldest sister if she thought she was breathing too quietly for fear she had died in her sleep. And Margaret would inspect Catherine's food for safety before meals. Margaret was clearly suffering from intense anxiety, even paranoia, but many of the young woman's fears about losing her family would tragically manifest as the country entered wartime. 1642 marked the beginning of the English Civil War between the Royalists and Parliamentarians, with Margaret's family strictly on the side of the the former. The first major incident to affect the Lucas family was part of what historians now refer to as the Stour Valley Riots, a series of attacks against Royalists and suspected Catholics. In the midnight hours of August 22, 1642, Margaret's elder brother, Sir John Lucas, was busy preparing his horses and weapons to be sent to the Royalist forces. Unfortunately for John, his preparations had not been subtle and townsfolk had suspected his plans for some time. A group of local parliamentarians had been designated to watch the Lucas family home that night, and their stakeout ultimately escalated to ransacking the manor on the grounds of St. John's Abbey. In addition to the kinds of destruction you'd expect, records show the family coffins were stabbed through with swords. Just to give you an idea how unpopular the Lucases and Royalists were, where was a 19 year old Margaret during this fateful night? We don't exactly know. Documentation is unclear and there's no mention of the riots in the Duchess later autobiography. That's not to say Margaret shied away from the subject of war. Her writing dives into discussing it both philosophically and materially. One quote from her autobiography reads, this unnatural war came like a whirlwind which felled down my siblings houses where some were crushed to death as my youngest brother Sir Charles Lucas and my brother Sir Thomas Lucas. Yes, the war would ultimately claim the lives of two of Margaret's three brothers, while her mother and one of her sisters would also die during that same period. Before those fateful days, however, most of the family relocated to London where they as royalists were in the minority. In the summer of 1643, Parliamentary led, London was actively preparing for war. At the same time, Margaret was making a dangerous and notably illegal journey. Her 50 plus mile trek took her from London to Oxford where she was going to go to the front lines to join the royalist army and meet Queen Henrietta Maria. Upon hearing that the Queen did not have, in her words, the same number of maids of honor, she was used to have the horror, Margaret begged her family to let her go to Henrietta Maria's side. Margaret's mother and siblings were understandably reluctant to agree. After all, Margaret shut down in social situations without them. But Margaret was so persistent that they relented when Margaret predictably begged her family to return. Finding that her anxiety was in fact debilitating, her family made her stay like the English court was sleepaway camp. That she was committed to attending. Margaret's decision to join in spite of her limitations was representative of an underlying drive that would motivate her for the rest of her life. Margaret's shy, bookish disposition was accompanied by an intense desire to leave, learn and observe as well as the kind of self importance you'd find in a wealthy youngest daughter. In the absence of a university system that valued women, the kind that Woolf advocated for, court was Margaret's only option to spread her wings in young adulthood. If you asked her, however, Margaret's decision was purely born out of her sense of duty as a good royalist daughter. As a royalist, Margaret almost certainly idolized Queen Henrietta Maria. The Queen was a heavily publicized figure at that time, the subject of many headlines for her trip to Holland to pawn the Crown jewels for war funds. When she returned, she toured the country with the King's army, where she was known to, as one account put it, ride astride her horse without the effeminacy of a woman and to live with her soldiers as if they were her brethren. As is expected, Parliamentarian newspapers Focused on building resentment toward her supposed gender transgressions instead of her politics. This kingdom is woefully ruined. One read by a conjugal conspiracy, conspiracy by a plot in matrimony. Henrietta Maria, in response to their claims, called herself the she Majesty Generalissima, which as far as I know, is still up for grabs as a drag name. In Margaret's 1662 play Belle in Campo, Margaret writes of a general's wife, Lady Victoria, who assembles a troop of wives to accompany their husbands to the front lines. Lady Victoria is described as the generaless, instructoress, ruler and commandoress, and her troop of women, even Don Amazonian armor to fight, ultimately winning a battle where the men fail. Lady Victoria delivers a speech condemning the masculine sense sex, who believe that women are only fit to breed and bring forth children, and contradicts the idea that women have no ingenuity for inventions nor subtle wit for politicians, nor judgment for counselors, nor secrecy for trust nor method for keeping the peace, nor courage to make war. It's not hard to imagine from whom Margaret was drawing inspiration for Victoria in that proto feminist piece of fiction. By the time Margaret arrived at the Queen's side in Oxford, however, the Queen wasn't exactly living in the barracks. Instead, she was residing in Meryton College, where her rooms had been redecorated to model the royal household. As a maid of honor, Margaret's job would be to be quote in presence. What did that mean in practice? A lot of standing around. She would arrive at the Queen's presence chamber at 11 each morning and sit on the sidelines until Henrietta Maria wished for entertainment or needed news relayed. This continued all day until supper time, when the maids retired to their own chambers to make sure strict household rules were followed. Margaret and her fellow maids were under constant surveillance by the appointed mother of maids, who was to report them to the Lord Chamberlain for any transgressions. This was undoubtedly an oppressive environment for Margaret, who was used to her solitude. She later described herself in those early years at court as like one that had no foundation to stand on. And she apparently was so afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing that she opted for near constant silence. In spite of her shyness, or perhaps because of it, Margaret was also known for designing her own clothes to her personal tastes, which often made her stand out for better or worse. In such a conformation, warmest environment. They would also contribute to her later reputation as the quote, crazy Duchess. Things began to rapidly change at court. In the summer of 1644, Henrietta Marie was at that time then heavily pregnant and began to fear for her safety and the safety of her unborn child in Oxford. So she and her court began a journey to leave England. After escaping in disguise, the group made it to Falmouth, where a ship was ready to take them to France. They set sail, but they were quickly pursued by cannon fire from a parliamentary ship. Henrietta Maria, like Margaret's Lady Victoria, decisively took charge of the situation. Margaret and her fellow ladies cried in horror when the Queen told the captain that in the event that escape became impossible, he was to blow up the ship rather than let her be taken alive. Things did not become that dire, but as soon as they were clear of the political threat, nature's cruel neutrality offered another as a terrible storm nearly destroyed. That chimp storms were would ultimately become a repeated motif in Margaret's fiction. The blazing world begins with one, and in a 1656 poem, Margaret tells the story of a woman who is shipwrecked in the kingdom of sensuality, where she is sold into prostitution, shoots her would be solicitor and cross dresses to escape by boat. That woman's second journey at sea brings another storm. Fortune, Margaret writes, irritated the gods against them, making the clouds and seas to meet them, showers to beat them, winds to toss them, thunder to affront them, lightning to amaze them. This description is evocative, but her own experience with a tempest is another traumatic event that Margaret avoids recounting in her memoir. We don't know how Margaret felt during this actually perilous journey, but through her prose we can see storms become a source of both fear and awe, both a metaphor for trauma and a reflection of life's painful realities. The ship ultimately arrived in France, where Margaret would remain until 1651 if she felt isolated in the English court. The experience was magnified tenfold upon her arrival in the French court, where she could not speak the language fluently and where she was a sea away from her family. Despite all of that, Margaret managed to find a bright spot in a dark place. In 1645, Margaret and her ever bored fellow ladies and gentlemen witnessed an exciting spectacle when one of the King's Lords of the Privy Council arrived at the French court in a lavish carriage pulled by nine horses. This dramatic man was William Cavendish, the Marquis of Newcastle, and he would marry Margaret before the year was out. William was a prominent, respected literary and scientific patron. History has given a name, the Welbeck Academy, to the intellectual circle that he curated. He hosted many gatherings at Welbeck, the Cavendish family seat for the likes of the playwright Ben Jonson, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the naturalist Robert Paine and many more. However, William did not have a stellar reputation at the time of his flamboyant arrival, which was in reality an elaborate display of supposed wealth designed to trick creditors into lending him more money. His name currently bore the weight of his rather disastrous loss as a commander in the Battle of Marston Moor, which was a loss so spectacular that he opted for a self imposed exile. The writer and politician Sir Philip Warwick wrote that Cavendish was a generous, loyal man, but his failing was that he had a tincture of a romantic spirit and had the misfortune to be somewhat of a poet. That apparently made him a lousy general, but a wonderful match for our Margaret. Their attraction was quick and mutual. In Margaret's own words, William pleased to take some particular notice of me and express more than an ordinary affection for me. More than ordinary may be an understatement. Between April and December of 1645, aka the beginning of their courtship to their marriage, Margaret wrote William at least 21 love letters. In response, he wrote her over 70 poems, that's more than one every two days. Their match was surprising due to in part the difference in their statutes, a 30ish year age gap and Margaret's earlier declaration that she generally shunned men's company as much as she could. Friends tried to keep them apart, Margaret's friends cautioning her that William had a reputation as a Casanova. William's friends reminding him of the out of wedlock circumstances of Margaret's eldest brother's birth and the scandal that still hung over the family name. But their protests were all in vain. It was love. In their courtship, Margaret was hindered by her own anxiety, but William understood her true nature and continued to pen passionate, sometimes excessively passionate poems. I simply cannot continue this episode without reading you a couplet from a poem he wrote about the couple's age gap. No man can love more or loves higher. Old and dry wood makes the best fire. If I have to sit with that innuendo, so do you. Margaret's letters to William are also the first pieces of writing we have from her. They were not just declarations of love, but observations of life at court and reflections of her own state of mind. Suppose me now in a very melancholy humor she writes to William. For I see all things subject to alteration and change, and are hopes as if they had taken opium. But I should be lost to those things if I did not meet some of yours to restore me to myself again. Even in a simple letter at A low point. We can see Margaret's clever grasp of language. I find the description of hopes as if they had taken opium as a particularly evocative metaphor for the bleakness of depression. We also see how she had quickly come to rely on William to alleviate those dark thoughts in place of her mother and siblings across the sea. As a listener of the show, you may be waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing how often unhappiness plagues marriages among nobility, but this is a rare, noble blood love story with a happy ending. Their marriage was both long lasting and mutually supportive. William's unconditional support of his wife was more important than ever when it came to the issue of having children, or rather, not having children. It appears the couple did initially try, but after two years with no success, William sought a doctor for advice. The doctor essentially told William that Margaret's intense melancholy, which was believed at the time to be the result of an excess of black bile in the body, would make pregnancy and birth incredibly difficult and likely result in losing the child. William already had children, more importantly, heirs from his first marriage, but he was disappointed to learn he would not have more with Margaret. Margaret was only disappointed on William's behalf, but noted that her apparent infertility never lessened his love and affection for me. Not only did Margaret accept the reality that she would never become a mother, she she fully embraced it. In her writing, she repeatedly explains how the absence of children and chores of housewifery as she described it, allowed her to devote her time to her true babies, her books. In her 1664 collection of fictional correspondence, Sociable Letters, Margaret even proposes the idea that having children is gainless for women. Sons carry on the legacy of the father, while daughters will be ingrafted into the stock of another family. Margaret takes this second notion even further. Daughters are to be accounted as movable goods or furniture. It would be easy to write that off as cynicism after her own experience. But even if there is some defensiveness present, there's no denying the fact that she's putting to paper ideas that wouldn't be part of mainstream feminist conversations or debates for centuries to come. Following their first few years of married life in Paris, the couple moved to Antwerp in the late 1640s, where they rented the house of the famous Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens from his widow. Their desire to live in an artistic home apparently outranked their desire to live in a well staffed home. Money was tight with William still in debt, so they let go of most of their servants upon the move. What was a childless couple in a cultured home to do but create a space for intellectual gatherings. William, as we know, had the connections to do so. One dinner even hosted his friend Hobbes and his philosophical rival Descartes at the same table. I can imagine the atmosphere felt like talking politics with the family at Thanksgiving. A fixture in the home during this time was William's brother Charles. He either lived with or nearby to the couple during these years and became an important person in Martin Margaret's life. The Cavendish brothers devoted time to giving Margaret the education that she was not afforded in her childhood. William, to his credit, had provided his own daughters from his first marriage with a rare formidable education. From her husband, Margaret learned about politics and history and became well acquainted with Hobbes work on society and government. From her brother in law, she learned about science. Charles was a mathematician and was working on his own experiments. In the new age of scientific discovery, he was a good teacher. He brought Margaret a model of the Copernican planetary system so she could visualize the movements and translated theories about atoms that were only available at the time in large Latin. He also gave Margaret access to his experiments firsthand, which was her first time using a microscope. It would become a repeated point in later writings that Margaret now somewhat famously did not endorse the instrument that she called the artificial informer, believing that it more delude then informs. One of her disavowals of the microscope found in 1666's Observations upon Experimental philosophy focuses on the recent discovery that flies possessed clusters that contained about 14,000 eyes. We know today that that figure is a misconception, but flies do in fact have compound eyes made up of hundreds of smaller photoreceptors. Margaret's natural philosophy was grounded in the principles of reason and rationality, which she believed nature functions according to. In that case, what sense would it make that flies have thousands of eyes but can't see as well as humans do? With two in her, if two eyes be stronger than a thousand, then nature is to be blamed that she gives such a number of eyes to so little a creature. But nature is wiser than we or any creature is able to conceive. And surely she would not work to no purpose or in vain. But there appears as much wisdom in the fabric and structure of her work works as there is variety in them. Margaret speaks of nature with a romantic, even religious reverence. Today we understand that her perspective lacks nuance. But her work is also cautious of a very relevant the hubris of man. While this work comes from a writer much more certain in her convictions. It was during this period period of education, around 1650, that Margaret began writing formally experimenting with essays, allegories and more. In writing, Margaret found not only a way to understand the world as she always longed to, but peace of mind in a way she had never experienced. In her words, quote, my mind is become an absolute monarch, ruling alone, my thoughts as a peaceable commonwealth and my life an expert soldier, which my lord settled, composed and instructed. This description tells us as much about Margaret's state of mind as it does her politics. Only a royalist could describe alleviation from their depression as a benevolent monarch enforcing peace. Putting aside the political implications for a second, however, this statement is also telling when juxtaposed against the perception of Margaret's work popularized by Virginia Woolf. The crazy duchess who had become a bogey to frighten clever girls with, was in fact, by her own analysis, at her most composed. When writing. She should have had a microscope put in her hand, Woolf declared. She should have been taught to look at the stars and reason scientifically. Her wits were turned with solitude and freedom. No one checked her, no one taught her. We know that this was actually untrue. Margaret did have a microscope put in her hand. She just didn't like what she saw. She had teachers invested in her education, just not formal ones, and just not when she was exclusively young. Perhaps the truth is more simple than what Woolf tries to argue. Margaret had more passion for the written word than talent for it. To pursue that passion formally for a woman of her time was a remarkable feat in itself. While Margaret had found her passion, her career would not begin until she returned to England in 1653. Shoppers in London bookstores could find a rare sight, a book openly written by a woman. If they opened the COVID of Poems and Fancy, they would be greeted with a title page in large print, written by the Right Honorable the Lady Margaret, Countess of Newcastle. As Woolf remarked, in a room of one's own, any woman who published under her own name risked being thought a monster. Margaret agreed. If I am condemned, she reflected, I shall be annihilated. That's part one of our episode on Margaret Cavendish, but keep listening after a brief break to hear a little bit more about Virginia Woolf's take on the crazy Duchess.
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Dana Schwartz
Woolf's opinions on Margaret's work were highly critical, yes, but also carried an undercurrent of admiration in the common reader. Woolf approaches Cavendish's work with a different perspective. Quote Though her philosophies are futile and her play is intolerable, the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of authentic fire. One cannot help following the lure of her erratic and lovable personality as it meanders and twinkles through page after page. Her simplicity is so open, her intelligence so active, her sympathy with fairies and animals so true and tender. She has the freakishness of an elf, the irresponsibility of some non human creature, its heartlessness and its charm. While these compliments are arguably not very complimentary and surely double edged, there is something genuinely earnest to them. Perhaps Woolf had some Cavendish in her after all, noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Erin Manke. Nobleblood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hite and Julia Milani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer Rima Il Kayali and executive producers Aaron Menke, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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This is an iHeart podcast.
Host: Dana Schwartz
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts and Grim & Mild
Release Date: August 12, 2025
In the inaugural episode of Noble Blood, Dana Schwartz delves into the life and legacy of Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. This episode, titled "Who's Afraid of the Duchess of Newcastle (Part One)," explores the multifaceted personality and pioneering contributions of Margaret Cavendish, a remarkable woman navigating the complexities of 17th-century royalty, science, and literature.
Dana begins by addressing the fictional Kingdom of ESPY, an amalgamation of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland from Margaret Cavendish’s novel, The Blazing World. She humorously acknowledges the challenge of discussing royals from this fictional realm, highlighting Cavendish's imaginative prowess.
Dana Schwartz [00:36]: "The notion of England and France under a single monarchy is too absurd."
Margaret Cavendish emerges as a pioneering figure, being the first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society and publishing extensively under her own name at a time when female authors were a rarity. Dana emphasizes Cavendish's dual legacy in both real and fictional worlds, underscoring her role in shaping early scientific and philosophical discourse.
Dana Schwartz [02:30]: "Margaret was significantly younger than her other siblings, most of them marrying before she hit her preteens, so she picked up the favored pastime of many only children, creating worlds for herself."
Born in Essex in 1623, Margaret was the youngest daughter of Thomas Lucas and Elizabeth Layton. Her father's early death and her family's Royalist allegiance plunged her into a life marked by both privilege and instability. Despite the lack of a formal education, Margaret's intellectual curiosity was nurtured by her mother, who valued virtue over traditional feminine pursuits.
Dana Schwartz [04:50]: "Learning is artificial, but wit is natural."
Margaret's life was overshadowed by intense social anxiety and melancholy, conditions that limited her social interactions and influenced her writings. Dana draws parallels between Margaret's struggles and modern understandings of depressive disorders, highlighting how these personal challenges shaped her worldview and literary output.
Dana Schwartz [06:45]: "I find the description of hopes as if they had taken opium as a particularly evocative metaphor for the bleakness of depression."
The outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 had devastating effects on Margaret's family, leading to violence and loss. Dana recounts the Stour Valley Riots, which resulted in the destruction of the Lucas family manor and the deaths of several family members. These traumatic events deeply influenced Margaret's perspectives on war and society.
Dana Schwartz [10:15]: "This unnatural war came like a whirlwind which felled down my siblings' houses where some were crushed to death..."
Defying her anxiety, Margaret undertook a perilous journey to join Queen Henrietta Maria in Oxford, seeking to contribute to the Royalist cause. Her determination to support the Queen, despite personal limitations, underscores her sense of duty and resilience.
Dana Schwartz [12:30]: "Margaret's decision to join in spite of her limitations was representative of an underlying drive that would motivate her for the rest of her life."
Margaret’s role as a maid of honor involved stringent surveillance and minimal interaction, contributing to her isolation. The precarious situation at Oxford forced Queen Henrietta Maria and her court, including Margaret, to flee to France, where they faced both political and natural adversities, such as a life-threatening storm.
Dana Schwartz [17:50]: "The ship ultimately arrived in France, where Margaret would remain until 1651 if she felt isolated in the English court."
In France, Margaret met William Cavendish, the Marquis of Newcastle, a charismatic but financially troubled nobleman. Their swift and passionate courtship, marked by an extensive exchange of love letters and poems, defied social norms and familial opposition, culminating in their marriage in 1645.
Dana Schwartz [21:40]: "Their marriage was both long lasting and mutually supportive."
After their marriage, the couple relocated to Antwerp, residing in the former home of the painter Peter Paul Rubens. Here, Margaret received an education she had previously been denied, learning about politics, history, and science from her husband and her brother-in-law, Charles Cavendish. This intellectual environment fostered her development as a writer and thinker.
Dana Schwartz [26:15]: "From her husband, Margaret learned about politics and history and became well acquainted with Hobbes' work on society and government."
Margaret's literary works, including essays, allegories, and The Blazing World, reflect her fascination with science and philosophy. She engaged critically with contemporary scientific instruments like the microscope, questioning their efficacy and incorporating natural philosophy into her narratives.
Dana Schwartz [30:20]: "Margaret's natural philosophy was grounded in the principles of reason and rationality, which she believed nature functions according to."
Upon returning to England in 1653, Margaret embarked on a prolific publishing career. Her works, such as Poems and Fancies (1662), were groundbreaking for being openly authored by a woman. Dana highlights the challenges and societal perceptions Margaret faced, as well as her resilience in the literary arena.
Dana Schwartz [35:50]: "Suppose me now in a very melancholy humor she writes to William...”
Dana concludes the episode by examining Virginia Woolf’s critical yet admiring view of Margaret Cavendish. Woolf's portrayal oscillates between disdain and fascination, capturing the Duchess's complex personality and enduring influence on literature and feminist thought.
Dana Schwartz [40:15]: "Though her philosophies are futile and her play is intolerable, the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of authentic fire."
As the episode wraps up, Dana reflects on the duality of Cavendish’s legacy—both as a "crazy Duchess" and a profoundly intelligent writer. She promises to continue exploring Woolf's perspectives and Margaret's enduring impact in the forthcoming part two of the series.
Dana Schwartz [40:15]: "That's part one of our episode on Margaret Cavendish, but keep listening after a brief break to hear a little bit more about Virginia Woolf's take on the crazy Duchess."
Noble Blood masterfully intertwines historical facts with literary analysis, offering listeners a comprehensive look into Margaret Cavendish's life. By highlighting her intellectual endeavors, personal struggles, and the societal challenges she overcame, Dana Schwartz paints a vivid portrait of a woman ahead of her time, whose contributions continue to resonate in today's discussions on gender and literature.
For more insights into history's most fascinating royals, tune into future episodes of Noble Blood available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform.
Produced by:
Erin Menke, Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hite, and Julia Milani
Edited by: Jesse Funk
Supervising Producer: Rima Il Kayali
Executive Producers: Aaron Menke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick