Cavendish and Phillips

What interested me about this week’s readings were the differences and similarities between the writing of men like Donne, Herrick, Marvell, etc., and that of female writers such as Phillips and Cavendish. Maybe it’s because I knew they were women so I was looking for it, but I found the differences and similarities in their writings very thought-provoking, especially because modern day poetry doesn’t generally display such distinctions.

The most obvious difference was theme. Donne, Herrick, and Marvell objectify women quite frequently, and cast them as objects of sexual or romantic love. As you would guess, Phillips and Cavendish do not. For example, In “To His Coy Mistress,” Marvell coaxes a woman not to be reserved, and to take advantage of her youth and “sport” while she can. Herrick and Donne also write a great deal about women: Herrick’s Upon the Loss of His Mistresses, The Vine, Delight in Disorder, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, Elegy 19 and The Flea have women as the prime focus. In contrast, Phillips writes delicate poems such as Friendship’s Mystery, To My Dearest Lucasia and To Mrs. M. A. At Parting, which extoll and celebrate friendships. Cavendish writes of things like her life in A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life, and The Blazing World, wherein she creates a new, parallel world.

I thought the Blazing World was interesting for a lot of reasons. It was very different from everything we’ve read so far this semester, and also one of the first things we’ve read by a woman. One thing I noticed was that in the Blazing World, the position of women in society was much more important. The empress unequivocally rules – “No sooner was the lady brought before the emperor, but he conceived her to be some goddess, and offered to worship her…and gave her absolute power to rule and govern all that world as she pleased.” The idea that the duchess should rule an entire world is acceptable as well.  I feel that the fact that Cavendish had to go as far as to “create” another world in order to be able to rule it shows how impossible it was at the time The Blazing World was written. At the end she compares her creation of the Blazing World and the Philosophical world with the conquests of Caesar etc., saying that her conquests are in some ways superior: “[the] creation was more easily and suddenly effected, than the conquests of the two famous monarchs of the world, Alexander and Caesar: neither have I made such disturbances, and caused so many dissolutions of particulars, otherwise named deaths, as they did; for I have destroyed but some few men.”

The Blazing World also brings up some interesting points about religion at the time. There’s not much religion in The Blazing World; in fact Cavendish goes as far as to disdain all religions and pointedly decides to create a new, unified one in her Blazing World. “I have made my Blazing World, a peaceable world, allowing it but one religion, one language, and one government.” This shows the lack of involvement of women in religion during this time period.

As far as style goes, Phillips is very flowery, which contracts with Donne and Marvell to an extent, but not so much Herrick. Cavendish was not so much so, in fact some of her poetry was very circuitous, reminiscent of Carew. So it would probably be a very sexist conclusion to say there is a definite difference between the style of male and female writing during this time period.