Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
Galilæana. Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Science

Focus

Vol. 22 No. 2 (2025)

Inner discourse as philosophical debate in Margaret Cavendish

DOI
https://doi.org/10.57617/gal-78
Submitted
30 March 2025
Published
2025-10-31

Abstract

Despite being the first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) was denied membership. Her exclusion from these inner circles prevented her from participating in rigorous debates about her work and the work of her contemporaries. Although she was not invited into these conversations, she nevertheless entered them by imagining the kinds of objections her opponents would raise and publishing her responses in the form of an inner discourse. Inner discourse, here, describes a written dialogue where an author argues with themselves. This paper explores Cavendish’s use of inner discourse across three genres: philosophical prose, letter writing, and science-fiction. Ultimately, I argue that inner discourse as a literary device, for Cavendish, serves not only as a way to overcome social barriers, but also as an argument, by demonstration, against members of the Royal Society who believed that natural philosophy should be done primarily through experiments.

References

  1. Augustine. Soliloquies and Immortality of the Soul, trans. by Gerard Watson. Warminster UK: Aris and Phillips, 1990.
  2. Borbély, Carmen. “The Extravagance of Form in Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World”. Caietele Echinox 46 (2024), 139-150.
  3. Boyle, Deborah. “Margaret Cavendish on Perception, Self‐Knowledge, and Probable Opinion”. Philosophy Compass 10, no. 7 (2015), 438-450.
  4. Boyle, Deborah, ed. Philosophical Letters, Abridged. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2021.
  5. Broad, Jacqueline. “Cavendish, van Helmont, and the Mad Raging Womb”. In The New Science and Women’s Literary Discourse, ed. by Judy A. Hayden New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 69-87. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118430_4: 69-87
  6. Caballero, José Daniel Díaz Tuesta. “‘Yet Is She a Plain and Rational Writer’: Margaret Cavendish’s Self-Fashioning in The Blazing World, Politics, Science, and Literature”, British and American Studies 24 (2018), 19-35. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2115984728
  7. Cavendish, Margaret. The Worlds Olio Written by the Right Honorable, the Lady Margaret Newcastle (London, 1655). In Early English Books Online. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A53065.0001.001
  8. Cavendish, MargaretCavendish, Margaret. Philosophical and Physical Opionions Written by her Excellency, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle (Printed by J. Martin and J. Allestry, 1655). ed. by Lisa Walters. The Digital Cavendish Project. http://digitalcavendish.org/complete-works/philosophical-and-physical-opinions-1655/
  9. Cavendish, Margaret. Philosophical Letters, or, Modest Reflections upon Some Opinions in Natural Philosophy Maintained by Several Famous and Learned Authors of This Age, Expressed by Way of Letters (London, 1664). In Early English Books Online. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A53058.0001.001
  10. Cavendish, Margaret. The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World, Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princesse, the Duchess of Newcastle. In Early English Books Online Collections. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A53044.0001.001
  11. Cavendish, Margaret. Grounds of Natural Philosophy: Divided into Thirteen Parts: With an Appendix Containing Five Parts (London, 1668). In Early English Books Online Collections. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A53045.0001.001
  12. Cavendish, Margaret. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, ed. by Eileen O’Neill. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Originally published in 1668.
  13. Chamberlain, Colin. “The Duchess of Disunity: Margaret Cavendish on the Materiality of Mind”. Philosophers’ Imprint 24, no. 7 (2024): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3998/phimp.2503
  14. Clucas, Stephen. “Variation, Irregularity and Probabilism: Margaret Cavendish and Natural Philosophy as Rhetoric”. Early Science and Medicine 8, no. 3 (2003), 227-257.
  15. Clucas, Stephen. “Margaret Cavendish and the Rhetoric and Aesthetics of the Microscopic Image in Seventeenth-Century England”. In Margaret Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, ed. by L. Walters, B.R. Siegfried. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 51-68.
  16. Cottegnies, Line. “Margaret Cavendish’s Critique of Robert Hooke in The Blazing World”. Revue d’histoire des sciences 77, no. 2 (2024), 225-247.
  17. Fitzmaurice, James. “Autobiography, Parody, and the Sociable Letters of Margaret Cavendish”. In A Princely Brave Woman: Essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, ed. by Stephen Clucas. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003, 69-86.
  18. Hooke, Robert. Micrographia, or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon. London: Printed for James Allestry, 1667.
  19. Hutton, Sarah, and Marjorie Hope Nicolson, eds. The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and Their Friends, 1642–1684. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
  20. Hutton, Sarah, and Marjorie Hope Nicolson, eds. “In Dialogue with Thomas Hobbes: Margaret Cavendish’s Natural Philosophy”. Women’s Writing 4, no. 3 (1997): 421-432.
  21. Keller, Evelyn Fox. “Producing Petty Gods: Margaret Cavendish’s Critique of Experimental Science”. ELH 64, no. 2 (1997), 447-471. https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.1997.0017
  22. Lascano, Marcy P. “Margaret Cavendish and Early Modern Scientific Experimentalism: ‘Boys that play with watery bubbles or fling dust into each other’s eyes, or make a hobbyhorse of snow’”. In Kristen Intemann and Sharon: Crasnow, The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science. New York: NY, 2020, 60-77.
  23. Matthews, Gareth B. “Inner Dialogue in Augustine and Anselm”. Poetics Today 28, no. 2 (2007), 283-302. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-2006-023
  24. Mercer, Christia. “Descartes’ debt to Teresa of Ávila, or why we should work on women in the history of philosophy”. Philosophical Studies 174, 10 (2017), 2539-2555.
  25. Mercer, Christia. “The Methodology of the Meditations: Tradition and Innovation”. In David Cunning, The Cambridge Companion to Descartes’ Meditations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 23-47.
  26. Peterman, Alison. “Margaret Cavendish on Motion and Mereology”. Journal of the History of Philosophy 57, no. 3 (2019), 471-499.
  27. Plato, Theaetetus, trans. by M. J. Levett. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1992.
  28. Pohl, Nicole. “‘Of Mixt Natures’: Questions of Genre in Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World”. In A Princely Brave Woman: Essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, ed. by Stephen Clucas. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003, 51-68.
  29. Power, Henry. Experimental Philosophy, in Three Books Containing New Experiments Microscopical, Mercurial, Magnetical: With Some Deductions, and Probable Hypotheses, Raised from Them. In Avouchment and Illustration of the Now Famous Atomical Hypothesis. London: Printed by T. Roycroft for John Martin and James Allestry, 1664.
  30. Project Vox. “Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673). Letters from Scholarly Contacts”. Project Vox. https://projectvox.org/cavendish-1623-1673/
  31. Rapatz, Vanessa L. “‘A World of Her Own Invention’: Teaching Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World in the Early British Literature Survey and Beyond”. ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830 14, no. 1 (2024), Article 5.
  32. Royal Society. “Groundbreaking Women of Science Celebrated”. The Royal Society, March 8, 2017. https://royalsociety.org/news/2017/03/28-groundbreaking-women-of-science-celebrated/
  33. Sarasohn, Lisa T. The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish: Reason and Fancy during the Scientific Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/book.465
  34. Shapiro, Lisa. “Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia”. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta. Fall 2021 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/elisabeth-bohemia/
  35. Tillery, Denise. “‘English Them in the Easiest Manner You Can’: Margaret Cavendish on the Discourse and Practice of Natural Philosophy”. Rhetoric Review 26, no. 3 (2007), 268-285. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350190701419822
  36. West, Peter. “Margaret Cavendish and the Power of Debating with Yourself”. Aeon/Psyche, March 2022. https://psyche.co/ideas/margaret-cavendish-and-the-power-of-debating-with-yourself
  37. Wilkins, Emma. “Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society”. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 68, no. 3 (2014), 245-260.