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Genre and Implications

Scholar Nicole Pohl of Oxford Brookes University has argued that Cavendish was accurate in her categorization of the work as “a ‘hermaphroditic’ text”. Pohl points to Cavendish’s confrontations of seventeenth century norms, with regard to such categories as science, politics, gender, and identity. Pohl argues that her willingness to question society’s conceptions while discussing topics that were considered in her era best left to male minds, allows her to escape into an exceptional gender-neutral discussion of said topics, creating what Pohl labels, “a truly emancipatory poetic space.”

Northeastern University professor Marina Leslie remarks that readers have noted that The Blazing World serves as a departure from the habitually male dominated field of utopian writing. While some readers and critics may interpret Cavendish’s work as being restricted by these characteristics of the genre of utopia, Leslie suggests approaching interpretations of the work while remembering Cavendish as one of the first, more outspoken feminists in history, and especially in early writing. Doing so, Leslie argues, allows us to view Cavendish’s work as a capture of the possibilities that the young genre of utopia had to offer. Leslie contends that in this sense, Cavendish utilized the utopian genre to discuss issues such as “female nature and authority” in a new light, while simultaneously expanding the utopian genre itself.

University of Georgia professor Sujata Iyengar notes the importance of the fact that The Blazing World is clearly fictional, a stark contrast to the scientific nature of the work it is attached to. Iyengar notes that writing a work of fiction allowed Cavendish to create a new world in which she could conceive of any possible reality. Such liberty, Iyengar argues, allows Cavendish to explore ideas of rank, gender, and race that directly clash with commonly held beliefs about servility in her era. Iyengar goes as far to say that Cavendish’s newfound liberty within fictional worlds provides her an opportunity to explore ideas that directly conflict with those that Cavendish writes about in her nonfiction writing.