Limited Utopia in The Blazing World


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			Limited Utopia in The Blazing World

				8 December 2000

	"Utopia" has had many manifestations in the literary world; from Sir Thomas More's Utopia to Bacon's The New Atlantis to Voltaire's land of El Dorado in Candide, many writers have fantasized and written about what constitutes a perfect government and a perfect society. Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World is often considered part of this utopic canon. Though it is more fanciful than the others (the Blazing World is not on earth but exists tangentially to the North Pole), it still provides a description of what constitutes a perfect place for Cavendish; in her world, a woman is the ruler, science rules above all else, and there is only one religion, alleviating the need for religious wars and animosities. But once this world is looked at closely, it can be seen that this "utopia" would only be a perfect place for a privileged few. Much like the English society from which Margaret Cavendish haled, the Blazing World is only an enjoyable country for aristocrats, technocrats, and followers of popular opinion. From the point of view of the lower classes, the artists, the dissenters, and practically everyone who does not have the privilege of being called "Empress," the Blazing World is no perfect place; it is a land of dictatorial rule and oppression.

	This oppression almost immediately manifests itself in the text. In the very first paragraph, the Lady who had been kidnapped from her own world is given control over the entire Blazing World to "rule and govern all that world as she pleased" (Cavendish 53). There were no elections, no consultation with the subjects, nothing to indicate that the inhabitants of the Blazing World had any power whatsoever in the decision to make this Lady their ruler. Though it is true that the population "tendered her all the veneration and worship due to a deity," they could hardly do otherwise considering that she had complete and absolute control over them (Cavendish 53). This autocracy had been in place before the Lady had made her entrance; the narrator says that the "priests and governors were of the imperial blood" (Cavendish 53). Thus there was an imperial family set apart from the rest of the population to eventually be given total control over the populace. Since some of these became priests, they were able to dictate the laws of the church and religion, which were harsh indeed.


	One such provision made by these priests of the Blazing World stipulated that women were not allowed to attend church, since "it is not fit....that men and women should be promiscuously together in time of religious worship" (Cavendish 53). Instead, the women are forced to "stay at home, and say their prayers in their closets" (Cavendish 54). Though the Empress is a woman, she is the only woman in the world that has any power. From her own admission, the reader learns that "women and children have no employment in church and state" (Cavendish 54). Women cannot even obtain power by being married to a priest or a governor; these high personages are made eunuchs "to keep them from marriage" (Cavendish 54). According to the priests, who are all men of the imperial family and thus already enjoy the privileges of their status, women even as wives of governors and priests "cause as much, nay, more mischief secretly, than if they had the management of public affairs" (Cavendish 54). Much has been said about the Blazing World being a place where women are empowered. For instance, Erin Lang Bonin suggests that other utopian works frequently disregard women's roles in the government:

	For the most part, early modern island utopias depend upon carefully controlled heterosexual reproductive economies. Because such utopian narratives valorize natural law and depend upon patriarchal paradigms for marriage, family, and the state, they seldom question women's nature and place. (339)
	She goes on to state that Cavendish is able to "wrest female characters from patriarchal economies to envision female political agency" (Bonin 340). In reality, women have little power in government or religious affairs in the Blazing World. Though it is true that the Empress is a woman, the general population "could hardly be persuaded to believe her mortal;" thus she is treated more as a god in the form of a female than as a female herself (Cavendish 53). As for all the other women who are merely mortal, they are confined to their homes as wives of laymen, never having their voices heard in the government and never being deigned worthy to worship their god in a church.

	The Empress, given the power to do whatever she wills in the Blazing World, decides to maintain monarchical control of the land rather than give the people a voice in its affairs. Susan Wiseman writes of Cavendish that "her heroines endorse the division of the world into binary opposites based on the masculine right to authority" (171).� In the case of the Empress, this does not appear to be the case. She does not adhere to the "right of authority" as established in the Blazing World. While the rules of succession remain unknown to the reader, as does the origins of the original Emperor's power, the very existence of an imperial family suggests that the power structure of the Blazing World is based on lineage. It seems therefore that the emperorship should have been given to the next in line, perhaps the oldest son of the Emperor or the next brother of the Emperor, as in the French monarchical system of the 18th century. One thing is sure: the Empress did not deserve the right to rule a people she did not know and of which she was not a part. As such, she was a usurper. It can be argued that by virtue of her marriage to the Emperor she was able to lay claim to the title of Empress, but he, like the rest of the Blazing World, first thought she was a divine being. Since his subjects also eventually thought she was a deity, he probably realized he would be in a perilous situation should the people choose to honor and worship the Lady rather than himself. Thus his marriage and subsequent abdication of power may be explained by his supposed certainty that the Empress would become ruler regardless of his actions. The Blazing World, then, was certainly no utopia for this now-powerless Emperor.
	The Emperor may be a character deserving pity for his plight: a wondrous Lady appears from another world, and his subjects immediately begin to worship her. But his case is uncertain, unlike that of the various artists that doubtlessly existed in the Blazing World. On page 54, the narrator writes that some of the animal-men mentioned had "applied themselves to the study of several arts and sciences" (Cavendish). Unfortunately for them, the Empress chose to "encourage" the fields which she deemed important; "to that end she erected schools, and founded several societies" (Cavendish 53). These fields of study included experimental philosophy, astronomy, natural philosophy, chemistry, Galenic physics, politics, mathematics, oration and logic, and architecture. There is no mention of painting, sculpture, music composition, instrumentation, literature, poetry, dance, or language. According to this passage, the Empress would not have supported almost any field covered by a Liberal Arts school. So what became of the artists? The Empress' ingenious idea was to assign professions according to species, much like apartheid South Africa tried to assign professions according to race.

		The bear-men were to be her experimental philosophers, the bird-men her astronomers, the fly-, worm-, and fish-men her natural philosophers, the ape-men her chemists, the satyrs her Galenic physicians, the fox-men her politicians, the spider- and lice-men her mathematicians, the jackdaw-, magpie- and parrot-men her orators and logicians, the giants her architects, etc. (Cavendish 53).

	Though the narrator asserts that these professions were the "most proper for the nature of their species," it can be assumed that someone must have decided which profession was most proper for each specie. In sociology, this is often termed as "ascribed status." The fact that these men "were to be" these professions instead of "had been" means that these professions were imposed on them, based on someone's whim. Given that the above paragraph constantly refers to "her chemists" and "her mathematicians," it can be assumed that once again the Empress is exercising her monarchical muscles.
	As already stated, the higher-status positions in the government and the clergy were reserved for members of the imperial family. The imperial family is not established to consist of any of the animal-men. On the contrary, immediately after mentioning the castration of the men of the family, the narrator begins to describe men of "several complexions": "an azure, some of a deep purple, some of a grass-green, some of a scarlet, some of an orange color, etc." (Cavendish 53). These men were not the recognizable colors of the races of Earth, but other than their complexions, they appear to be the same specie as humans and thus the Empress herself. These men are part of the Imperial family and are endowed with the special privileges that this entails - most notably, power over the others through government and religion. In a different century, Margaret Cavendish would have been called "speciest" or "anthropomorphic." Eve Keller seems to think that this assignation of profession based on species is one of the driving forces of the utopian atmosphere of the Blazing World: "Although the experimental study of nature cannot produce utopian unity in Cavendish's envisioned world, the autocratic application of the Blazing World's weird technology is nonetheless able to enforce it" (Keller 464). As it is, the azure man of the Blazing World seems to have a much better life than the lice-man relegated to solving mathematical equations each day.
	� If the lice-man does not revolt, if he has convinced himself he is happier being the Empress' mathematician than as whatever he was before, it is because the church of the Blazing World has decreed that the Empress should have absolute power. As one priest says, "a monarchy is a divine form of government, and agrees most with our religion; for as there is but one God, whom we all unanimously worship and adore with one faith, so we are resolved to have but one Emperor, to whom we all submit with one obedience" (Cavendish 53). Thus disobeying the Empress is tantamount to disobeying God. Marina Leslie quotes Rachel Trubowitz as saying that Cavendish "dissociates the utopia from the repressive force of the discipline and newly associates it with a suspension of rationally conceived laws and institutionally imposed order" (120). So according to Trubowitz, Cavendish's utopia should not be based on institutionally imposed order. Yet the Blazing World's church, considered by most Earthlings to be a religious institution, is the only thing justifying the rule of the imperial family. As such, it is the only thing maintaining order; under penalty of whatever the religion prescribes, the inhabitants of the Blazing World are not free to make their own decisions. Thus revolts are quelled before they occur and dissension will not occur. There's one interesting caveat to this system: the same family who runs the religion is the same family who runs the government - the imperial family. Thus one family has control of the religious structure which keeps the government in power as well as the government system itself. This concentration of power is able to keep the lower classes - the lice-men and bear-men and all the other animal-men - in addition to the women of the Blazing World in their substandard positions.

	In short, the Blazing World is only a utopia for the ruling family's male members and for the Empress herself. All others are forced into submission through religious ordinances. There is no power of the common people, no voice for the women, and no choice for occupations. Dissenters, artists, and the lower classes are left without any outlet for opposition. As such, it may be a good thing that this utopia is literally "no place."

	Works Cited

	Bonin, Erin Lang. "Margaret Cavendish's Dramatic Utopias and the Politics of Gender," SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900: 40.2 (2000). 339-354.

	Cavendish, Margaret. Excerpt from The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World, English 403 booklet. Compiled by Dr. Andrew Shifflett, 2000.

	Keller, Eve. "Producing Petty Gods: Margaret Cavendish's Critique of Experimental Science," ELH 64.2 (1997). 447-471.

	Leslie, Marina. Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.

	Wiseman, Susan. "Gender and Status in Dramatic Discourse: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle," Women, Writing, History 1640-1740. Ed. Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992.

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