BIOGRAPHY
The feminine mystique
|
`Was Margaret Cavendish really mad, or just an eccentric? The search for an answer resulted in this book... '
|
What a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind!
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
KATIE WHITAKER, the author of this intensely researched book, during the course of her investigation for her doctoral work on the history of science, happened to study the meetings of the Royal Society. She chanced upon a revealing entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle which referred to her in the most disparaging terms as "a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman". How could a woman so exceeding successful in public life, so highly acclaimed, the first woman of her time to publish works in her own name, earn such a disapproving entry in Pepys's diary? What sort of a bizarre woman was she? Was she a maverick, or really mad, or just an eccentric? The search for an answer resulted in this book, Mad Madge that examines her extraordinary life, lauds her accomplishments, frees her from her concerns and seeks to restore her from near neglect.
Margaret (Lucas) (1623-73) was born in Essex, the richest county in 16th-century England. At the age of two, she lost her father and at 20 she was singularly chosen as the maid of honour to Henrietta Maria (1609-69), the vivacious queen Consort of England and wife of Charles I. William Cavendish, one of England's wealthiest aristocrats, a confirmed and uncompromising Royalist, older than Margaret by 30 years, with five surviving children from a previous marriage that lasted 25 years and a close friend and patron of Ben Jonson, married her when he was 52; and the two had to spend 16 years in exile in Paris during the English civil wars, till the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Margaret got introduced to the elite of the European intellectual community that consisted of persons like Jack Hobbes, the political theorist and Descartes, the philosopher-mathematician. When most women believed that the goal in life was to get married into wealthy families and lead perfect and peaceful lives, she believed in such other things as the cultivation of the mind. The result was a panoply of publications — plays, short fiction, philosophic treatises, scientific speculations — in 23 volumes in a writing career that spanned less than two decades. Margaret Cavendish had practically had no formal training in philosophical disquisition. She based full faith in what is called "atomism". It is a belief that all matter, whether animate or inanimate, is composed of a single atom. She had no faith in experimental science which was a developing phenomenon in the 17th Century. She discarded the experiments of famous scientists like Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry.
William, who was in his fifties, was discovered to be suffering from impotence. The prospect of having to be childless added to her depression. No wonder attachment to the arts was a natural outlet. For one thing, it afforded the necessary distraction. Margaret belonged to "Salon" culture wherein aristocratic women participated in creating literary portraits and character drawing of stereotypes. The role of women in society was a prominent and recurring theme and Margaret, passionately defending women, attacked the stability of the edifice of masculine superiority. On the question of morality, however, she was a die-hard conservative. Promiscuous women, for her, "were the foulest and falsest creatures of Nature's works".
As a poet, Margaret was not in favour of "love poetry" or complimentary verses. The genre of the moral dialogue — as practised by Milton or Marvell, for instance — was her favourite wherein she could discuss some of the grand themes such as humanity's obsession with wealth, human arrogance, injustices, vain and fruitless pleasures. At a time when women were forbidden from printing their own writings, Margaret declared to the world that publication "was an honourable act, even a moral or religious duty" for a woman. She dedicated her lavish folio volume, in large print, to her brother-in-law, Sir Charles Cavendish, in gratitude. Margaret's English spelling was atrocious, the handwriting not quite legible, sentences ungrammatical, disconnected or incomplete — a condition attributed to dyslexia or malfunctioning of the brain. She tried her hand at the short story. She wrote plays meant for reading and in them the concentration was on women characters. She wrote letters which had a long tradition as a literary form and these letters handled the theme of "the humours of mankind and the actions of man's life".
With the Restoration of Charles II, Margaret's life of exile was over. She turned her attention to the domestic work of housewifery, besides continuing her literary efforts at revising her writings. Back home she became a celebrity, a big crowd puller, a major figure in London society. Margaret was fond of dressing extravagantly and gaudily, even sometimes exceeding the limits of propriety. This won her the nickname Mad Madge. Andrew Marvell mentioned her in one of his poems. She sent her gift of books to intellectual giants, the Cambridge Platonist Henry More being one of them. Margaret aspired to be known as a heroic woman and this was more than realised in her lifetime. Oxford and Cambridge paid her rich compliments and gave her a public reception. But later historians view this as just a formality paid to a noble woman. Dryden, Flecknoe and Shadwell were among those who received favours from this patron of letters, Margaret. With new projects in mind and with the revision of her earlier works still incomplete, Margaret breathed her last at the age of 50. Overwork and strain had taken their toll. William died three years later.
If we look back upon Margaret's life, we cannot but notice that she had her share of admirers and critics: she retained an air of mystique about her. Verse satires and comic ballads were written after her death and some of these circulated anonymously. Her reception in the 18th Century was largely favourable. Most of her works disappeared from public view by mid-18th Century. Lamb and Hazlitt liked her works. Twentieth Century dismisses her writings and it was Virginia Woolf who demolished her lock stock and barrel. In recent times her stocks have started rising. Recent studies relate her work to the work of her contemporaries and conclude that she was a versatile writer and an active participant in the intellectual life of her times. Wasn't she the first woman who lived by her pen?
Mad Madge carries coloured and black and white photographs in 16 pages and a facsimile of a love letter that Margaret wrote to William in 1645. The industry that has gone into the research and the meticulousness in narration are admirable. One may read Mad Madge with profit: it tells the story of a woman who elevated her life by conscious endeavour. But what one notices in this otherwise standard literary biography is its failure to preserve what Lytton Strachey terms "the becoming brevity — a brevity that excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant". And that makes all the difference.
M.S. NAGARAJAN
Mad Madge: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Royalist, Writer and Romantic, Katie Whitaker, Chatto and Windus, 2002, p.436, £12.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
