The Restoration of Royalist Form in Margaret Cavendish's Sociable Letters

Abstract

In Sociable Letters Margaret Cavendish makes a sharp distinction between the writer and their public persona:<br/>a Man is Known by his Works; and we Admire the Creator Through and By his Works; but the Foolish part of the World, which is the Most part, thinks that a Man's Learning or Wit, or Ingenuity, is Printed in his Face.<br/>Until recently, her critical reception has been characterized by overattention to her personality. Cavendish has been identified as a problematic model for contemporary feminism due to the idiosyncratic individualism of her writing. Virginia Woolf described her using the metaphor of nature 'gone wrong', as an overgrown cucumber choking the garden of poesie. Recently Catherine Gallagher argued that she borrows from royalism a singularity that is only an infinite regress into the self. This is supported by Cavendish's own promotion of the protoromantic idea that her writing is pure invention, or fancies shaped by her own brain and not imprinted by others' forms.