This post takes place IN THE PAST!
Hello, I am here today to tell you about a lady named Margaret Cavendish.
This is her! She lived from 1623-1673, she was a Duchess, she designed her own clothes, and she wrote science-fiction!
...I am not Covetous, but as Ambitious as ever any of my Sex was, is, or can be; which is the cause, That though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second; yet, I will endeavour to be, Margaret the First: and, though I have neither Power, Time nor Occasion, to be a great Conqueror, like Alexander, or Cesar; yet, rather than not be Mistress of a World, since Fortune and the Fates would give me none, I have made One of my own.
- Introduction to The Blazing World
I've only just started reading her writings but they are pretty fascinating. In The Blazing World the heroine is kidnapped by a lecherous merchant, but the ship he has her own drifts far to the north and winds up passing into another world that is joined to ours at the North Pole, where there are walking, talking bears and geese, and humanoid people whose skin is bright purple and blue and green. She ends up marrying their emperor and is worshiped as a goddess, ha ha. Where I am right now she's learning about their culture and government. I understand that later on she'll lead an invasion through the poles back into our world in proto-submarines. XD
She's an interesting lady. I think a lot of her contemporaries thought she was nuts. She was extremely, painfully shy. She once had dinner with Thomas Hobbes (she read and wrote a lot about philosophy and science, as well as fiction) and was struck dumb with anxiety. She married a man 25 years older than her and they never had children (he had kids from a previous marriage), but he seems to have completely adored her. There's a really lovely sonnet he wrote in honor of her at the beginning of The Blazing World.
This is her! She lived from 1623-1673, she was a Duchess, she designed her own clothes, and she wrote science-fiction!
...I am not Covetous, but as Ambitious as ever any of my Sex was, is, or can be; which is the cause, That though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second; yet, I will endeavour to be, Margaret the First: and, though I have neither Power, Time nor Occasion, to be a great Conqueror, like Alexander, or Cesar; yet, rather than not be Mistress of a World, since Fortune and the Fates would give me none, I have made One of my own.
- Introduction to The Blazing World
I've only just started reading her writings but they are pretty fascinating. In The Blazing World the heroine is kidnapped by a lecherous merchant, but the ship he has her own drifts far to the north and winds up passing into another world that is joined to ours at the North Pole, where there are walking, talking bears and geese, and humanoid people whose skin is bright purple and blue and green. She ends up marrying their emperor and is worshiped as a goddess, ha ha. Where I am right now she's learning about their culture and government. I understand that later on she'll lead an invasion through the poles back into our world in proto-submarines. XD
She's an interesting lady. I think a lot of her contemporaries thought she was nuts. She was extremely, painfully shy. She once had dinner with Thomas Hobbes (she read and wrote a lot about philosophy and science, as well as fiction) and was struck dumb with anxiety. She married a man 25 years older than her and they never had children (he had kids from a previous marriage), but he seems to have completely adored her. There's a really lovely sonnet he wrote in honor of her at the beginning of The Blazing World.