Review: "The Contract" and "Assaulted and Pursued Chastity", by Margaret Cavendish

Review: "The Contract" and "Assaulted and Pursued Chastity", by Margaret Cavendish

by Rich Horton

I recently reviewed Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, a significant piece of proto-SF. (Review here.) The writer is one of the more interesting authors, a fascinating, ambitious, and accomplished woman. She was born in 1623, the youngest child of Sir Thomas Lucas. They were a Royalist family. In 1644, she went into exile in France with William Cavendish, the Marquess of Newcastle, and they married in 1645. He was 30 years her senior, and had five children by his previous marriage -- she never bore him any children, but the marriage seems to have been a loving and successful one. They returned to England after the Restoration, and William's title was elevated to Duke of Newcastle, so that Margaret Cavendish is known as the Duchess of Newcastle (or Newcastle-upon-Tyne). She died in 1673.

Cavendish was a very prolific writer, on philosophical subjects and natural history. She also wrote some 20 plays, and several works of fiction, poems, a memoir, and a biography of her husband. Besides The Blazing World her most significant works of prose fiction are these two stories, which were first published in her 1656 book Nature's Pictures drawn by Fancy's Pencil to the Life. That book is an extended collection of a variety of works, in both prose and verse: essays, morals, fanciful descriptions of nature, an autobiographical essay, etc. The full book apparently has not been reprinted since the 17th Century. These two stories, along with The Blazing World, make up the Penguin Classics edition The Blazing World and Other Writings, edited by Kate Lilley, and first published in 1992. I assume, then, that in Lilley's view these stories are her most interesting pieces of prose fiction. 

The recent sort of rediscovery and rehabilitation of Cavendish as a major early woman writer seems deserved and belated. I think her relative neglect (though she was never forgotten) stems from a few causes -- skepticism about women writers, for one thing (in her lifetime it was often assumed that her husband actually wrote her works), but also resistance to her stubborn royalism and belief in absolute monarchy. Also, to be completely fair to her critics, her works, some self-published, really could have used the attentions of an editor, if simply to normalize such things as spelling and paragraphing, but also to clean up some really infelicitous prose. (I'm aware that in the 17th century spelling and such were not nearly standardized to the extent they are now.) Also, her philosophical speculations, while intriguing, have mostly become out of date due to scientific discoveries, though they were in keeping with such speculations back then, and,  in fact, she apparently published the first discussions of atomic theory in English. Even so, her fiction (and her biographical and autobiographical work) is more rereadable to us now.

At any rate, having read The Blazing World, I figured it made sense to get this Penguin Classics edition, partly for the very useful critical material included, and partly for the more rigorous editorial attention Lilley gave the text. And, of course, for the other two stories. They are both shorter than The Blazing World: "The Contract" is a novelette, and "Assaulted and Pursued Chastity" a novella, by SFWA standards anyway. "The Contract" is not fantastical, but "Assaulted and Pursued Chastity" definitely is -- an allegory set in an invented world, with one extended section set among a quite fanciful variety of humans.

"The Contract" concerns a young woman, named Deletia, heir to a significant estate, who is raised from infancy by her uncle. The uncle was friends with a Duke, and the two men agreed that the child should marry the Duke's second son. However, the son was not interested in betrothal to a child of (at the time) seven, and instead continued his rather debauched ways. Under pressure, he did agree to a contract of marriage, but thereafter ignored her. The child's uncle then arranged for his ward to have a very broad education.

When Deletia reached her teens, she learned that her supposed husband had instead married his latest married lover after her husband died, and had also become the heir to the Dukedom. This did not worry Deletia, for she knew she was blameless, and in fact she felt she had dodged a bullet, so to speak, by not being allied to an immoral man. And she was happy to continue her studies, now encompassing the natural sciences. But she was a very beautiful girl, and her uncle finally decided to introduce her to society. There she soon became a sensation (due rather more to her beauty than her accomplishments, alas) and attracted the attentions of an older man, a Viceroy, who wished to marry her. But she also had again met her contracted husband, now ascended to his Dukedom, and fallen in love. Still, she refused to become the Duke's mistress, and also refused to marry the Viceroy ... all leading to a courtroom drama in which the young lady uses her knowledge of the law to prove that she is the Duke's rightful wife based on the contract executed when the two were much younger. 

It's a curious work -- unsatisfying as a romance, in that the young Duke does not seem worthy of the heroine's affection, and a bit convoluted in working to a satisfactory conclusion, complete with a double marriage. But it's a fierce defense of women's intellectual abilities, and their right to a full education. And it's an enjoyable enough story to read.

"Assaulted and Pursued Chastity" is a stranger work. Like "The Contract", and for that matter, The Blazing World, it foregrounds a woman of great accomplishments and abilities, and indeed this heroine spends much of the story disguised as a man, and acting as one, to the point of engaging the affections of "his" Queen. It's highly allegorical as well, and is set in an invented world. 

A young woman, Affectionata, born in the Kingdom of Riches is forced to flee due to a war. Intending to make it to the Kingdom of Security, she ends up in the Kingdom of Sensuality, but without anyone to protect her, she is sold to a "bawd" (mistress of a whorehouse), who offers her to a debauched Prince. However, Affectionata (now called Miseria) refuses the Prince's attentions, and threatens to kill herself instead of submitting. Over time the Prince falls sincerely in love with her, but she will not have him without marriage, and the Prince is already married. To escape his importunities, she dresses as a boy (calling himself "Travellia") and stows away on a ship. 

It turns out the ship isn't heading in the direction Travellia hoped, so he vows to work for his passage, and before long he has become so useful to the ship's master that the master adopts Travellia as his son. But their ship is wrecked, and they end up in a strange land, described in detail, with unusual plants and animals, and strange (though clearly human) people. The master and Travellia (the only survivors of the wreck) are taken to the capitol city, and meet the King, but seem destined for the dinner pot (as these people are cannibals, and even raise the people of their lower classes for meat.) The two escape by claiming to be messengers of the gods, and indeed in the process convince these people to abandon cannibalism.

In the meantime the Prince has learned that Affectionata has escaped. She left him a letter, admitting that she loved him but would not have him unless he could marry her. In despair, he decided to chase after her -- but the ship he was on was captured by pirates. However, the Prince soon became the leader of the pirates, and ended up staying at sea. Where, of course, as one does, he quickly captured the small boat that Travellia and his adopted father had used to escape the cannibal kingdom. After some further pirate adventures, the Prince discovers Travellia's disguise, and again attempts to make her his mistress, but she still refuses, and she and her father again escape.

The Prince ends up at the Kingdom of Amour, while Travellia has made his way to the Kingdom of Amity. The Prince becomes an adviser to the King of Amour, while Travellia becomes an adviser to the Queen of Amity, who is soon enamored with him. But the King of Amour has long wanted to marry the Queen of Amity, and decides to go to war when she won't have him. In the course of things, the Prince leads the armies of Amour, while Travellia leads the armies of Amity, and both have successes and failures. The resolution, predictably perhaps, turns on the two reconciling (now that, conveniently, the Prince's wife has died back in his home country.) And the Queen of Amity is convinced to turn her affections from Travellia -- now that he is a she again -- to the King of Amour.

I enjoyed reading both these stories -- a bit more than I enjoyed reading The Blazing World, actually. That story has more interesting speculative ideas, but little to no plot, and it becomes quite tedious at times. Both these stories have plenty of action, and "The Contract" has a coherent plot. Both are marriage stories, though it must be said that the central romance is disappointing in each case, with the main female character falling for an objectively pretty awful person. But both stories truly center female intelligence, female agency, female learning. 

And especially in "Assaulted and Pursued Chastity" there is some pretty intriguing play with gender. Affectionata/Miseria/Travellia is referred to by both male and female pronouns, takes traditional male roles, and at the end will be taking a major role in ruling her newly adopted country. It's also interesting to note that both stories feature the female protagonists marrying older men who have been previously married -- just as Margaret Cavendish did. (It's interesting that in the marriage between the rulers of Amour and Amity the author seems clearly to prefer Amity. One could wonder if that's a hint to the nature of her marriage to a much older man.) There's no doubt that these stories are often weird, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes loopy -- but they are also quite interesting.