Margaret Cavendish Essay

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle was born in 1623 to a wealthy family. She was a philosopher, poet, essayist, scientist, and playwright who lived during the seventieth century. During this time period, it was still rare for a woman to write and publish their own work. She never received any formal education. However, she had access to scholarly libraries and was an avid reader. She’s the youngest of 8 children and spent most of the time with her brother John who was a scholar himself and a member of the Royal Society. The works she wrote in the Longman Anthology include a few of her poems and the books titled “Observations upon Experimental Philosophy” and “The Description of a New Blazing World”. It is interesting to see how someone,

She prided herself on her originality and boasted about her ideas saying they were not inspired by the writings of others. However, looking back today, it is evident that there are examples of common themes in her poems seen from other authors who published poetry in the same time period. In her poems, she wrote about her own fears, desires, opinions, and aspirations. Her first book, “Poems, and Francies”, included her earliest ideas on natural philosophy. She wrote about her theory that all atoms have the same amount of matter, but differ in shape. Shortly after she published a book that same year titled “Philosophy and Francies”, where she disproves her own atomic theory. Not only did Margaret challenge her own ideas, she often challenged the work of other

She was exposed to Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke conducting experiments and this is where she started attempting her own experiments. She would act as her own physician by inflicting various medical “treatments” on herself. This inevitably led to her health deteriorating and eventually her death in 1674. Her writings were outside of the norm during that time, but they helped to popularize ideas during the scientific revolution. It’s important to note here that she was one of the first natural philosophers to argue that theology was separate from scientific