By Rena Ryu, WWP Research Fellow

When the architecture of knowledge is gendered, gaining access to knowledge is not necessarily considered the same as gaining intellectual authority. Many historical examples show that a woman can enter a space of learning and still be expected to bow her head to its rules, hierarchies, and definitions of “legitimate” knowledge. Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666) and Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) dually confront this problem, but they imagine women’s intellectual authority on different stages. Whereas Astell is primarily concerned with how women can become capable of recognizing and authorizing one another as peers and rational thinkers, Cavendish imagines what happens when women move beyond recognition and strive to create intellectual worlds of their own. In short, their difference is that Astell constructs a model of intellectual authority through community and reciprocity, while Cavendish builds one through imagination, authorship, and creativity. Together, they suggest that answering a gendered architecture of knowledge requires women to move from being imprisoned by intellectual systems shaped by male authority to becoming its designers. 

To start, I wanted to compare similarities found in both authors before looking into differences. One of the most revealing similarities between Astell and Cavendish is that neither author treats intellectual authority as something that should belong exclusively to one individual. For instance, we see that Astell’s proposed “Amicable Society” is very explicitly communal. The women within it are expected to “rule according to Reason, not Humour” and practice “Friendly Admonition” (F4r–v). What matters in this space is that these women are learning to judge one another, therefore creating a system in which the concept of intellectual authority may circulate between women rather than descending from an established, god-like figure above them. 

Cavendish shares this rejection of an individualistic and isolated intellectual authority, but she imagines its consequences differently. We see this in the Empress and the Duchess’s intellectual exchange transformed into a mutual creation. When the Empress helps inspire the Duchess with a plan to create an imaginary world, the Empress then decides to also create another world in her own mind. There is a distinction that I wanted to make clear here. The Duchess’s influence in this exchange is successful precisely because it marks the Empress as capable of becoming a creator herself. This marks a clear difference between Astell and Cavendish’s approach to world-building. Astell imagines women validating one another’s reasoning while Cavendish imagines one woman’s intellectual authority generating another woman’s invention. I would also consider their different approaches in light of each author’s individual classes within society. Astell, who came from a relatively prosperous middle-class family of Newcastle coal merchants without the aristocratic status enjoyed by Cavendish as the Duchess of Newcastle, places greater emphasis on creating a community for the general female population through which they can collectively develop intellectual authority.  On the other hand, Cavendish was a member of the aristocracy and writes through figures such as the Duchess and the Empress, whose social status allows them to exercise authority, evaluate existing systems, and invent alternatives.  These differing versions of intellectual authority may therefore reflect contrasting philosophical approaches along with contrasting relationships to social power from which the two authors were writing. 

This difference also reveals two distinct understandings of what a successful intellectual community should produce in the future. For Astell, the immediate goal is the formation of rational judgment. The women under her society must learn how to deliberate, correct, and reason together. For Cavendish, however, judgment is simply the beginning, with the endpoint being creation. The Duchess eventually discovers that “no patterns would do her any good in the framing of her World” and decides to “make a World of her own Invention” (O2v). Whereas Astell asks how women can become independent thinkers, Cavendish asks what independent thinking should eventually allow women to make. 

I believe that the difference becomes especially significant because Cavendish places her female creator in relation to male philosophical systems that are already established. The Duchess actually considers worlds based upon the philosophies of figures such as Aristotle, Epicurus, Descartes, and Hobbes, but finds that none of their so-called “patterns” adequately serve her purposes. Her decision to abandon these worlds is therefore her assertion that inheritance is not equal to authority. A woman may know the established philosophical systems like the back of her hand and still refuse to treat them as the final possible structures of thought. 

Astell makes a related move, but through institutional rather than creative means. This is shown through her “Amicable Society” which reorganizes the relationships in which knowledge is produced. Astell decides to emphasize friendship, constructive criticism, and collective reasoning instead of the competition or rigid hierarchy seen in patriarchal forms of intellectual institutions. In this sense, both authors are hesitant to give women access to pre-existing intellectual systems. Astell changes the social organization of knowledge while Cavendish changes its conceptual possibilities. 

Another way in which their approaches differ is in what they think women must ultimately become. Astell’s ideal woman becomes a disciplined and rational participant in her intellectual community. Her proposal is deliberately concerned with cultivating the habits that allow women to govern themselves through reason. This is evident in her instruction that the women of the community should “rule according to Reason, not Humour” and practice “Friendly Admonitions” (F4r-v). Astell’s version of reason is one that is a habit that must be cultivated through self-government, judgment, and the willingness to take on constructive criticism. Cavendish’s vision of an ideal woman is more of the disruptive kind as seen in the Duchess and the Empress possessing the authority to invent, evaluate, and govern their worlds. In sum, Astell’s woman becomes a better thinker within a newly constructed community, whereas Cavendish’s woman becomes capable of constructing the world in which reasoning takes place. 

Yet Cavendish’s emphasis on creation should not be mistaken for a rejection of Astell’s communal model. In fact, the relationship between the Empress and Duchess demonstrates that intellectual creation still must require another mind. The Duchess’s world becomes meaningful because the Empress recognizes it and enters into dialogue with it. Their exchange creates a sort of intellectual production with the recognition that each other’s world produces further creation. 

This is also where the two authors challenge the traditional idea of intellectual authority the most effectively in my opinion. The basic idea of a hierarchical model of knowledge tends to imagine authority as something one person possesses and another person receives. Astell replaces this with reciprocal authority through the correction and friendship process I mentioned earlier while Cavendish replaces it with generative authority. In both cases, intellectual power increases rather than decreases when it is collectivized. 

Their different treatments in authorship are also striking. In terms of who is being addressed, Astell directly speaks to “the Ladies,” effectively imagining her readers as the future participants in the community she describes. Cavendish performs something similar through the Duchess, who functions as a fictionalized author within the fiction itself. Through this, Cavendish therefore creates a woman who creates worlds, allowing female authorship to become part of the content as well as the form of the work. 

Seen together, the works therefore answer the question of how women can build spaces for their minds in different but complementary ways. Astell believes women must first construct a community capable of sustaining and recognizing female reason. Cavendish imagines women taking the next step and constructing new intellectual possibilities that do not depend upon existing/inherited models. Astell therefore changes who is allowed to participate in the production of knowledge while Cavendish changes what that production can produce. 

This makes their works more ambitious than mere arguments for female education alone. Both authors understand that simply admitting women into an existing intellectual structure risks leaving the underlying patriarchal hierarchy untouched. Astell therefore, as mentioned previously, creates an alternative community in which women may become authorities for one another, while Cavendish imagines women becoming their own authors and architects of entirely new worlds. If the architecture of knowledge has historically positioned women as its occupants rather than its designers, then their answer must ultimately be not to ask for a larger room. It is to become capable of deciding what the room should look like for themselves. 

Sources:

Cavendish, Margaret (Lucas), Duchess of Newcastle. The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World, 1668. Northeastern University Women Writers Project, 12 Feb. 2002. 

https://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/texts/cavendish.blazing.html.

Astell, Mary. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, 1694. Northeastern University Women Writers Project, 4 Apr. 2002. https://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/texts/astell.proposal.html.

This post is part of a series written by Rena Ryu, WWP Research Fellow. See the other two posts: “What Does it Take to Build a Space for Women’s Minds?” and “Why Does Mary Astell Begin with a Room?“

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