What Does It Take to Build a Space for Women’s Minds?
By Rena Ryu, WWP Research Fellow When I first encountered Margaret Cavendish’s The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666), I expected what many modern readers may expect from early science fiction: fantastical creatures, imaginative worlds, and much speculation. Certainly, I found those generic elements underneath the plot of a woman being transported and crowned as Empress in an unfamiliar universe surrounded by philosophers. But what fascinated me was the fact that Cavendish had to invent an…