Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons^™

Margaret Cavendish's Exploration Of Consciousness In Her Writings, Cynthia Lynne Rogan De Ramirez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writing at a time when women had few property rights, were given scarce educational opportunities, and were viewed as incorrigibly irrational, the largely autodidactic English intellectual Margaret Cavendish is fascinated by knowledge and how to secure for herself a place in the micro- as well as macrocosmic community of letters. In particular, Cavendish holds an abiding interest in what we now call "consciousness" which she attributes to every piece of matter. Throughout the universe, the three aspects of matter--inanimate, sensate, and rational--are omnipresent. While throughout all of Cavendish's eclectic literary creation, consciousness is the unifying principle. Her exploration of consciousness …