Chapter 8: Scholarly and Feminist Philosophical Debates and Dialogue in Cavendish's Orations
In chapter 5, I examined possible worlds in Cavendish's scholarly orations[i];[ii] where scholars use philosophical argument techniques to debate which possible world is best for academic rigour. Further to my chapter 6 on men debating women's liberties and my chapter 7 on Female Oration, here, I wish to develop my earlier suggestion that there are overlapping philosophical techniques used by Cavendish to explore topics. In other words, as I mentioned at the beginning of this volume, alongside possible worlds, I suggest that Cavendish also avails herself of further philosophical techniques, namely elements of philosophical dialogue, a philosophical style of rhetoric and thought experiments. Therefore, I interpret Cavendish as using various strands of philosophical techniques in her works (in no particular overall order of priority), which she weaves together seamlessly into overlapping approaches.
One Philosophical Strand: Possible Worlds and their value in Debates
Broadly construed, possible worlds enable theoretical or hypothetical constructs of a world, or various worlds, to assist analysis and exploration of modality (a way of talking about possible situations, as well as expressing likelihood, necessity and contingency, advisability, desirability and so on, making them a useful tool of persuasion as well as a tool of philosophical analysis). For example, as we see in Female Orations[iii] and the two previous orations by men in the marketplace (arguing for and against women's liberties in orations 127[iv] and 128[v]), a possible world can describe a possible or desirable social world which contains parameters of how much freedom will be granted to women by men with a view to applying it to the real, concrete world (both by continuing to uphold certain notions now as well as attempting to influence societal notions, values and norms in the future). Each orator presents their stance, within which, I suggest, one can decipher a possible world that the orator is attempting to argue for and convince their audience to support. These notions about women, and arguments about what constitutes the best possible world for society, are often based on an orator's opinion about women's rightful position and status in society. For instance, oration 127 argues for a possible world in which all women are effectively banned from social contact with anyone who is not a close relation and barred from forming public gatherings in order to silence them and turn them into obedient housewives and mothers[vi]. Male and female orators often purportedly ground their claims on women's nature so that their claims seem objective, true and immutable and a good for the natural, concrete world, rather than a man-made misogynistic ideology imposed on society. Nevertheless, I argue, a close analysis shows that Cavendish skilfully demonstrates that many of the claims about women made by orators and speakers are heavily based on sexist ideology and assumptions which support the patriarchal structure of society, both directly and indirectly. This, I suggest, can be seen across various forms of argument presented by Cavendish, despite the orators differing in their degree of positive or negative outlook about women. For example, one female orator (referred to as woman C in my previous chapter) has clearly internalized sexist concepts about women when she assumes women are naturally weak and incapable of anything much beyond bearing children[vii]. However, another female orator (to whom I refer to as woman G) appears to claim that women are the better sex, but supports this claim by reducing women to sexist stereotypes, such as valuing only their physical appearance not their intelligence, and then using such sexist perceptions of women to restrict their life choices and opportunities[viii]. These feminist topics are ones that the "querelle des femmes" (a four-century -long debate in Europe on women's place in society) raised and debated, in an attempt to find alternative possible worlds for women and then bring them into the real world in order to improve their social condition in their patriarchal societies.
Another Philosophical Strand: Classical Rhetoric/Dialogue
Orations aim to persuade the listener/reader through rhetoric and debating skills and these speeches are structured accordingly. As can be seen in Cavendish's Orations[ix], they are both self-contained speeches as well as replying and responding to the previous orations before them, creating an interconnecting web of debate. Cavendish depicts, as Susan James aptly terms it, a "many-sides debates" consisting of more than just two opposing stances in a debate (the pro and the contra) in order to importantly show that "there are sometimes more than two sides to a question"[x]. Furthermore, Susan James rightly points out that Cavendish "employs the conventions of the art of rhetoric to view each of the issues it discusses from a variety of angles"[xi]. Moreover, Susan James maintains that, despite Cavendish's "disclaimers"[xii] about her depth of knowledge of scholarly rhetoric, one can in fact recognise several classical features of rhetoric in her orations as a whole, such as:
Demonstrative oration (for or against praising something or finding it "honourable"[xiii]
Deliberative oration (for or against finding something profitable or not and "exhorts" or not accordingly) [xiv]
Judicial oration (relates to the concept of justice and "accuses or defends" accordingly)[xv]
Indeed, I agree with Susan James that these styles of rhetoric (based on the types identified by Aristotle) are very much apparent throughout Cavendish's Orations, irrespective of the subject matter at hand. So I consider that these styles and techniques of argumentation structure are worth looking out for throughout her Orations and are generally worth examining to better understand Cavendish's philosophy.
As I have previously argued elsewhere[xvi], another classical style of argumentation that may have been utilized by Cavendish is a style similar to Plato's dialogues. I maintained that Cavendish's Orations are no more fictional, or any less philosophical than Plato's dialogues, especially given that Cavendish does not provide character names or descriptions for her orators, nor does she spend much time setting the scene or constructing a plot[xvii]. I interpret her Orations as being in the classic style of debate (introduced in Ancient times and still used in orations, rhetoric and debate in the 17th century) where various arguments are thrashed out with the aim of reaching the truth[xviii]. Here I would like to build on these previous claims I made by unpacking what I consider to be some of the most key features of this style of philosophical debate which, I suggest, sheds light on some additional philosophical argumentation devices in Cavendish's Orations.
I think there are striking parallels between Plato's dialogues and Cavendish's Orations. For my assessment of these parallels and my interpretation of Margaret Cavendish, I shall be drawing on a standard interpretation of Plato in scholarship, as set out by Kraut (2004; 2017)[xix]. One parallel is that, as with my reading of Cavendish's writings, Kraut argues that "Plato's dialogues do not try to create a fictional world for the purposes of telling a story", unlike the literary genre of fiction[xx]. He further states that Plato constructed "philosophical discussions - "debates" would, in some cases, also be an appropriate word - among a small number of interlocutors"[xxi]. Similarly, I find, Cavendish's Orations book[xxii] sets out debates between only a few orators which develop philosophical discussions of pressing issues in the 17th century and, I suggest, examinations of topics and stances which continue to be relevant to contemporary issues today. These written debates by Cavendish, I think, have the double effect of both involving the reader as though they are listening to and interacting with the orators, as well as providing Cavendish with a forum for carrying out a subtle social critique. This is also something one finds in Plato's works. As Kraut states, "Plato is not only attempting to draw his readers into a discussion, but is also commenting on the social milieu that he is depicting, and criticizing the character and ways of life of his interlocutors"[xxiii]. So it seems to me that if one can attribute such deeper layers of social commentary and philosophical analysis to Plato, one can equally apply it to Cavendish, rather than water-down her authorial style and intentions to something less academically and philosophically rigorous.
Furthermore, it is plausible that Cavendish's Orations[xxiv] are not simply a collection of fictional scenes, given that she may well have based at least some of them on real-life orations by historical people or intellectual gatherings that took place. For instance, Susan James highlights that Cavendish may have been influenced by scripts of speeches made during the English Civil War which "were printed and circulated" and were made by people Cavendish would take an interest in, such as the Earl of Newcastle[xxv]. Similarly, Susan James brings up the idea that Cavendish’s Female Orations[xxvi] are perhaps heavily based on a famous four-century-long feminist, academic debate (1440-1700) in Europe, beginning with Christine de Pisan, known as the "querelle des femmes"[xxvii]. Indeed, this is highly likely given that Cavendish explores the same main themes, such as women's apparent nature, women's role in society, what women should and shouldn't be allowed to do and what level of education they should be allowed to access. Just as one finds in Cavendish, these topics give rise to various for and against arguments. This "querelle des femme" style of feminist debate, I argue, provides further textual evidence to support my interpretation of Cavendish's writings being first and foremost philosophy and feminism, with fiction and literature perhaps sometimes playing a supporting, secondary role. As Nora Peterson states about the querelle des femmes debate: "The techniques of layering and protecting sensitive issues in a medley of entertaining tales, humility formulas, and the pretences of fiction allowed women to continue the debate for centuries, even until today"[xxviii]. This, I think, raises the plausible question: Did Cavendish also use such pretences of fiction as a vehicle for publishing her feminism and participating in the centuries long feminist debates? Other feminists clearly did so before her, so it is a genuine possibility. If she did use the pretences of fiction method to give her a voice with which to raise awareness of her feminist philosophy, then I may be right in thinking that a feminist, philosophical interpretation enables the reader to come closer to the meaning of her texts, than if they adopt a traditionally literary approach and criticism because, on this picture, literature would be Cavendish’s means rather than her intrinsic end for writing and publishing. Hence, similarly, I claim that the contemporary reader must resist the assumption that Cavendish is writing various forms of fiction or fictive-like works for mainly creative, literary reasons and that a literature-based, creative writing-based approach sheds most light on these types of works by Cavendish. Instead, I suggest that a thoroughly philosophical and feminist approach will yield the closest reading and interpretation of Cavendish's seemingly creative writing. As can be seen with other feminists in the centuries leading up to Cavendish's era, it was common to package controversial feminist topics as fiction and to use a dialogue-style approach to better involve and engage readers in these topics and sides of the feminist, social and political debates.
So, just as Plato depicts gatherings of people who "form vivid portraits of a social world"[xxix], so does Cavendish, and in the case of her Female Orations, she depicts a feminist version of this, based perhaps on the querelle des femmes phenomenon. The fact that she, sometimes overtly sometimes indirectly, seems to dress up her philosophical arguments as fictional or semi-fictional writing may simply be because she is drawing on the same style of writing as feminists before and during her time. There is much evidence that feminists used fiction as a vehicle for expressing their ideas and arguments. As Peterson points out, an "important ingredient of the querelle was fiction" and this also had the advantage that the "more complicated the fiction became, the more easily one could forget that the author was a woman"[xxx]. Even arguments which seem imbued with a sense of female inferiority can contain important feminist claims, as can be seen in Pisan's writings, according to Peterson[xxxi]. So one can also not dismiss some of Cavendish's orators' arguments as potentially signifying unfeminist ideas from Cavendish herself (especially not on the basis that they appear to support notions of female inferiority) because, as we learn from Peterson, Early Modern feminist writers still had to be careful how they presented their feminist claims therefore used even more circumlocutory ways of presenting their ideas.
However, somewhat disguising one's personal stance on a topic was not unique to feminist writers. Plato himself was often evasive about presenting his own views. As Kraut argues:
"In all of his writings - except in the letters, if any of them are genuine - Plato never speaks to his audience directly and in his own voice. Strictly speaking, he does not himself affirm anything in his dialogues; rather, it is the interlocutors in his dialogues who are made by Plato to do all of the affirming, doubting, questioning, arguing, and so on. Whatever he wishes to communicate to us is conveyed indirectly."[xxxii]
I suggest one can say very much the same about Cavendish. She also does not blatantly state her personal views. So, I argue that it is very philosophical of Cavendish to debate issues from a greater variety of stances than she holds because it is both in the style of Plato as well as in keeping with a common feminist approach of the Renaissance and Early Modern period. Plato used several types of dialogue, changing the format depending on what he wished to achieve, including ones which are closer to a debate rather than a dialogue[xxxiii]. So there would be no set formula in Plato for Cavendish to follow, hence one would expect some deviations from Plato's dialogues since her aims are different from his. Moreover, in her online book, Peterson[xxxiv] discusses dialogue and dialogism in a way that I find relevant to Plato and Cavendish. She writes that "...the dialogism that continues to beg for interpretation, and for responses, becomes all the more effective as readers become more involved"[xxxv]. So perhaps Cavendish was also attempting to draw her readers into a deeper interpretation and level of involvement by presenting some of her work, such as her Orations, in a dialogism-style format.
Moreover, I maintain that Cavendish's orations are no less parallel to and on par with Plato's dialogues, simply because they more akin to speeches than a question and answer format. The reason for this is that scholarship tends to categorise Plato's speech-style dialogues as dialogues, even when they stretch the concept of what a dialogue is. (Kraut[xxxvi] cites Plato’s Symposium which contains a series of speeches, further examples are Plato’s Apology, Menexenus, Protagoras, Crito, Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Critas, many of which stretch the notion of a dialogue.) Hence, my suggested approach is to draw parallels with Cavendish's Orations and various forms, styles and structures of dialogue writing to analyse the category of dialogism alongside other philosophical techniques she uses. I suspect that the long-term benefit of this will be to obtain a fuller picture of her various writing styles and philosophical approaches, rather than just restrict one's analysis to the question of whether her Orations can be reduced to merely a series of dialogues or not. There are other benefits to a dialogue-style approach which evokes a conversation among people. As Kraut notes, it encourages readers to appreciate the "intrinsic value" of a work and build on it by drawing on it to enhance and inform their own philosophical debates with people they meet[xxxvii]. These general values, I think, also apply to Cavendish's works. Another point to note from Plato scholarship for interpreting Cavendish, I think, is that one must also be careful not to accidentally overlook more overarching philosophical questions posed by Cavendish. Given that we also find similar, subtle questions in Plato, such as assessing social and political conditions and exploring possible alternatives to current systems and conventions through dialogue[xxxviii], I think this may also be true of reading Cavendish, because this description is very reminiscent of Cavendish's Orations generally, as well as her feminist querelle-style orations.
Furthermore, I also suggest it is potentially a gendered double standard for scholarship to criticise Cavendish for being confusing, obscure and self-contradictory, as though this somehow lessens the value of her work. I see no reason not to adopt the same outlook as is taken by Kraut with Plato when he concludes that there is "artistry in his philosophy" when Plato gives "a sense of puzzlement among his readers" through the dialogue form when he presents us with "unresolved puzzles and apparent contradictions"[xxxix]. And one can certainly detect an impressive artistry in Cavendish's philosophy.
These two overall techniques of constructing worlds and using dialogue, argumentation and some rhetoric to better persuade people during dialogue intersect with each other. As I have attempted to show over the past 3 chapters, each oration deploys rhetoric and dialogue to construct theoretical, possible worlds. These orations aim to apply their possible world to society in order to bring about actual, real, concrete social worlds and realities within society. Nevertheless, despite most often being theoretical constructs, many of these orators, especially the ones which support patriarchal notions, claim that their possible world merely reflects the natural world or state of affairs rather than some form of a patriarchal, man-made ideology.
Third Philosophical Strand: Thought Experiments: Fiction or Analysis?
In addition to possible worlds and philosophical rhetoric, there is another, related, argumentation technique, namely the construction of thought experiments, which, as I suggested at the beginning of this volume, may also be of use to bear in mind when analysing Cavendish's philosophy. There are many types of thought experiment techniques that can be unpacked into many subcategories, each with their distinctive style of argumentation, structure and aims. I shall go into this in greater depth in volume 2. However, for present purposes, I shall simply summarize thought experiments as the construction of hypotheses or philosophical theories, including generating feminist, ethical, social and political principles. This logical process often involves trying to deduce logical conclusions from earlier premises to assess the possible consequences of the thought experiment under examination. This technique also enables a deep exploration of possible worlds because it provides a logical argument structure and analysis. Thought experiments can also be a way of inviting further questions to develop an issue during a debate. One reason I suggest thought experiments might suit Cavendish is that they are the hypothetical equivalent of the practical, scientific experiments she conducted herself. In other words, the philosopher or scientist undertakes a rational examination of a topic or dilemma, instead of, or perhaps sometimes as well as, undertaking an observational, empirical-style experiment.
Why are thought experiments relevant to Cavendish? One way in which I consider them important when interpreting Cavendish's philosophy is that they could be conflated with fictional and imaginative writing. Cavendish was also a scientist and a natural philosopher, so she was used to carrying out both practical and theoretical experiments to test her theories in science and natural philosophy. However, this scientific aspect of thought experiments can be easily overlooked because they can also be products of the imaginative faculty and packaged in a story-like narrative, which does not seem very scientific. A certain amount of gendered assumptions may also be involved here, given that many male philosophers and scientists in her 17th century era, such as Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, also made use of thought experiments, but this is not considered to be some burst of creative writing within their arguments. Hence, my interpretation of Cavendish attempts to decipher the nuances between imaginative fiction and narrative in her writings and what may constitute a thought experiment packaged and structured as a narrative.
[i] Margaret Cavendish of Newcastle, ‘A Sleepy Speech to Students’, in Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places (London, UK: First printed by W. Wilson; online Public Domain version: Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, 1662), https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A53051.0001.001/1:20.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext.
[ii] Margaret Cavendish of Newcastle, ‘A Waking Oration of the Former Sleepy Discourse.’, in Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places (London UK: First printed by W. Wilson; online Public Domain version: Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, 1662), https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A53051.0001.001/1:20.2?rgn=div2;view=fulltext.
[iii] Margaret Cavendish of Newcastle, ‘FEMAL(E) ORATIONS.’, in Orations of divers sorts accommodated to divers places (London, UK: First printed by W. Wilson; online Public Domain version: Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, 1662), https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A53051.0001.001/1:16?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.
[iv] Margaret Cavendish of Newcastle, ‘An Oration against the Liberty of Women.’, in Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places (London, UK: First printed by W. Wilson; online Public Domain version: Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, 1662), 222–23, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A53051.0001.001/1:15.10?rgn=div2;view=fulltext.
[v] Margaret Cavendish of Newcastle, ‘An Oration for the Liberty of Women.’, in Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places (London, UK: First printed by W. Wilson; online Public Domain version: Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, 1662), 223–24, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A53051.0001.001/1:15.11?rgn=div2;view=fulltext.
[vi] Newcastle, ‘An Oration against the Liberty of Women.’
[vii] Newcastle, ‘FEMAL(E) ORATIONS.’
[viii] Newcastle.
[ix] Margaret Cavendish of Newcastle, Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places (London, UK: First printed by W. Wilson; online Public Domain version: Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, 1662), http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A53051.0001.001.
[x] Margaret Cavendish of Newcastle and Susan James, Political Writings, First published, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), xxii.
[xi] Newcastle and James, xix.
[xii] Newcastle and James, xxiii.
[xiii] Newcastle and James, xxiii.
[xiv] Newcastle and James, xxiii.
[xv] Newcastle and James, xxiii.
[xvi] Liba Kaucky, ‘Margaret Cavendish: A Feminist?’, The Feminist Margaret Cavendish Circle (blog), 16 December 2018, https://thefeministmargaretcavendishcircle.blogspot.com/2018/12/margaret-cavendish-feminist.html.
[xvii] Kaucky.
[xviii] Kaucky.
[xix] Richard Kraut, ‘Plato’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (USA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2017), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/plato/.
[xx] Kraut.
[xxi] Kraut.
[xxii] Newcastle, Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places.
[xxiii] Kraut, ‘Plato’.
[xxiv] Newcastle, Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places.
[xxv] Newcastle and James, Political Writings, 149, footnote.
[xxvi] Newcastle, Orations of Divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers Places.
[xxvii] Newcastle and James, Political Writings, 248, footnote.
[xxviii] Nora M. Peterson, ‘The Querelle Des Femmes (and Women’s Novella Collections: Fiction, Dialogism, and Dialogue in Early Modern Texts)’, in The Book of the Tenth Muse, ed. Stephanie Merrim and Kerry Smith, online book (Women Writers Project at Brown University, Moved to North Eastern University, USA, 2003), https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Comparative_Literature/10th_muse_book/nora_querelle_femmes.html.
[xxix] Kraut, ‘Plato’.
[xxx] Peterson, ‘The Querelle Des Femmes (and Women’s Novella Collections: Fiction, Dialogism, and Dialogue in Early Modern Texts)’.
[xxxi] Peterson.
[xxxii] Kraut, ‘Plato’.
[xxxiii] Kraut.
[xxxiv] Peterson, ‘The Querelle Des Femmes (and Women’s Novella Collections: Fiction, Dialogism, and Dialogue in Early Modern Texts)’.
[xxxv] Peterson.
[xxxvi] Kraut, ‘Plato’.
[xxxvii] Kraut.
[xxxviii] Kraut.
[xxxix] Kraut.
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