Following on from my previous post, in this blog post, I'd like to share my podcast script for this week, which includes some of my research on Cavendish after the Cavendish on Literature conference.
This time focusing on one particular talk/paper.
This episode is available to listen to on demand on Spotify: here
For the reference bibliography of works cited in this episode, see the end of this blog post. I've also included some suggested reading that I have not referred to in this episode.
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Hello and welcome to Philosophy Fluency. Over iced coffees today, I shall continue my Margaret Cavendish theme for Season 13. In this third episode, I shall continue from last week by sharing some of my thoughts on the 3 day Cavendish on Literature conference I attended. Nevertheless, I shall also disseminate some of my Cavendish research and show its relevance to papers I heard.
As it's Pride Month, I'll focus on Cavendish's play 'The Convent of Pleasure' and the scholarly debates about the LGBTQ+ themes within it. The hot topic within this play is the character of the Princess, who enters the Convent of Pleasure in Act 2 Scene 3. Why is the Princess a focal point? Because one burning research question is:
Can we interpret the Princess as a transwoman or not?
Robin Elizabeth Haas highlighted in their talk at the Cavendish on Literature conference, that the little additional notes stuck onto certain copies of this play, called 'slips', are Margaret Cavendish's corrections to the printed version of this play. I think this shows her to be a stickler for accuracy which is an example of Cavendish's attitude to literature: There are not too many alternate explanations to her text. She likes to be precise and clear as to her authorial intentions so everyone understands her writings.
Robin goes on to suggest that what is written in these 'slips' is more representative of Cavendish's own authorial intentions than the printed copies which have strayed from her wishes. Robin poses the questions of whether this suggests a lesbian reading, or a heterosexual with queerness reading, or a trans reading, before putting forward the argument that they interpret these slips as giving us a reading of the Princess as being a transwoman. They believe that their trans interpretation of this play is a first in scholarship that nobody seems to have attempted before.
For referencing accuracy, when I say 'this paper' and Robin's trans interpretation at the Cavendish on Literature conference, I'm referring to the paper they presented on the 11th of June this year, with a change of title from 'To Those That Do Delight in Scenes and wit': Literary Pleasures and (Trans)formational Delights in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World and the Convent of Pleasure' to 'Collaboration, Publication, and Queer/Trans Recognition in Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure' because it's based on a different chapter of their PhD in the English department at Rutgers University than the paper they'd originally intended to present. So that's a brief overview of a trans reading in current scholarship.
I enjoyed listening to Robin's paper, it was very dense with information, so there was a lot to take in whilst sitting there listening to the talk and trying to grasp the arguments in the paper for the first time. But it's inspired me to take an even closer look at the scholarship surrounding 'The Convent of Pleasure' and the topic of 'slips' in some of Margaret Cavendish's works.
Since the conference, I've started a literature review of scholarship on these pasted on slips in Cavendish as well as other works in the early modern period.
To put this topic of editorial slips into context:
One article dates back to 2004, in which Jeffrey Masten discussed the role of paper 'slips' found in some copies of Cavendish's books in his journal article: 'Material Cavendish: Paper, Performance, "Sociable Virginity" in Volume 65, Number 1 of MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, published by Duke University Press. He even lists exactly how many slips there are, in which copies, housed in which locations around the world. He also mentions that a "paste-on "cancel" slip appears in some copies of the 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, with the slip correcting a punctuation error". So here we learn how slips were generally used in that era It was a way of cancelling and correcting anything seen as an error by the author in a printed copy.
Well over a decade ago, in 2012, Heather Wolfe posted a website article for the Folger Shakespeare Library titled: 'A newly uncovered presentation copy by Margaret Cavendish' in which she credits and cites Jeffrey Masten's article as she also takes up the discussion of slips in Cavendish's works, and she provides us with some fabulous images too.
Furthermore, the Digital Cavendish: A Scholarly Collaborative website, for the Digital Cavendish project, talks about the slips in their introductory note to their edition of 'The Convent of Pleasure' Edited by Liza Blake and Shawn Moore.
To summarise: The editors explain that Cavendish is believed to have had a secretary who helped Cavendish amend her books after they were printed but before she gave them to readers. These include the secretary's handwritten corrections and printed paper slips which state that a particular section is "Written by my Lord Duke", in other words, her husband William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle had interfered with Margaret Cavendish's text and not for the better, I suspect. So I challenge the idea the two collaborated together on Margaret Cavendish's works in the manner of JS Mill and Harriet Mill. The latter, unlike the former, was a constructive mutually respectful, equal collaboration.
Moreover, scholars assume these slips represent Cavendish's wishes and tell us that Cavendish was keen to ensure that there were no inaccurate copies lying around that misrepresented her views. This shows how Margaret Cavendish didn't want people to be over-creative and just go off into some wild imaginings when reading her plays, poems and prose.
Like other scholars, the editors Blake and Moore go on to explain how they have gone to great lengths to chase up all the numerous copies that contain variations, and they went the extra mile by logging all sorts of printing amendments, such as "stop-press changes and post-printing modifications". Liza Blake also took photos during her research field trips. Once satisfied that they had identified all variations and modifications, they "produced a text that allows readers to learn about the interesting features of the original text (where hand corrections appear, and where paper slips appear, for instance), but which is also readable and easy to navigate". So well done to them for spending so much time and energy on all these publication details and archives so we can benefit from the fruits of their arduous labour when reading their edition.
So there's a brief overview of the paper slips (imagine them as the Early Modern version of post it notes) and other publication variations that puts Robin's paper into the context of other scholarship this century.
I'd also like to put Robin's trans argument about the Princess in Cavendish's 'The Convent of Pleasure' into the context of another talk they're giving this summer, at the Comparative Drama Conference, hosted by LAMDA next month, 9-11 July, 2025 where they'll be presenting the paper: ' “Merrily, merrily shall I live now”: Reading for Trans Joy and Futurity in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure'. Judging by the abstract, she'll be arguing for a trans or at least a proto-transfigure reading of both the characters of Ariel, a spirit in Shakespeare's The Tempest and the Princess in Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure and drawing parallels between these two characters. Personally, I'm not too sure about all the ideas in this abstract but I haven't heard or read the paper so I'm in no position to comment. But I wish her well.
Hence, I dusted off my knowledge of Shakespeare's Ariel to see if it throws light on Cavendish's Princess. I discovered that the Canadian Professor of English, Mary Ann Saunders specialises in literature and trans feminist theory so has put forward her original trans interpretation of Shakespeare's Ariel. You can read this fascinating discussion of her understanding of Ariel through trans issues in a CBC news article, published back in 2016. Saunders also explains how she arrived at her trans interpretation. The article mentions her talk on her trans reading of Ariel for the March 2016 conference: 'Moving Trans History Forward: Building Communities – Sharing Connections', organised by the pioneering Chair in Transgender Studies, Aaron Devor.
Robin's abstract, however, doesn't mention if they're intending to build on Mary Ann's work on trans feminism and literature, and her trans reading of Ariel, but there's no doubt there are some interesting comparisons to draw between them.
For more on Cavendish, do join me next week for the next episode of Philosophy Fluency. Enjoy the baking hot sunshine and lovely weather.
Works cited in this episode:
*‘CDC 2025’. Accessed 25 June 2025.
http://comparativedramaconference.org/
*Department of English (incl PhD profile for Robin Elizabeth Haas). ‘Details’. Accessed 25 June 2025.
https://english.rutgers.edu/people/graduate-student-profiles/details.html?start=30
*Fisher, Gavin. ‘Shakespeare’s Transgender Spirit Sparks UBC Professor’s Talk’. CBC News, 14 March 2016.
*Haas, Robin Elizabeth. ‘Collaboration, Publication, and Queer/Trans Recognition in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure’. University of Southampton, 2025.
*Masten, Jeffrey. ‘Material Cavendish: Paper, Performance, “Sociable Virginity”’. MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly 65, no. 1 (2004): 49–68.
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/4/article/52938
*‘The Convent of Pleasure.’ Accessed 25 June 2025.
https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/newcastle/convent/convent.html
*Digital Cavendish Project. ‘The Convent of Pleasure Edited by Liza Blake and Shawn Moore’ ’(Textual and Editorial Note)’, 5 July 2017.
http://digitalcavendish.org/complete-works/plays-never-before-printed-1668/convent-of-pleasure/
*Wolfe, Heather. ‘A Newly Uncovered Presentation Copy by Margaret Cavendish | Folger Shakespeare Library’, 26 January 2012.
https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/a-newly-uncovered-presentation-copy-by-margaret-cavendish/
Suggested further reading:
Joubin, Alexa Alice, and Mary Ann S. Saunders. ‘The Tempest as Trans Archive: An Interview with Scholar Mary Ann S. Saunders’. Borrowers and Lenders The Journal of Shakespeare Appropriations 14, no. 2 (28 April 2023): 117–24. doi:10.18274/bl.v14i2.351.
https://borrowersojsazsu.tdl.org/borrowers/article/view/351
Wang, Karen. ‘Exploring The Tempest’s Ariel as a Lens to Transgender Individuals’. The Ubyssey, 6 April 2016.
https://ubyssey.ca/culture/exploring-the-tempest-ariel-as-a-lens-to-transgender-individuals-347/
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