Form is a central category for understanding the works of Margaret Cavendish, and her extensive and sophisticated uses of form should be central to disciplinary debates about the value of formalism. Angela Leighton observes that form is multiple: there are more than twenty dictionary definitions, from “shape, design, outline, frame, ideal, figure, image, style, genre” to “mould lair, print-type, desk, grade, or class.” Form is “dense and crowded,” always “thick with possible echoes and conflicting references.” Though Cavendish is well known for her ostentatious rejection of the constraints of form, she found the varied and variable (even promiscuous) nature of form to be an invaluable resource.