Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T10:38:25.319Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lucretia and the Impossibility of Female Republicanism in Margaret Cavendish's Sociable Letters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Sandrine Bergès
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Margaret Cavendish is known for her personal allegiance to monarchy in England. This is reflected in her writings; as Hobbes did, she tended to criticize severely any attempt at rebellion and did not think England could become a republic. Yet it seems that Cavendish did have sympathy with some republican values, in particular, as Lisa Walters has argued, with the republican concept of freedom as nondomination. How can we explain this apparent inconsistency? I believe that the answer lies in a lack of fit between the republican theories that were available to her and the values she accepted and according to which she was expected to live her life.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Fall 2018 , pp. 663 - 680
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean ethics, ed. Irwin, Terence. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Bergès, Sandrine. 2016. A republican housewife: Marie‐Jeanne Phlipon Roland on women's political role. Hypatia 31 (1): 107–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1664. Philosophical letters: Or modest reflections upon some opinions in natural philosophy maintained by several Famous and learned authors of this age, expressed by way of letters (London).Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 1997. Sociable letters, ed. Fitzmaurice, James. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 2002. The sociable companions. In Bell in campo and the sociable companions, ed. Bennett, Alexandra. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press.Google Scholar
Cavendish, Margaret. 2003. Margaret Cavendish: Political writings, ed. James, Susan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Coffee, Alan. 2014. Freedom as independence: Mary Wollstonecraft and the grand blessing of life. Hypatia 29 (4): 908–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coffee, Alan. 2017. Catharine Macaulay's republican conception of social and political liberty. Political Studies 65 (4): 844–59. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0032321716686991 (accessed April 5, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coyle, Martin, ed. 1995. Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince: New interdisciplinary essays. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Detlefsen, Karen. 2012. Margaret Cavendish and Thomas Hobbes on freedom, education, and women. In Feminist interpretations of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Hirschmann, Nancy J. and Wright, Joanne H.University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Dodds, Lara. 2013. The literary invention of Margaret Cavendish. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
Halldenius, Lena. 2015. Mary Wollstonecraft and feminist republicanism. London: Pickering & Chatto.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Christopher. 1984. The world turned upside down: Radical ideas during the English Revolution. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. 1995. Leviathan. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Jardine, Lisa, and Grafton, Anthony. 1990. “Studied for action”: How Gabriel Harvey read his Livy. Past and Present 129 (November): 30–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolo. 2007. Discourses on Livy. Trans. Ninian Hill Thomson. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Matthes, Melissa. 2000. The rape of Lucretia and the founding of republics: Readings in Livy, Machiavelli, and Rousseau. University Park: Penn State University Press.Google Scholar
McCormick, John P. 1993. Addressing the political exception: Machiavelli's “accidents” and the mixed regime. American Political Science Review 87 (4): 888–900.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 2007. Why republicanism? Basic Income Studies 2 (2): 1–6.Google Scholar
Pettit, Philip. 1999. Republican freedom and contestatory democratization. In Democracy's value, ed. Shapiro, Ian and Hacker‐Cordon, Casiano. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pettit, Philip. 2012. On the people's terms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Anne. 2000. Feminism and republicanism: Is this a plausible alliance? Journal of Political Philosophy 8 (2): 279–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richard, Carl J. 2015. Cicero and the American founders. In Brill's companion to the reception of Cicero, ed. Altman, William H. F.Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Roland, M.‐J. 1864, ed. Mémoires de Madame Roland, 2 vols., ed. Faugères, François Alphonse. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Roland, M.‐J. 1900. Lettres de Madame Roland (1780–1793) 2 vols., ed. Perroud, Claude. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.Google Scholar
Roland, M.‐J. 1905. Mémoires de Madame Roland, ed. Perroud, Claude. Paris: Plon.Google Scholar
Roland, M.‐J. 1913. Lettres de Madame Roland (1767–1780), ed. Perroud, Claude. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques. 1763. Projet de constitution pour la Corse. Digitized by Jean‐Marie Tremblay for “Les classiques des sciences sociales,” Université du Quebec à Chicoutimi: Bibliothèque Paul‐Emile‐Boulet. http://bibliotheque.uqac.uquebec.ca/index.htm (accessed January 22, 2018).Google Scholar
Schliesser, Eric. 2016. On discovering a political philosopher (by commenting): Cavendish & Xenophon. Digressions & Impressions, April 20. http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2016/04/on-discovering-a-political-philosopher-by-commenting.html (accessed January 22, 2018).Google Scholar
Walters, Lisa. 2014. Margaret Cavendish: Gender, science and politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitaker, Katie. 2002. Mad Madge: The life of Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1993. A vindication of the rights of woman, (1792) a vindication of the rights of men (1790). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar