Margaret Cavendish's "An Excuse for So Much Writ upon my Verses": The Anxieties of a Female Poet among Sexist Readers Mousrisha Roy College

The poem “An Excuse for So Much Writ upon my Verses” was written not simply as a lyric poem but as a conclusion to the long prefatory materials of Margaret Cavendish's book Poems and Fancies. As she was also a philosopher, Cavendish had a very specific concept about the structure of her book- she wanted her poems to be read in a particular manner and order. So she wanted to provide each of the readers with a suitable attitude to read the book properly. As different readers would have different perspectives and approaches, she had to write nine different prefaces addressed to different individuals or groups of people, including one which addresses in general “the reader”. These prefatory compositions were necessary chiefly because as a female poet she needed to defend her work more strongly than a male poet might have needed.

Historical reality shows how in the society which is sexist in general, works of women authors are often not given their proper value simply because they are written by women. Therefore she has been too much apprehensive about the reception of her work. Nevertheless, she realized that these materials are becoming too long for a preface. Therefore she writes this small lyric which explains the reason of her...