Summary
The Blazing World begins with the kidnapping of a Lady by a lustful merchant. He intends to marry her and sails away with her and his crew, but the gods punish the merchant by blowing his ship off course. They end up near the North Pole, where the merchant and all his crew freeze to death.
Only the Lady survives, and she discovers a pole of another world entirely. She finds herself in this new world, called the Blazing World. In this world, there exist a number of hybrid half-animal, half-human species.
The Lady is rescued by the bear-men, who live near the North Pole of the Blazing World. The bear-men are immediately intrigued by the Lady because she is so different from them. They agree to take her to their Emperor, who lives in a lavish palace in the city called Paradise. While traveling to meet the Emperor, the Lady notes the ingenuity of the bear-men's boat engine and marvels at the feat of engineering.
When she meets the Emperor, he assumes she is a goddess. When she assures him that she is human, the Emperor marries her and tells her that she can now govern the Blazing World however she chooses.
As Empress, she dedicates herself to learning everything she can about the Blazing World. She learns that the inhabitants speak one language, abide by the same religion, and are united under one Emperor. The species coexist peacefully despite their differences, with each species fulfilling the role of a particular profession such as astronomers, experimental philosophers, and chemists.
All of these species inform the Empress about their work and their function within the society of the Blazing World. While most of the species impress the Empress, some disappoint her, presenting her with lackluster findings.
She decides that the religion of the Blazing World is to blame for these shortcomings, and decides to convert the inhabitants of the world to her own religion.
Analysis
The beginning of The Blazing World centralizes the Lady (later, the Empress) as its protagonist, starting the novel off on a rather unconventional note in which a woman serves as the "quester" to new worlds rather than a man. As such, Cavendish dedicates a large portion of Part One to communicating the Lady's strengths and virtues, qualities that make her worthy of the heroic title often associated with male protagonists.
It becomes clear early on that the Lady is of superior virtue and intelligence compared to many of those who surround her, most notably the lustful merchant and his crew of men. When the ship is blown off course and the men freeze to death, the narrator says, "But alas! those few men which were in it, not knowing whither they went, nor what was to be done in so strange an adventure, and not being provided for so cold a voyage, were all frozen to death, the young Lady only, by the light of her beauty, the heat of her youth, and protection of the gods, remaining alive" (Part One).
This phenomenon in which only the Lady survives is presented as a reflection of the Lady's inherent goodness: she is young, beautiful, and protected by the gods. Cavendish also uses this description to introduce the common motif of light to the text: throughout The Blazing World, light is associated both with beauty and with knowledge. This early description of the Lady's virtue suggests that she is both physically beautiful and intellectually curious.
This section of the novel also features some attributes of a utopian text. The term "utopia" was introduced to English by Thomas More, who published his own utopian novel, Utopia, in 1516. The term is Greek for "no place," suggesting that these types of societies are so perfect that they cannot actually exist. Utopian fiction gained popularity throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and The Blazing World has often itself been included in the genre because of its presentation of a multi-species peaceful society united under one ruler.
As the Empress inquires about the social structure of the Blazing World, she learns that each of these hybrid species perform their own professional function related to scientific inquiry and the acquisition of knowledge. Moreover, all the species, despite their differences, live harmoniously among one another and are willing subjects of the same Emperor. This is the particular utopian vision that Cavendish – a known Royalist – espoused in her own political activism: the honoring of different ways of life without sacrificing the unifying feature of a monarchical society. As the English Civil War was fought over whether to abolish the monarchy for a commonwealth, this utopian vision takes on particular significance as an endorsement of the monarchy with simultaneous gestures toward a more diverse English society.
