Summary
The Blazing World opens with introductory material including a poem and a letter to the reader.
The poem, written by Cavendish's husband, William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, praises The Blazing World as an enlightening work that will help readers expand their minds. He compares Cavendish's efforts in crafting the Blazing World to the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.
In her letter to the reader, Cavendish explains her intentions behind the publication of The Blazing World. The text is published alongside her Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy, a more academic work of theory.
Cavendish argues that she is publishing these two texts together because she thinks that fiction and philosophy complement one another: philosophy attempts to understand the natural world while fiction often revolves around imagining entirely new worlds. She notes that The Blazing World is also, in its own way, a work of philosophy.
Cavendish says she will be pleased and honored if readers enjoy The Blazing World.
She notes that, while she cannot be like Henry the Fifth or Charles the First, she endeavors to be Margaret the First.
And while she cannot conquer worlds like Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar, she has created her own and encourages her readers to do the same.
Analysis
The introductory material to The Blazing World helps set up readers' expectations for the novel to follow.
The first text in the introduction is a poem by Cavendish's husband, William Cavendish, that praises The Blazing World for its philosophical contributions to society. Poems like these were common in early modern English publications, and are not dissimilar from blurbs of praise found on the covers of contemporary novels; they are meant to rouse readers' interest in the text and provide some insight into what the text will be about.
However, this particular poem is also a way for Cavendish to lend credence to her writing: while Cavendish was one of the first women to consistently publish under her own name, the work of women writers was still largely disregarded at the time Cavendish was most prolific. Her husband – a well-respected Duke and a writer of his own – strongly supported his wife's work, and they often collaborated on writing projects and scientific inquiries together. The poem by William Cavendish is therefore a work of praise for The Blazing World that encourages readers to read on, but also a subtle acknowledgment that the text – having been authored by a woman – is worthy of their intellectual attention in the first place.
Cavendish continues this defense of her work with less subtlety in the Letter to the Reader, which preemptively addresses some of the criticisms that might be lodged at her for writing such a seemingly strange work of an as-yet undefined genre (science fiction). In this section, Cavendish manages to heap her own praise on famous and accomplished men like Henry V (a widely celebrated fifteenth-century English king) and Charles I (the monarch in England for most of Cavendish's life, before his execution in 1649), while simultaneously elevating herself to the same level of historical importance. When she tells the reader that she cannot possibly be considered among these powerful men, she expresses false humility, instead saying that she endeavors to be the "first" Margaret to have a title similar to those of English kings. She also compares herself to the famous conquerors Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, once again exuding false humility as she notes that she could not conquer a world but can, indeed, create one.
As such, the introductory material of The Blazing World at once prepares the reader for the interesting text to follow and simultaneously defends that text as a pioneering contribution to English literature and English history alike.
