A Philosophical and Sociable Critique in the Form of Public Letters. Margaret Cavendish and the Seventeenth-Century Intellectual Debates

Although an increasing number of women have started to write and publish their works in the seventeenth century, patriarchal norms did not allow them to do so in all genres. It is now widely accepted that women wrote private and public letters to challenge their male contemporaries and to participate in intellectual debates. This paper aims to analyse Margaret Cavendish’s Philosophical Letters and Sociable Letters as works in which the author engages with both the major philosophical issues of the day and the preconceived notion of women’s inability to use reason. Through her critiques of Hobbes and Descartes, this essay will show how Cavendish was involved in the philosophical and intellectual debates of the time. Secondly, the essay will highlight her condemnation of the female condition, since according to her natural philosophy it is nature itself that allows her to write and confront her male contemporaries.