One of the earliest iterations of what would become Science Fiction can be traced back to writer, scientist, and philosopher Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, and her proto Science Fiction novel, The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World (1666). Cavendish’s utopian writing and parallel universes coexisting in tandem serve as the foundation for modern concepts of the multiverse.
Margaret Cavendish was born Margaret Lucas in 1624 to Sir Thomas Lucas and Elizabeth Leighton. While she did not have a formal education, she did have access to libraries and tutors and was taught basic reading, writing, dancing, music, and needlework—pursuits deemed acceptable for a woman by Stuart-era standards. Her political, philosophical, and scientific pursuits were entirely self-taught. At age 20, she became the lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta, Charles I’s wife, and accompanied her in exile during the English Civil War. While in exile, she met and fell in love with William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who was 30 years her senior. Against the protestations of friends and the Queen, who were concerned with Cavendish’s shyness and the Duke being an older widow, they married in 1645. During their expulsion, she petitioned Cromwell unsuccessfully for their estates and her husband’s court position to be reinstated. It eventually came to pass with the monarchy’s re-establishment and the ascension of Charles II. As Cavendish awaited the reinstatement of their court positions, she began her writing career and is one of the earliest recorded women to have her publications under her own name. She even had a frontispiece engraved with her portrait so that her writing could be indisputably hers and readers could not disregard the integrity and validity of her work. Contrasting with societal conventions of the time, her husband encouraged her to write and publish. While Cavendish is primarily known for her literary career, she was also the first woman to attend the Royal Society of London, was an advocate for female education, and is believed to have worked against animal testing.
Greatly inspired by Shakespeare and the archetypes and themes present in his work, Cavendish’s Sociable Letters Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle (1664), a fictional letter from herself to a friend in defense of Shakespeare’s plays, marked her as the first Shakespeare critic. Her opinions here are mirrored in Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy—“art produces hermaphroditical effects, that is, such as are partly natural, and an effect of nature, and cannot produce anything that is beyond, or not within nature.” These concepts meld together to create the multiverse for The Blazing World, and as we know the multiverse now in recent media. It could also be seen as a fictionalized account of Cavendish’s role in the monarchy’s reinstatement, her fight for equal education for girls, and her advocacy against animal testing.
In The Blazing World, Cavendish establishes two interconnected worlds, joined by the North Pole: our protagonist’s Homeworld (initially presumed to be Earth) and the Blazing World, the land she later comes to preside over as Empress. The Blazing World is inhabited by talking animals—this may have been Cavendish’s way of humanizing the creatures in her campaign for their welfare. The Empress sets up research institutes across the Blazing World, allowing herself and others’ findings to be challenged constantly, creating a society that strives for greatness in their academic pursuits. This plot point mirrors Cavendish’s own willingness to have her work interrogated by herself and others around her, relishing the opportunity to discover something new and evolve her métier. But this feedback was not always constructive. Cavendish’s counterparts nicknamed her “Mad Madge” to devalue her work, yet she refused to let this deter her and continued to publish.
Later on in the novel, the Empress expresses her wish to write a book. Requiring a scribe, she states that she wants Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, from Earth. This moment in the text does two things: firstly, it asserts that the Empress’ Homeworld is not Earth as it initially seemed, but rather a different world entirely, and secondly, it sets up an even larger multiverse. Cavendish has established three worlds by this point, the Homeworld, The Blazing World, and Earth, fictionally validating her statement in Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy: “if nature be infinite, there must also be infinite worlds.” She believed that Earth has an inherent intelligence and the ability to know its function and how to order itself. According to her philosophy, if Earth is an intelligent being that can order itself, then there is the likelihood that other planets can do so too, leading to the conclusion that we are not alone in the Universe.
Through The Blazing World’s universe with its multiple planets and realities, Cavendish not only pioneered the beginnings of the multiverse, but she penned one of the earliest accounts of a meta-narrative. She often directly addresses the reader throughout the novel to force them to suspend their disbelief and consider what would happen if women had positions of power. Cavendish’s multiverse is constructed into a fantastical utopia, which can be seen in recent fiction through parallel realities, alternate realities, dystopian societies, and manipulations of time.
Through this utopia, Cavendish asserted that women can control their narratives and ultimately serve society. She presented this through the Empress and Margaret’s friendship, writing that “truly their meeting did produce such an intimate friendship between them, that they became platonic lovers, although they were both females.” Their connection transcends the multiverse, verifying female emancipation through the presentation of a story where women are granted both soft, intimate relationships and masculine power and authority.
A common trope we see in modern iterations of the multiverse is the staging of an interdimensional war. Cavendish does just this, through the Homeworld being attacked and the Empress working with Margaret to defend it, representing a meta-narrative account of Cavendish’s role within the monarchy's reinstatement during the English Civil War. Through her multiverse, Cavendish asserts that women, when given the chance, can do incredible things and better society. Academic Kate Lilley observed that the women abandon their corporeality and the “souls of women are able to communicate with each other as platonic lovers and more freely and inevitably from one world and one body to another.” Through the movement between worlds, Cavendish illustrates the power and importance of female friendships.
In a drastic turn of events, the Empress threatens destruction on those attacking her Homeworld unless they submit to her authority. This narrative shift signifies the duality of women as both intelligent beings who wish to better society intellectually and ambition-driven products of spectacle who are willing to take drastic action. The Empress’ military prowess emphasises Cavendish’s assertion that when given a chance to prove themselves, women can do incredible things. It also highlights her life-long championing of education and emancipation for the rights of girls and women.
Cavendish’s insertion of herself into the narrative as a character forces the reader to suspend their disbelief, marking the novel as a proto-science fiction text and one of the earliest recorded instances of meta-fiction and the multiverse. Cavendish forces the reader to consider utopian validity and evaluate whether or not the harmony imbued within her writing could lay a foundation of what contemporary society could look like. Rather than becoming Empress of an existing society, she “made a World of my own.”
After a long illness, Margaret Cavendish passed away on December 15, 1673, aged 49. In life, her work was heavily criticized and mocked, yet she created significant foundations in literature and philosophy. Her work laid out the earliest groundwork of atomic theory and modern philosophy, particularly naturalism. More than 300 years later, The Blazing World is an enduring text that demonstrates women as being intuitive, ambition-driven people who have the capacity to change the world, or rather, worlds.
