Lady Happy: A Symbol of Margaret Cavendish's Progressive Vision and the Duke as the Shadow of Patriarchy

Lady Happy: A Symbol of Margaret Cavendish's Progressive Vision and the Duke as the Shadow of Patriarchy

Margaret Cavendish created a controversial character in her play “The Convent of Pleasure”, a beautiful, young and rich woman who as her name indicates, is a happy lady who chose happiness over adhering to the social conventions of her conservative seventeenth-century society. Lady Happy, as shown in the first act, is a woman who knows what she wants, and as opposed to her environment’s opinion about how should her life be after her father’s death, she chose to incloister herself with other virgin women in a convent and she described it: “My Cloister shall not be a Cloister of restraint, but a place for freedom, not to vex the Senses but to please them”^[1]. Margaret Cavendish here chose a purely catholic concept and detached it from its religious sense and turned it into a pure secular convent of pleasure, and her character seems not to be a devoted religious woman as any respected lady at her times should be, she is rather a skeptic woman who do not seem to take life as a given, but rather questions her society’s assumptions about the world. She invented a new way of embracing the commandments of the “gods”, as for her if they averse the pleasures of Nature, then “gods” are being unfair, and she finds it cruel to think that people should fast and wear woolen clothes and restrain themselves from the natural pleasures of life, in order to satisfy them. As with unsatisfied pleasures of the senses, “the Senses are dull'd with abstinency, the Body weakned with fasting, the Spirits tir'd with watching, the Life made uneasie with pain, the Soul can have but little will to worship”.^[2] Not to judge Cavendish’s character as an apostate, but her speech uncovers her sceptical views on religion, and that is also shown by her use of the plural noun “gods” instead of “God” as she might be including all religions,  and referring to them to be the same, yet she is a devoted believer of Nature as she ironically wanted “gods” to adjust to Nature in order to be better “gods”. In putting this concept of Nature hierarchically above God or “gods”, Lady Happy reminds us of Margaret Cavendish’s theories of natural philosophy, as the duchess herself, defined atoms as eternal and limitless, which is a concept that those who support corpuscular philosophy are cautious to distinguish from their theories of matter. This is because in a Christian perspective, only God can be eternal and infinite. Furthermore, the atoms described by the Duchess seem to have their own will, leaving open the question of whether they are controlled by God. According to her, The small atoms are able to create a world of their own due to their subtle nature and ability to take on various forms, as she stated:

Small atoms of themselves a World may make

 As being subtle, and of every shape:

 And as they dance about, fit places find,

Such forms as best agree, make every kinde....

And thus, by chance, may a new world create;

Or else predestined to worke my Fate.^[3]

The Duchess' views on the role of God and the afterlife were quite relaxed. She believed that the soul is made of matter and could still exist after death. Her ideas align with ancient atomism, which was seen as non-religious because it rejected the idea of God's involvement and the concept of an immortal soul. Therefore, her beliefs were seen as controversial, exactly like the statements made by Lady Happy in the play, she also does not seem to be hesitant to speak on such theological matters that were sacred to the English society, without being afraid to get canceled for her ideas. It is safe to say that Margaret Cavendish and Lady Happy both believe in the arbitrary nature of life and not in the supreme divine being the source of its creation, they both are sceptic women who are not afraid to go against the general theological belief of their conservative seventeenth-century society, we may presume that Lady Happy embodies these secular natural philosophical theories of the Duchess of Newcastle.

Lady Mediator, who embodies the voice of the patriarchal society in the play, is there to remind Lady Happy of the pressure she must feel as an unmarried woman. Lady Mediator, whose name also suggests her role in the convent, as she is the mediator between the inside and outside worlds of the convent, she as any woman in her society, affiliated women’s greatest pleasure solely to the company of men, and eventually, in their absence a woman is willingly depriving herself from all worldly pleasures. Lady Happy’s response is very striking, she did not just deny this absolute statement of Lady Mediator, in the sense that she can also enjoy life without a man, instead she claimed that: “Men are the only troublers of Women; for they only cross and oppose their sweet delights, and peaceable life; they cause their pains, but not their pleasures”.^[4] She basically denied any pleasure in the presence of men, she even accused them for women’s unhappiness and misery, as she stated:

“ …but those Women, where Fortune, Nature, and the gods are joined to make them happy, were mad to live with Men, who make the Female sex their slaves; but I will not be so inslaved, but will live retired from their Company. Wherefore, in order thereto, I will take so many Noble Persons of my own Sex, as my Estate will plentifully maintain, such whose Births are greater then their Fortunes, and are resolv'd to live a single life, and vow Virginity: with these I mean to live incloister'd with all the delights and pleasures that are allowable and lawful…”^[5]

In this particular passage, Lady Happy shed light on the societal norm that women should be subservient to men and live their lives under their control, she is by that making no exception, and considering the whole male gender of being enslavers of women, she refused to be object of oppression of men, instead, she decided to live a life of autonomy and self-determination, away from the company of men, which can be seen as a rejection of the traditional societal expectations that women should marry and have children. Lady Happy here did not just talk about herself, she used her voice to speak on behalf of all the “Female sex”, she also advocates for the formation of a community of like-minded individuals of the same sex, who are committed to living a single life and vowing virginity. The choice to live a life of seclusion can be seen as a way to escape the oppressive societal structures that limit women's freedom and autonomy. Overall, the passage can be seen as making a feminist statement by advocating for women's autonomy, self-determination, and freedom from societal expectations of how they should live their lives. It is a call for women to live their lives on their own terms, free from the constraints of traditional gender roles and societal norms.

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