Essay Questions

Why might an appropriate nickname for Cavendish based upon her “Fancies” be the Queen of Similes?

For the sake of clarity, there is absolutely no difference between the “Poems” and the “Fancies” in this collection. They as well as another category titled “Dialogues” are feature works of verse standard poetic structure; they all look like poems and they all read like poems. What does set the “Fancies” apart from most of the other poems in the book—but not by any means of all them—is the foundational characteristic of approach. What she terms “Fancies” are really poems that consider, analyze and express metaphor and similes. The emphasis on similes is heavier as can be gleaned from the titles of the works in this section: “Similizing the Brain to a Garden” and “Comparing Clouds to Horses.” So felicitous is Cavendish in presenting poetry as something that really can be enjoyed by everyone that she even includes prefatory material explaining her work in the form of verse:

“Fancy the form is: flesh, blood, skin and bone;
Words are but shadows; substance they have none.”

Cavendish notoriously writes verse on the subject of science, yet also seems to deny rationality with suggestions of the existence of fairies. How does she engage scientific logic in this argument?

As the title indicates, “To the Reader, Concerning Fairies” is a poem that is a directly appeal to readers who are about to embark upon a series of poems concerning fairies. To the reader, the reality of the subject of this series of poems does not appear to significantly alter from the reality of her earlier series about atoms. The structural pattern of the book definitely suggests that atoms and fairies are intended to be taken at the same face value of existing as a matter of faith. This address to the reader even explicitly serves to substantiate the logic of following that dictum. In response to why fairies have never actually been seen, the argues, poetically:

“We may as well think there is no air, because we do not see it, or think there is no air in an empty barrel, or the like, because when we put our hands and arms into the same we do not feel it.”

Cavendish is basically making the same argument for the existence of fairies as is made for electricity: just because it can’t be seen doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Later, in a poem titled “Of Fairies in the Brain” she will then expand upon this mode of logical thought by posing the question of whether it might not be fairies who have settled at home in the brain which are responsible for visions, dreams and flights of imaginative fancy.

What is unusual about the poem “Of the Style of This Book” that is found in the book’s Conclusion section?

The Conclusion to the volume is extremely unusual in that it includes not one, but two different pieces in which the poet essentially apologizes for being not being a good poet. “Of the Style of the This Book” opens with the speaker confessing that she wishes she had that level of talent that could dress up her ideas in the fancy language of rhymed verse before going on to admit:

“Or had they art, would made a better show.

But they are plain; yet cleanly do they go.”

Throughout the volume, Cavendish has directly addressed her readers with prefatory verse that introduces the sections, offering explications and clarifications of intent and purpose. The Conclusion offers her one last chance to remind the reader—the attentive membership of which will have long since realized without being needing to be told—that the author trafficks in the sphere of ideas more than she does ethereal imagery and rigid commitment to literary rules.