• Admin
    UC Research Repository
    View Item 
       
    • UC Home
    • Library
    • UC Research Repository
    • College of Arts
    • Arts: Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
       
    • UC Home
    • Library
    • UC Research Repository
    • College of Arts
    • Arts: Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of the RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Sovereign virtue, singular fame : Margaret Cavendish's self-construction as woman and author, and the roles she sees for women as thinkers and beautiful tyrants in Natures pictures drawn by fancies pencil to the life.

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Geard_thesis.pdf (5.205Mb)
    Author
    Geard, Jennifer Louise
    Date
    1992
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/10092/12327
    Thesis Discipline
    English
    Degree Grantor
    University of Canterbury
    Degree Level
    Masters
    Degree Name
    Master of Arts

    Wanting to be more than a body subject to time, and fearing erasure, Margaret Cavendish wrote in ord,er to leave artifacts which characterised her and would ensure the continuation of her identity in immortal fame. Since publication was a transgressive act for a woman, she made her writings into defenses of virtue and utilised a range of other feminising strategies to ensure that she would be remembered as a good and distinctive woman. Among these strategies were her use of femininity as performance art; her claims to extreme originality, taking her ideas from her own fancies and conceptions rather than any external stimulus; her use of the metaphors of absolutism as a basis for constructing herself as a writing subject; and her advocacy of beauty's tyranny over men. Given the paradoxes of the project it is little surprise that many of her female protagonists assert the strength of their wills to deny themselves sustenance and life.

    Collections
    • Arts: Theses and Dissertations [1572]
    Rights
    https://canterbury.libguides.com/rights/theses

    UC Research Repository
    University Library
    University of Canterbury
    Private Bag 4800
    Christchurch 8140

    Phone
    364 2987 ext 8718

    Email
    ucresearchrepository@canterbury.ac.nz

    Follow us
    FacebookTwitterYoutube

    © University of Canterbury Library
    Send Feedback | Contact Us