Design for Living: Women’s Communities in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure and Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

Abstract

In each of the women’s worlds we’ve examined up to this point, whether it’s the imaginary City of Ladies, the not-yet realized dream of a room of one’s own, or the temporary, ad hoc occupation of a garden or dining room, we have seen no planned communities. Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies is carefully constructed and organized, but what will women do with themselves once they are safely protected behind the city’s walls? If women should ever have a space to themselves for more than a few hours or a couple of days, what will they turn their attention to when they’ve talked themselves out? And even if a woman has a room of her own, she can’t write all the time. How will women occupy themselves when—or if—they achieve a space of their own? In pairing Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure and Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, we will find answers to these questions.KeywordsEscape VelocityTitle PageEarly Modern PeriodWoman WriterHeterosexual MarriageThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.