Memory, Monuments, and Melancholic Genius in Margaret Cavendish's Bell in Campo

Abstract

margaret cavendish’s inclination to celebrate female partici pation in martial affairs in her dramatic works has received a substantial amount of critical attention. The indulgent wish fulfil ment represented by the remarkable victories of Lady Victoria and her female army in Bell in Campo, and the astonishing battle achievements of Lady Orphant (Affectionata) in Love’s Adven tures, have unsurprisingly been the focus of that attention. While the disruption and horror of the civil war overturned gender hierarchies, allowing and even requiring women to assume tradi tionally masculine roles, few writers depict female soldiers quite as flamboyantly and unapologetically as Cavendish.1 Not until very recently have scholars turned their attention to the less startling but, we contend, no less dramatic figure of Madam Jantil, a mourning war widow in Bell in Campo, who dies of grief after designing and overseeing the erection of an elaborate monument to her husband, a casualty of war.