Militant Complaint in Margaret Cavendish’s Bell in Campo

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Bell in Campo, the complaints of women left behind in wartime become the complaints of grieving war widows, namely Madam Jantil and Madam Passionate. Cavendish juxtaposes these laments with depictions of a new female army that emerges from – or perhaps truncates what begins as – complaint, with Lady Victoria issuing a call to arms in her fury at being transported, for her safety, away from her husband and the battlefield. While the “Generalless” ostensibly identifies two very different motivations for enlisting, “discontent” and “honour and fame” intertwine in the mode of complaint (I:3.2, p. 51). “Honour” is often interchangeable with “pride” in the period, but “pride” is also frequently feminised, sometimes in contradistinction to masculine honour. Moral tracts described sinful pride as mistaking one’s place, an error to which women were thought to be especially prone. This definition resonates with Lady Victoria’s troops seeking “renown” on the battlefield despite the men’s insistence that the women do not belong there (I:3.2, p. 55). Bell in Campo reveals how complaint, as a literary mode, participates in the gradual shift from notions of pride as a particularly feminine sin to more positive understandings of pride as legitimate self-assertion.