Reading and Writing inSociable Letters; Or, How Margaret Cavendish Read Her Plutarch

Abstract

AbstractMargaret Cavendish's Sociable Letters (1664), a fictionalized collection of private letters, makes reading and writing its subject in the broadest possible sense. Individual letters in the collection frequently offer commentary on books and describe the reading practices of women and men. This essay argues that Sociable Letters can be read as a case study of the conditions of women's reading practices. In Sociable Letters Cavendish demonstrates both an awareness of gendered models of reading and a strategic reclamation of the desiring female reader. Epistolarity becomes a means for some women to negotiate identities as reading subjects. More broadly, this essay suggests that Sociable Letters can contribute to a more inclusive history of early modern reading, which has often been defined in terms of a normative male reader. Cavendish's extended commentary on Plutarch's Lives offers a skeptical critique of humanist models of reading. In her responses to Plutarch's Cato and Pericles, Cavendish descri...