The Rhetoric and Aesthetic of Indirection: Women, Religion, and Power in the Works of Margaret Cavendish

Abstract

Through the rhetoric and aesthetic of indirection, Margaret Cavendish establishes herself as both an early feminist and proficient theorist of religious and spiritual subject matter. Though Cavendish tried to convince readers that she did not write on religion – in an attempt to distance herself from ‘low-church’ Anglicans and nonconformists, especially “preaching sisters” – she uses the art of indirection, as later defined by Søren Kierkegaard, to do just that. In writing on religious matters in her poetry, prose, and plays, Cavendish grants herself, a female intellectual, a compelling voice on the subject and envisages agentic and authoritative women in reimagined religious institutions.