I JUST CAN'T STOP BLOGGING! (or procrastinating)

Am I supposed to be packing? Well, yes. Am I? No. Am I going somewhere tonight that takes me away from packing? Yes. Will I be packing tonight? Yes (veryverylate tonight). So, I'm here instead to tell you about what I wrote about for my paper.

MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE

heard of her? probably not.

Why? She's a 17th century kind of feminist who challenged societal norms mostly in the battle of the sexes.

She wrote a book called A Description of a New World, called, The Blazing World. Or something like that. Summary of the book: woman is transported to magical land via a scurvy plot to hurt her honor. This world is aptly named The Blazing World in a symbol of brightness, happiness, and flaming passion. She becomes the Empress, once she marries the emperor, and proceeds to examine all scientific societies there (while laughingly mocking such scientists as Newton, Hooke, etc.) and lets women in on church. Feminist? Kind of. Tory feminist? kind of. Antifeminist? Kind of. She's really complicated. Actually, I liked the woman more than the book. She was the first to enter the royal society in high style and attracted attention wherever she went. She was (as I gathered) hopelessly in love with her husband. A letter that she wrote him shows how grateful she is for him and his tolerance with her writing plays and books and essays on government and dabbling in scientific theory and yields to him that she would not be such a woman if not for him. It's absolutely adorable, but really not feminist. In my essay, I looked at how the 3 genres of the work (romance, scientific, feminist utopia) reflected her personality, views, and life in general. There is an absolutely weird court scene in the book - if you don't know the background. If you do, it's adorable. She wrote this scene in because it's her fantasy about what would have happened. In real life, she was given the opportunity to defend her husband's possessions and property in court but chickened out. In the book, she gives a passionate and eloquent speech about her husband's strength of character and a defense of his actions (mind you, they were royalists in just post-civil war era, this would have been a legitimate reason to defend someone.) If you don't know what it's talking about, it seems weird, but once you do, it seems so sweet...

Anyhow, I love Margaret Cavendish, the little duchess that no one cares about anymore. You can tell, because it's really hard to get research on her, especially in a smallish university in America. Anyhow, do you remember the original purpose of this blog? I barely do. It was to read all of the books on that list...and look at me, by Christmas reading list is full of amazing books that aren't on the list. Shame on me. I am, however, very excited to start reading. Here they are:

Les Miserables (SO EXCITED I"VE ALREADY READ 2 CHAPTERS!!!!

A Prayer for Owen Meany (strongly recommended by a friend and a venture into American authors (gasp))

Searching for God Knows What (I'm halfway through and can't seem to finish it..)

Redigging the Wells (a wonderful book by my grandfather that I haven't read yet, but I have a copy)

and possibly, though doubtful:

On Writing (by stephen king, also strongly recommended by several people)

Do you see the problem? or rather, the oddity? 3/5 of this list is nonfiction. WEIRD. But then again Les Mis counts for bout 10, so it's really 3 /11.