Margaret Cavendish truly had faith in the feminine spirit and felt that women were never given the credit they deserved. Cavendish firmly believed that women could understand philosophy and politics as well as men, and that they should be allowed to study these subjects freely. Furthermore, he called for women's independence from male restrictions. For this reason, feminism abounded in her thoughts and works. In The Blazing World, Margaret Cavendish shows that women are capable of ruling a world effectively when given power. It also shows that women are capable of excelling in a world created in their minds, free from the limitations imposed by men. To better understand Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, it is necessary to examine her background. When Cavendish was only two years old, his father died, leaving his mother to raise the family alone. As a result, her mother became a model of "feminine independence and administrative competence" (Lilley ix). This demonstrated to young Margaret that a woman could handle various affairs on her own quite well and instilled in her strong feminist values. He firmly believed that "Woman was given to Man not only to delight him, but to help and assist him" and that "women would work as hard with the fire and furnace as men" (qtd. in Harris 210). His shining example must have been his widowed mother. Later, when Cavendish began publishing his written works, he boldly used his real name instead of a pseudonym. This was very unusual for a woman in the seventeenth century (Lilley x). Cavendish was fully aware that women writing philosophy went completely against all norms; he compared it to "men in slips" (q...... middle of paper ......politics.BibliographyBattigelli, Anna. Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1998.Cavendish , Margaret. The Burning World and Other Writings. Kate Lilley, ed. Harris, Frances. "Living in the Quarter of Science." , Rob and Frances Willmoth. “Astronomy and the Domestic Sphere.” Hunter 235-265. “Gender and Status in Dramatic Discourse.”, 1992. 156-77.