ABSTRACT
In one of her Sociable Letters (1664) written during her exile from the English Protectorate with her husband, the then Marquis of Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish describes to a female correspondent some of the ‘several Sights and Shews’ to be purchased at ‘Carneval Time’ in the city of Antwerp. From a medley of human and animal performers she singles out a female freak, half woman, half animal:
amongst the rest there was a Woman brought to me, who was like a Shagg-dog, not in Shape, but Hair, as Grown all over her Body, which Sight stay’d in my Memory, not for the Pleasantness, but Strangeness, as she troubled my Mind a Long time, but at last my Mind kick’d her Figure out, bidding it to be gone, as a Doglike Creature.1
