ABSTRACT
Margaret Cavendish was an independent thinker who was willing to challenge almost any sort of orthodoxy, whether religious, societal, philosophical, or even medical. When discussing differing religious loyalties in Observations, she repeats her position from Sociable Letters and Orations of Divers Sorts: it is not important to which faith another person belongs and no entity or individual should attempt to compel another's belief. Here she identifies with no particular faith, gives no evidence of loyalty to the Anglican Church, but rather argues that it is the variety within nature that leads to different religions. She treats faith as if it were something that exists, but independently of her, and primarily to be analyzed as an element important to human nature or the nature of the universe. And this is the work, where Hobbes first clearly lays out his argument for women's authority in the state of nature and precedents for their governing in civil society.
