ABSTRACT
In her prose utopia, The Blazing World (1666), Margaret Cavendish ensures that her reader will be dazzled by the material splendor of the palace occupied by the heroine of her story, a lady from a foreign world who soon becomes the Empress of the Blazing World. Simultaneously borrowing images of vast wealth from folklore, biblical traditions, and discovery narratives, Cavendish depicts a majestic building whose rich value symbolically underwrites the heroine’s social, political, religious, and military power when she rules over the Blazing World. Immediately (and improbably) upon her arrival into this new world, the Emperor “ma[kes] her his wife, and g[ives] her an absolute power to rule and govern all the world as she please[s]” (Cavendish, Blazing World 132). She does so from a magnificent dwelling:
The Empress rules from a fantastically bejeweled palace that associates her with the economic power of impossibly great wealth, as well as with the physical protection of an impenetrable fortress of “precious stones.” Cavendish’s emphasis upon diamonds as building materials, as well as decoration, suggests that this is especially permanent, durable real estate.
