Rooted patriarchy in Bell in Campo : Margaret Cavendish's female warriors between military victory and political defeat

Abstract EN

Critics tend to oversimplify Margret Cavendish's Bell in Campo (1662) and read it as a celebration of women's empowerment.

This paper challenges the validity of such critical interpretation and attempts to prove that Cavendish stages women's spectacular failure to defeat patriarchy and move from the margin to the center of power.

The women's doomed pursuit of equality, in spite of their life-changing achievements can be traced through three elements, ultra patriarchal system, the ancient Greek mythology of Amazon warriors and traditional rhetoric.

Thus, the Amazons' ideological and rhetorical tragic failure to leave the margin is caused by the deep and effective mechanism of the patriarchal system.

They lost not because they are weak but because there is no equal powerful system that can be an alternative to the oppressive patriarchy.