Displacement, space, and agency in Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) and Giuseppina di Lorena Carignano (1743–1797)

Abstract

This article analyzes how the utopian narrative in the works of Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) and Giuseppina di Lorena Carignano (1743–1797) articulates literary strategies of resistance against the prevailing gender hierarchies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is achieved through an adventurous, fantastical framework and a speculative prose deeply engaged with the scientific and philosophical debates of their time. By examining the ways in which both writers connect utopian reflection with spatial reconfiguration and agency, the study demonstrates how they critically questioned the established order and proposed alternatives to the exclusion of women in their respective eras. The analysis identifies a common narrative structure underlying some of their key works: the rupture and purging of habitual space, the formation of alternative societies, and the eventual dissolution of the utopia itself.