Wall Symbolism in Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure

"My cloister shall not be a cloister of restraint, but a place for freedom, not to vex the senses but to please them," Lady Happy, the heroine of Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure, explains of her self-made female paradise (1. 2. 141-142). What Happy does not mention throughout her passionate justification for isolation from men is that a barrier is needed to keep one polar atmosphere from the other-this division comes in the form of a thick wall around the "convent". The wall between females and males takes on a symbolic role, one which is obvious to both sexes and is used by the author throughout the play to better illustrate the gender issues and the ponderings of the female psyche. By using Lady Happy's estate wall to symbolize the boundary between the men and women in The Convent of Pleasure, Margaret Cavendish develops themes of gender separation related to the origin and function of such a division, as well as the means by which males attempt and succeed in weathering and penetrating this towering structure of femininity.

Cavendish's theme of separation questions whether Nature or the women develop the idea of the symbolic wall and whether the divide itself is divine will or human invention. Lady Happy seems to contend that when Nature grants pleasure to women, these rewards are meant for the women alone, not for men to steal away, and that "those women where Fortune, Nature, and the gods are joined to make them happy were mad to live with men, who make the female sex their slaves" (1. 2. 131-133). Lady Happy's argument for Nature speaks to those women who are already enjoying pleasures and gives a reason why these women would be going against what is natural to them by associating with men instead of separating themselves so that they may benefit from greater pleasures than those which males claim to provide for the female sex. On the other hand, the gentlemen in the world outside the wall, upon hearing that Lady Happy is a "votress to Nature" and has created her convent of pleasure with other willing ladies, are certain that the women's actions are fully against the will of the gods and Nature:

MONSIEUR TAKE-PLEASURE. If there be so many women, there will be the more

use for men. But pray, Madam Mediator, give me leave rightly to understand you by

being more clearly informed: you say the Lady Happy is become a votress to Nature.

And if she be a votress to Nature, she must be a mistress to men (2. 1. 86-91).

Later in the play, while discussing the right and wrongs of the women's isolation, Monsieur Take-Pleasure continues with this reasoning in order to conclude that burning down the convent would not be a crime "for we shall do Nature good service" (2. 4. 17). While Cavendish seems to lead the audience to believe that the convent is an all but perfect female paradise, which leans toward Happy's reasoning, the writer allows this atmosphere of female community to dissolve in the end, leaving the gentlemen the winners with the observation that Nature has had her way in the destruction of the wall.

The gender barrier theme carries itself past the Nature argument and into the function of the wall, which is, both physically and allegorically, to exclude from the women's lives the pains and troubles of men and of the society that those males have developed to best serve their own gender. As far as its primary function is concerned, the wall succeeds in keeping the female pleasures and freedoms inside the convent and stopping the male-rooted plagues of abuse, child-birth, and heartache from entering the women's domain; however, the wall does fail in stopping all males from entering. Thematically, the symbol of the wall is in this case a point toward Nature's (and the gentlemen's) insistence that, while the division seems to serve its purpose, it is too unnatural to remain a success-in other words, it is too good to be true.

Consequently, it is the function of the literal and figurative walls in the play which provides the conclusion, and it is the thinning of the wall itself which provides a means for a character of romance and deception to enter and destroy the barrier. In The Convent of Pleasure, only the man who successfully makes it past Lady Happy's wall and lives by the pleasures of the female sex, forgoing his own wants and dignity, is worthy of earning the affection of a woman and able to effectively damage her personal barrier enough to fold it into submission. This man is actually the foreign "Princess" who enters the scene from the beginning of the convent's creation, almost slipping past the wall before it can be fully forged, and it is this character who is later revealed to be a deceiver, a man in disguise as a woman. By the time the truth of his gender is discovered, he already has Lady Happy's heart and mind, having presented himself to her as an equal and a friend. The wall is broken by the Princess-turned-Prince, and the ghost of the figurative barrier holds only to an idea of romance.

On a larger scale, Cavendish implies that a thick wall, built to keep men out, can only crumble when a man ceases to obsess over his own self-importance in favor of learning enough about a woman to break down her defenses. However, what is left of the theme of separation concludes that the falling of the female's wall is in her best interest, only that this conclusion means the end of the pleasures the woman has had to herself: in her marriage to the Prince, her convent is given over to her spouse who abusively abandons it to another, thus rendering her time and effort meaningless. What Lady Happy accomplishes through the power of female communion fades because she allows her wall to disappear in favor of exploring love and a relationship.

Since Cavendish's theme of separation of the sexes is so heavily tied to the symbolic and material walls which surround the convent of pleasure and the female being, the play's conclusion is both tragic and comedic. For Lady Happy the wall is not only a symbol of separation but of the strength of her will to find pleasure within her convent, and while the seemingly happy ending is one which appears to be founded in love, it is also rooted in man's deception and poisoned by a fallen female spirit which had thrived behind a wall so sturdy that it was only able to be destroyed from within its protected paradise. Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure uses the symbolic wall to explore the will of Nature as well as the grander themes of unity through separation and even unconscious personal defeat through matrimony.