The Convent of Pleasure

The Cavendish plays challenge characteristics thought inherent to the female gender; the Amazonian army in Bell in Campo proves capable of traditionally “masculine” feats while Lady Happy in The Convent of Pleasure rejects the “feminine” role as wife and mother in favor of a life free from men. Cavendish’s treatment of gender in The Convent of Pleasure, however, is complex. Traditional gender stereotypes are apparently reinstated in Lady Happy’s ultimate submission to married life, as well as in the impossibility of homosexual attraction (the Princess is, of course, male). In a play that appears so progressive in terms of questioning what is “natural” in female conduct through the very premise of the “convent of pleasure,” how should we react to Lady Happy’s lamentation that “Nature is Nature, and still will be / The same she was from all Eternity” (IV.1) or to Madam Mediator’s note that the “princess” and Lady Happy kissed with more passion than could exist between two women when the truth of the situation seems to affirm this observation (V.2)? Perhaps the ending is not happy at all, but the marriage rather expresses the reality of the world in which Cavendish lived and wrote (in terms of traditional views of gender, marriage, etc.). As others have noted, Lady Happy is almost silenced in the final scenes of the play—we never even hear her reaction to the discovery that the princess is actually a prince. How, then, does Cavendish’s ending leave the question gender and nature?