This article addresses the role of space in re-imagining a case of
essentialist society as collective gender paranoia of biological
reconciliation, as presented in Margaret Cavendish‟s The Convent of
Pleasure (1668). Using the institution of the R
oman Catholic
convent, Cavendish‟s play interrogates biological polarity and
disavows establishing reversed gender hierarchies of empowerment
and subservience. To this effect, the play suggests a communal
psychosis, being delusively constructed by antagonistic biological
differences that generate both sexes‟ denial of cyborg or hybridized
dualism in their gender identification. In this regard, the presented
argument addresses several critical lacunae in the scholarship of The
Convent of Pleasure.