Space as an Arbiter of Cyborg Psychosis in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure

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 Roman 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.