Elbow Room: The Visual Self-Representations of Margaret Cavendish

In mid 1650s, when Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) started her career as one of the century’s most prolific women writers of natural philosophy, poems, essays and dramas, she had a frontispiece made in which she was portraited standing as a statue in a classical niche between Minerva and Apollo, with her right hand on the hip and the elbow pointed at the viewer. The article elaborates on the akimbo pose. It was not in the picture by coincidence. By situating the pose in the context of an early modern culture of gestures and visual conventions, I aim to show how Cavendish’s self-representation drew on available means to portray masculine authority as well as create possible elbow room to challenge prevailing notions of gender. A title is proposed for the frontispiece – ‘libero arbitrio’ – which is one of the emblems in Ripa’s Iconologia, and according to which each person has the power to decide the purposes of his or her actions and thinking.