 Here Cavendish might be reflecting how women ought to behave in any possible world irrespective of the power and responses of the beings that surround them. If she thinks that the nature of women is such that women should be chaste and humble and quiet, then to the extent that she thinks that other characteristics are higher and more exalted she takes women to be an inferior part of the species. If she is instead reading off of her own world what behaviors are regarded as legitimate for women, then she is just describing the behavior that is adaptive to that environment. The generalless of Bell in Campo is not especially modest or temperate or quiet, but her behavior would not “gain us praise” or “love in this world” — the seventeenth-century environment in which Cavendish thinks we find ourselves. But perhaps Cavendish thinks that the generalless is operating counter to her own nature. Alternately, if Cavendish is reading off of her culture how women would be most wise to behave, then she might just be offering conservative advice about how women can best flourish in the short material life that has been allotted to them.