 An issue of interpretation that arises in the attempt to reconstruct Cavendish’s social and political philosophy is that for the most part the texts in which she addresses social and political questions are not formal philosophical treatises but works of fiction. What is regarded as her central work on political philosophy, Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, is a novel, and in another central text, Orations of Divers Sorts, Cavendish presents a multiplicity of opposing perspectives on social and political topics: gender roles, virtue, war, and the proper form of government, among others. Cavendish is indeed the author of Blazing World, and she also makes an appearance as a character, but it is difficult to be certain that all of the conclusions and insights of the narrator are ones that Cavendish would identify as her own. The interpretive problem is even worse in the case of Orations, as there are as many as three or four speeches that are offered on any given subject, and the speeches are in some cases contradictory. Still, there are a few texts in which Cavendish puts forward claims about social and political matters and in which she is clearly speaking in her own voice — in particular, World’s Olio. We can use these claims to determine which of the perspectives she is endorsing in her more fictional work and to get a concrete sense of how she might follow up on these (Boyle 2006, 253–254).