Hierarchy in The Blazing World

I overall really enjoyed The Blazing World, I think it might be my favorite of the texts we’ve done in this class! I do think it presents a very interesting human-centric hierarchy, in a world supposedly without humans. When she arrives, she is given complete power to rule despite having just entered the world. I think this is because she’s human. It seems as though in The Blazing World’s hierarchy, the closer you are to human the higher your place in society. The Empress (does she have a name?) is an actual human being, she can’t get closer to it if she tried, and as such is allowed to rule. 

Below the Empress are the Priests and Governors.

“Their Priests and Governors were Princes of the Imperial Blood, and made Eunuchs for that purpose; and as for the ordinary sort of men in that part of the World where the Emperor resided, they were of several Complexions; not white, black, tawny, olive- or ash-coloured; but some appear’d of an Azure, some of a deep Purple, some of a Grass-green, some of a Scarlet, some of an Orange-colour, etc” (14). 

There are the Priests and Governors, followed by the “ordinary sort of men.” I believe these two groups to be human in appearance, although with different skin-tones than occur in our World. This becomes more interesting when she describes everyone else:

“The rest of the Inhabitants of that World, were men of several different sorts, shapes, figures, dispositions, and humors, as I have already made mention, heretofore; some were Bear-men, some Worm-men, some Fish-or Mear-men, otherwise called Syrens; some Bird-men, some Fly-men, some Ant-men, some Geese-men…” (15). 

These men are the workers, sent off by the Empress to gather information and do research for the benefit of the human-esque beings. It’s clear they have the same reasoning skills as the Empress, so as far as I can tell these distinctions are made based upon their appearance. 

In class we talked about if The Blazing World reproduces real world racism or hierarchy, and I think yes – by having a distinct working population it implies they have systems in place for other types of oppression.