Platonick Love

Platonick Love is the novel’s name for an intimate spiritual attachment that joins the Empress of the Blazing-World and the Duchess of Newcastle’s soul, and later draws the Duke of Newcastle’s soul into their company. It makes affection a source of intellectual trust and political counsel rather than a rival to marriage: the Duchess’s soul is the Empress’s intimate adviser, while her loyalty to her husband remains central to her concerns. The relationship is idealized as free of ordinary sexual betrayal, yet the narrative gives it emotional force through longing, jealousy, separation, and reunion.

A Friendship Formed Through Counsel

The Empress first summons the Duchess’s soul to serve as her scribe. The Duchess explains that her handwriting is difficult to read, but agrees that the Empress’s secretaries could learn her characters. Their first substantial exchange is not a romantic courtship but a debate about knowledge and interpretation. When the Empress proposes making a Cabbala, the Duchess advises against attempting a Jewish mystical interpretation: neither the Empress nor the spirits possess comprehensive knowledge, and Sense and Reason already offer as much natural understanding as can be attained. She also argues that a literal reading of Scripture is more instructive than an interpretation fashioned to suit individual preference.

The Duchess redirects the Empress’s creative ambition rather than merely refusing it. A philosophical Cabbala, she says, would add confusion to an already infinite subject; a moral one would elaborate principles that need no such system; and a political one would do the same to the basic work of government, reward and punishment. If the Empress is set on making a Cabbala, the Duchess recommends a poetical or romantic one, where metaphors and allegories can be interpreted freely. The Empress accepts this advice, makes the Duchess her favourite, and later permits her soul to return to her husband and kindred, on condition that she visit again. Their continuing meetings develop into what the narrative calls Platonick Love.

The friendship’s intellectual basis fits the novel’s broader resistance to claims of absolute knowledge. The Empress’s learned societies repeatedly turn observation into disputes: the Bird-men give competing accounts of the Sun and Moon, and the Bear-men’s Telescopes multiply disagreement rather than settle it. The Empress eventually recognizes that the instruments can mislead, while the Bear-men admit their pleasure in artificial delusions and argument. In another inquiry, the Empress’s account of Nature as one infinite self-moving body challenges the search for a set of basic ingredients in chymistry. Against this background, the Duchess’s counsel is notable for setting limits on speculative certainty and distinguishing what Sense and Reason can address from mysteries beyond created understanding.

Ambition and the World Within

The Duchess’s soul later confides that her melancholy comes from extreme ambition. She wants first to be a great princess, then clarifies that what she truly wants is to be an Empress of a world. The Empress answers affectionately and considers whether the spirits can help her friend find a world to rule. They report that there are more worlds than the stars visible in the three worlds already discussed, but that these worlds are governed and populous; conquest is possible in principle, yet conquerors are often feared rather than loved and may meet an untimely end.

The spirits offer a different kind of sovereignty: each person can create an immaterial world within the mind and populate it with immaterial subjects. Such a world may be fashioned and altered according to its creator’s choices. Their argument turns the Duchess’s ambition away from the unstable acquisition of a material empire and toward imaginative world-making, which allows pleasure and authorship without the burdens of governing an extensive territory. The Empress’s own rule illustrates the contrast: although she possesses a whole world, she knows neither all its places nor all its dominions, and a monarch bears general responsibility while subjects enjoy local pleasures. The proposed inward world does not simply erase ambition; it recasts creative power as an alternative to conquest and public sovereignty.

The Duke’s Soul and a Threefold Conversation

During a visit to the Duchess’s Native World, the Empress and the Duchess’s soul see the Duke of Newcastle, whom the Duchess has not encountered in person during the visit. The Duchess’s soul becomes so overjoyed at seeing him that her aerial vehicle grows more luminous. The two souls follow him into the house, where the Empress observes his riding practice and his skill with the sword. Concerned that he is exercising before a meal and might overheat himself, the Duchess’s soul enters her husband’s body; the Empress’s soul follows, so that the Duke has three souls within him.

The Duke’s soul is described as wise, honest, witty, courteous, and noble. Its conversation delights the Empress’s soul, and the two become enamoured of one another. The Duchess’s soul is initially jealous, but sets that feeling aside on the grounds that no adultery can occur among Platonick Lovers and that Platonism is divine. The episode brings the relationship’s governing distinction into focus: spiritual intimacy may expand beyond a pair without being treated as a breach of the Duchess’s marriage. The Duke’s soul entertains the other two with scenes, songs, music, conversation, and harmless recreations; their time together passes so quickly that the narrative presents companionship, rather than physical possession, as the bond’s substance.

Separation, Loyalty, and Political Counsel

The Empress’s absence from her own body has consequences at court. A spirit informs her that although the Emperor and his subjects do not know her soul is away, the Emperor’s soul is melancholy because it misses its beloved. The Empress therefore returns to the Blazing-World. The Duke’s and Duchess’s souls regret her departure but accept that she cannot remain. The episode places the spiritual friendship among several attachments: the Empress’s closeness to the Duchess and the Duke’s soul does not cancel her relationship with the Emperor, whose distress calls her back to her public and domestic place.

Before the Empress leaves, the Duchess asks her to help reconcile the Duke with Fortune, whom he has regarded as an enemy since his youth. The Empress doubts that lawyers would be impartial and proposes arranging friends on both sides, but the attempted mediation fails: Fortune rejects Honesty’s plain speech and departs in anger. The episode shows the friendship’s practical reach as well as its limits. The Duchess brings the troubles of her husband’s life before the Empress, who tries to assist, but affection alone cannot compel Fortune to accept judgment or agreement.

On a later farewell, the Duchess’s soul returns with Prudence and Honesty, while the Empress asks for her advice about government. The Empress admits that, after receiving absolute power, she altered the government she had found and now fears that continuing disputes among the learned societies and different peoples may lead to rebellion. The Duchess recommends dissolving the societies: learning, she argues, often produces rival claims, stubbornness, and faction, which can spread from schools into the state. She also reframes reversal as a mark of wisdom and goodness rather than disgrace. The Empress responds with an immaterial embrace and tears, recognizing the Duchess not as a flattering attendant but as a true friend. Their recurring meetings thus make Platonick Love a form of frank counsel: intimacy is proved not by agreement or praise, but by the freedom to correct a sovereign.

Meaning and Limits

The relationship gives the novel a model of female intellectual and emotional companionship that crosses worlds and survives physical separation. The Duchess’s soul can advise the Empress, accompany her in inquiry, and return to her husband; the Empress can value that friendship without claiming it as exclusive. The Duke’s soul is welcomed into the circle, and the Duchess’s initial jealousy yields to the story’s distinction between Platonick attachment and adultery. The result is not an account of ordinary marriage replaced by another bond, but an imaginative arrangement in which several forms of affection coexist.

That ideal also has a pointed limit. The Empress’s friendship with the Duchess is intimate, but the Empress retains absolute political authority, and the Duchess’s advice concerns how that authority should be exercised. In the world of the intellect, the spirits counsel the Duchess to create a world of her own rather than conquer one; in the political world, she helps the Empress manage the consequences of rule. Platonick Love consequently joins private closeness to public judgment: it offers companionship and creative possibility, while making honest counsel, loyalty, and the obligations of sovereignty inseparable from affection.