Like the Empress, the Duchess (Cavendish) values wealth out of a sense of honor, not greed. Specifically, she thinks that rebuilding her disgraced husband’s reputation will require growing his fortune again. She really wants power and influence, not mere possessions. Of course, since she lacked the political and legal means available to men, she built her legacy through her writings instead. As she puts it in her introduction and epilogue to
The Blazing World, she has chosen authorship because ruling a fictional world is her best alternative to ruling the real one.