ASTELL Artículo Mary Astell and The Conservative Contribution To English Feminism

Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism
Author(s): Joan K. Kinnaird

Source: Journal of British Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Autumn, 1979), pp. 53-75
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The North American Conference on British
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Mary Astell and the
Conservative Contribution
to English Feminism
JOANK. KINNAIRD
In 1675 Mrs. Hannah Woolley, schoolmistress and writer of books on

cookery and household management, published The Gentlewoman'sCom-
panion. Her Introductioncontains this unexpecteddiatribe:
The right Education of the Female Sex, as it is in a manner

everywhere neglected, so it ought to be generally lamented.Most
in this depraved later Age think a Woman learned and wise
enough if she can distinguish her Husbands Bed from anothers.
Certainly Mans Soul cannot boast of a more sublime Original
than ours, they had equally their efflux from the same eternal
Immensity, and [are] thereforecapableof the same improvement
by good Education. Vain man is apt to think we were meerly
intended for the Worlds propagation, and to keep its humane
inhabitants sweet and clean;but by their leaves, had we the same
Literature, he would find our brains as fruitful as our bodies.
Hence I am inducedto believe, we are debar'dfromthe knowledge
of humane learning lest our pregnant Wits should rival the
towring conceits of our insulting Lordsand Masters.1
Mrs. Woolley's complaint was intended for a female audience only, but
the themes of her indictment-male oppression, the equal intellectual
capacity of the sexes, the injustice of barring womenfromhigher learning
-appear openly and often in the literature of Restoration England.
Rebellious daughters and emancipated wives, female virtuosi, "she-
philosophers"-all rebels against male authority-crowd the Restoration
stage. So many took up the cause of women in the "Battleof the Sexes"in
the last decades of the century that one scholarhas foundin the pamphlet
literature of the time "a large and well-definedmovement,an early 'liber-
ation war' of the sex."2Finally, in 1694 Mary Astell, self-styled "Loverof
Her Sex," published the first consideredplea by an Englishwomanfor the
'Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman'sCompanion(London,1675),p. 2.

2A.H. Upham, "English Femmes Savantes at the End of the Seventeenth Cen-
tury," Journal of English and GermanicPhilology, XII (1913), 262. Upham pro-
vides an excellent bibliographicalguide to literature in defenseof the female sex by

54 JOURNALOF BRITISHSTUDIES
establishment of an institution of higher learning for women, A Serious

Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest
Interest.3 So much activity on behalf of women might well justify the view
that feminism-or, to be more accurate, protofeminism-had its genesis
in the Restoration period.
The impulse to this new feminist consciousness, however, remains ob-
scure. In French studies of feminism the governing assumption has been
that "modernism and feminism go... together; they are two diverse as-
pects of one state of mind."4 A similar assumption informs several English
studies as well. Early feminism in Jean Gagen's work on Restoration
drama is seen as part and parcel of the ethos of the New Woman-as owing
its rise to secular ideas and to the general revolt from authority after the
Civil War. In The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800,
Lawrence Stone links late seventeenth-century feminism directly with
John Locke and the revolution in political thought. Locke, in his debate
with Robert Filmer, extended the contract theory of government to the
family when he contended that a voluntary contract for the begetting and
raising of children was the basis of conjugal society. Stone concludes, "New
claims concerning the status and rights of women were set in motion by the
repudiation of monarchical patriarchy in the state in 1688, and were
publicized by a handful of zealous feminists [he includes Mary Astell] at
both male and female authors. For referencesto the woman'squestion in general,
see Rae Blanchard, "RichardSteele and the Status of Women,"Studies in Philol-
ogy, XXVI (1929), 325-55. For theoretical backgroundof the controversy,see Ruth
Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana, 1956). For studies of
seventeenth-century women, see Myra Reynolds, The LearnedLady in England
1650-1750 (1924; rpt. Gloucester, Mass., 1964) and Ada Wallas, Before the Blue-
stockings (London, 1929). The most useful general survey is Doris Mary Stenton,
The English Womanin History (London,1956), which coversthe Anglo-Saxonera
to the nineteenth century. See also Allison Adburgham,Womenin Print: Writing
Womenand Women'sMagazinesfrom the Restorationto the Accessionof Victoria
(London,1972) and MargaretPhillips and William Tomkinson,English Womenin
Life and Letters (London,1927), which covers the period 1650-1830.See also Alice
Clark, WorkingLifeof Womenin the SeventeenthCentury(1919;rpt.London,1978),
and Christina Hole, The English Housewife in the SeventeenthCentury(London,
1953).
3Criticismof women's education had been growing since the sixteenth century.
Others before Mary Astell claimed women'sright to higher learning. Mostnotable
were Anna Maria von Schurman,whose work appearedin English translation as
The Learned Maid; or Whethera Maid MayBe a Scholar (London,1659) and Mrs.
Bathsua Makin, author of An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentle-
women in Religion, Manners,Arts and Tongues(London,1673).MaryAstell alone
proposedan institution of higher learning. Von Schurmanspoke of private educa-
tion and Mrs. Makin of boardingschoolsfor"gentlewomen"of eight and nine years
of age.
4George Ascoli, "Essai sur l'histoire des idees feministes en France, du XVI
sidcle a la Revolution,"RevuedeSynthese Historique,XII(1906),168-169as cited in
Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes:Women,Salons, and Social Stratifica-
tion in Seventeenth-CenturyFrance (Princeton, 1976). Lougee's study confirms
Ascoli's view; she found that the seventeenth-centuryFrench "feminists"rejected
custom, tradition, and religious authority.

MARY ASTELLAND ENGLISHFEMINISM 55
the end of the seventeenth century."Still anotherforcethat has been seen

as undermining patriarchal authority is Puritanism or, more narrowly,
sectarianism. Keith Thomas, in his important article, "Womenand the
Civil War Sects," argues that the Puritan sects, with their various chal-
lenges to tradition, ultimately advancedthe status of womenby contribut-
ing "to the general process of substituting secular for divine sanctions for
the arrangements of society." In rejecting the traditional arguments for
woman's exclusion from church office, they were challenging the very
same arguments used to justify the subordinationof women in general.
Their demand for religious toleration led to the "redefinitionof the limits
of paternal power"in the family.5
In view of these interpretations, it is puzzling to note that MaryAstell,
considered to be by general consensus the first majorEnglish feminist for
her defiant praise of woman, had no sympathies with Puritanism, secu-
larism, or Lockean political thought. She was a staunch royalist and a
fervid defender of the Church of England. Her loyalties must raise con-
siderable doubt about the validity of linking feminism in this age exclu-
sively with libertarian, antiestablishment trends. It is proposedin this
paper-by exploring the main influences on MaryAstell's life and charac-
ter, the sources of her thought, and the goals of her feminist programs-to
demonstrate the paradox that feminism in its earliest phase owed as
much, if not more, to conservative and Anglican values than it did to the
antiauthoritarian and secular impulses in Restoration culture. Such a
study, moreover, should make possible a tentative definition of what
might be called "protofeminism,"that is, of late seventeenth-century
feminism in both its continuity with and differences from subsequent
stages of the movement.
Mary Astell,6 her eighteenth-century biographer George Ballard ob-
served, loved obscurity, "whichshe courtedand doated [sic] on beyondall
earthly blessings," and was "ambitiousto slide gently throughthe world,
5Jean E. Gagen, The New Woman:Her Emergencein English Drama 1600-1730

(New York, 1954); Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England
1500-1800 (New York, 1977), pp. 265, 340; Keith Thomas,"Womenand the Civil
War Sects," in Crisis in Europe 1560-1660, TrevorAston (ed.), (New York, 1968),
pp. 317-40. Thomas discountsthe view that Puritanismproperimprovedthe status
of women by attacking wife-beating, acceptingdivorce,andpreachingthe spiritual
equality of the sexes. His argument is restricted to the later sects. For a more
sociological explanation of the emergenceof feminism in RestorationEngland,see
Roger Thompson, Womanin Stuart England and America:A ComparativeStudy
(London, 1974). He stresses imbalance in the sex ratio and economicdislocationas
important causal factors.
6MaryAstell's works are, in chronologicalorder:
A Serious Proposal to theLadies for theAdvancementof TheirTrueand Greatest
Interest (hereafter, Serious Proposal), 4th ed.; London, 1701 [original ed.: Pt. I,
1694; Pt. II, 1697], rpt. New York, 1970). Part I of Serious Proposalwent through
four editions in 1694,1695, 1696, and 1701.Part II appearedseparatelyin 1697 and
with Part I in a combinededition in 1701.

without so much as being seen or taken notice of."7As far as her private life
is concerned, Mary Astell almost did succeed in this wish, for regrettably
little is known of her personal history.8 She was born at Newcastle in 1666
into a gentry family of royalist sympathy that included lawyers and
clergymen, as well as merchants. Ralph Astell, a clergyman uncle, sup-
posedly educated the bright young girl until his death in her early teens. In
her twenties, orphaned after the death of her mother, she left home-even
though a brother Peter continued to live in Newcastle-and moved to
London. By 1695 she was settled in Chelsea. For a time she was an
independent householder but later joined the household of the daughter of
the Earl of Ranelagh, Lady Catherine Jones, with whom presumably Mary
Astell lived until her death in 1731. Mary Astell never married-
disappointed, Ballard reports, by the breakdown of marriage negotiations
with an eminent clergyman.9
Her circle consisted mainly of Anglican divines whom she joined in
theological debate and in literary warfare against the Dissenters, earning
thereby a reputation as an "ingenious" lady and a formidable polemicist.?1
Despite her stern appearance-she is described as "in outward form,
indeed, rather ill-favored and forbidding"-she attracted the friendship of
Letters Concerning the Love of God Between the Author of the Proposal to the
Ladies and Mr. John Norris (hereafter, Letters)(London,1695). The second and
third editions appearedin 1705 and 1730.
Some Reflections upon Marriage(hereafter,Some Reflections)(4th ed.; London,
1730 [original ed. 1700], rpt. New York, 1970).The foureditions appearedin 1700,
1703, 1706, and 1730.
ModerationTruly Stated: or a Reviewof a LatePamphletEntitul'dModerationa
Vertue with a PrefatoryDiscourse to Dr. D'AvenantConcerningHis LateEssays on
Peace and War(hereafter,Moderation)(London,1704).
A Fair Waywith theDissenters and TheirPatrons(hereafter,Fair Way)(London,
1704).
An Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil Warin This King-
dom (hereafter,ImpartialEnquiry)(London,1704).
The Christian Religion as Profess'd by a Daughter of the Church of England
(hereafter, Christian Religion) (3rd. ed.; London, 1730 [original ed. 1705]). The
second edition appearedin 1717.
Bart'lemy Fair or an Enquiry after Wit... To My Lord * * *, By Mr. Wotton
[pseudonym] (London, 1709). A second edition was published in 1722 under the
title, An Enquiry after Wit.
An Essay in Defenceof theFemale Sex (London,1696)is nowgenerallyattributed
to Judith Drake rather than to MaryAstell. See FlorenceSmith, MaryAstell (1916;
rpt. New York, 1966), AppendixII, pp. 173-82.
7GeorgeBallard, MemoirsofBritish Ladies ... (2nded.; London,1775),p. 308.
8Smith, Astell, ch. 1. (For full citation see n. 6). I am indebted to this fine
expository study of Mary Astell's life and work for biographicaldetail and for
references to contemporarysources.
9Ballard,Memoirs,pp. 449-50. Contemporarysourcesreferto her as Mrs.Astell,
a convention of address.For consistency,I have retainedthat usage.
'?Thefirst contemporarynotice of MaryAstell appearsin John Evelyn'sNumis-
mata (1697), p. 265, where she is includedamong the celebratedwomenof the age.

MARYASTELLAND ENGLISHFEMINISM 57
a number of brilliant young women. Besides Lady Catherine Jones, her

feminine disciples included Lady Elizabeth Hastings (she who inspired
the compliment, "To love her is a liberal education."); Lady Elizabeth's
four half sisters; Lady Anne Coventry, author of devotional tracts; and
Catherine Atterbury, wife of Francis Atterbury, the prominent Tory and
high church divine. There was also Elizabeth Elstob, the Anglo-Saxon
scholar, who came from Newcastle and probably knew the Astell family
there. During her years in London, Elizabeth Elstob visited Mary Astell
frequently and later furnished George Ballard with many details on
Mary's life. Twenty years younger but especially dear to Mary Astell was
the future Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who in later life testified to the
formative influence Mary Astell had had upon her early years.
There are fleeting glimpses of the feminist's life in Chelsea. Spying from
her window idle visitors come for "chatt and tattle," she leans out to
announce that "Mrs. Astell is not at home"-not suffering such triflers to
make inroads upon her more serious hours.1 More graciously she receives
the young antiquarian, Ralph Thoresby, who had come with the "obliging
Mr. Croft, the minister, who introduced me to the celebrated Mrs.
Astell."12 At dinner she argues divinity with Dean Atterbury, no stranger
to polemics, who admires her intellect but admits ruefully, "I dread to
engage her."'3 At tea she sits with the ladies reflecting on the memoirs of
her Chelsea neighbor, the Duchess of Mazarin, who serves "as an unhappy
Shipwreck to point out the Misfortune of an ill Education and unsuitable
Marriage."'4 An interest in science prompts a visit to Sir Hans Sloane to
see his curios and to show him some of hers. She walks through the fields of
Chelsea with Lady Elizabeth Hastings to consider possible sites for a
school for girls.15 Dramatically she confronts Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
with the promise that she will return from the dead, if possible, to prove
the truths of the Christian religion to her skeptical young friend.'6 And on
many a Sunday morning, despite inclement weather, she is seen walking
from Chelsea to St. Martin's to hear a celebrated preacher. In the last
An obituary notice in 1731 describesher as "aGentlewomanvery muchadmiredfor

several ingenious Pieces... in the cause of Religion and Virtue"and praises her
"elevated mind"and "Turnof Genius above what is usual in her own Sex, and not
unworthy of the most distinguished Writersof the Other."Remarksand Collections
of Thomas Hearne, H.E. Salter (ed.),(Oxford,1915),X, 426. For individualopinions
see Smith, Astell, pp. 20, 119, 157-58, andpassim.
"Ballard, Memoirs,p. 309.
2RalphThoresby,Diary, Rev. Joseph Hunter (ed.), (London,1830),II, 161.
3Ballard,Memoirs,p. 312.
14SomeReflections,p. 7.
"Smith, Astell, pp. 31-32.
16RobertHalsband, The Life of Lady Mary WortleyMontagu (Oxford,1956), p.
118.

years, too, there are moving glimpses of Mary Astell stoically enduring an
operation for cancer and dying some time later (in 1731) alone-having
barred her friends in the last days-with a coffin and shroud set by the bed
to fix her mind upon eternity.7
The glimpses are few for a life that spanned sixty-five years. But if
obscurity cloaked her personal life, it certainly did not hide her militant
views. In 1695 the Platonist divine, John Norris, rector of Bemerton, won
her permission to publish their correspondence, Letters Concerning the
Love of God, so long as he did not reveal her identity. Mary Astell had
initiated that correspondence two years before, and in her first letter
struck a note of feminine assertiveness that would echo through all subse-
quent writings:
Sir,
Though some morose Gentlemen wou'd perhaps remit me to the
Distaff or the Kitchin, or at least to the Glass and the Needle, the
proper Employments as they fancy of a Womans Life; yet expect-
ing better things from the more Equitable and ingenuous Mr.
Norris, who is not so narrow-Soul'd as to confine Learning to his
own Sex, or to envy it in ours, I presume to beg his Attention a
little to the Impertinencies of a Womans Pen.18
The early correspondence with Norris reveals as well an identification

with her sex as a whole and a personal commitment to the advancement of
women that mark the true feminist. These characteristics, it may be
argued, distinguish the feminist as a type quite distinct from two other
related species-on the one hand, the "learned lady" who, while often
critical of males, is concerned only with her own pursuits; and on the other
hand, the dissident or unconventional woman whose behavior may violate
society's norms but who feels no need to protest or improve the condition of
women in her society.'9 By contrast, Mary Astell was a true feminist, a
woman with a mission: "Fain wou'd I rescue my Sex," she declared reso-
lutely, "or at least as many of them as come within my little Sphere from
that Meanness of Spirit into which the Generality of'em are sunk."20
Dean Atterbury once regretted that Mrs. Astell had not the "most decent
manner of insinuating what she means, but is now and then a little
offensive and shocking in her expressions"; she lacked, he found, "a civil
"Ballard, Memoirs,pp. 315, 317.

8Letters,pp. 1-2.
"gExamplesof "LearnedLadies"might include the Duchess of Newcastle, Anne
Conway, Elizabeth Elstob; unconventionalwomen-Lady Halkett, Celia Fiennes,
Lady Ann Fanshawe; true feminists-Lady Mary Chudleigh, Judith Drake,
Hannah Woolley, Aphra Behn, Damaris Masham.
20Letters,p. 49.

turn of words."21Nowhere are the directness and asperity of which Atter-

bury complains more apparent than in her censure of that meanness of
spirit in the female sex. Mrs.Astell upbraidedthe gentlewomenof her day,
all too many of whom were "contentto be Cyphersin the World,useless at
the best, and in a little time a burden and nuisance to all about them."
Their conversation was insipid-"idle twattle and uncharitableRemarks"
-and their companytedious. Preoccupiedwith fashion, their bodieswere
"Glorious Temples which enshrine no better than Aegyptian Deities";
they were like to the "garnish'dSepulchre,which for all its glittering, has
nothing within but emptiness or putrefaction!"In her ire, the metaphors
spill forth in reckless profusion."Howcan you be content,"she rails, "tobe
in the World like Tulips in a Garden,to make a fine shew and be goodfor
nothing?"Womenmust wake to a new consciousnessof their worth:
For shame let's abandonthat Old, and thereforeone wou'dthink,

unfashionable employment of pursuing Butter-flies and Trifles!
No longer drudge on in the dull beaten road of Vanity and Folly
which so many have gone before us, but dare to break the en-
chanted Circle that custom has plac'dus in.22
Perhaps not Atterbury's "civil turn of words"-but, confusedmetaphors

notwithstanding, a dramatic manifesto.
Before Mary Astell could rescue other women, she herself had to be
freed. What had liberated her own consciousness and empoweredher to
break through custom's "enchantedCircle"?The answer perhapsstartles
the modern reader conditioned to anticipate sociologicalexplanations of
change and prone, in an age of waning ideologies, to dismiss systems of
thought as ineffectual. The magic charm for MaryAstell was nothing less
than philosophy. "I have courted Truth," she exulted, "with a kind of
Romantick Passion."23And the truth that she courtedand that made her
free was a heady blend of Cartesian and Platonic principles.
That blend of philosophies did not originate with Mary Astell but with
the Cambridge-Platonists. They-most notably Henry More and Ralph
Cudworth-were Descartes' earliest admirers in England, able and en-
thusiastic propagandists for his views. In the 1650s they had eagerly
embraced his scientific metaphysics, his proofs for the existence of God,
and his dualistic epistemology, for they foundin him, or so they thought, a
redoubtable champion in the war against both scholastic obscurantism
and atheistic materialism. Descartes stood, in their minds, for a sounder
union of the modernand the spiritual, and they pitted him against Hobbes,
their archenemy. Gradually, it is true, their ardorfor Descartes cooledas
the Platonists came to appreciate the difficulties that his dualism raised
for a providential interpretation of the universe. By 1671, Morefelt com-
21Letterof Dean Atterburyto Dr. GeorgeSmalridgein Ballard,Memoirs,p. 312.
22SeriousProposal, pt. i, p. 6; pt. ii, p. 131;pt. i, p. 3.
23Letters,p. 78.

pelled to dissociate himself from Descartes, whom he thereafter classified

with the "mechanicks" and atheists; but by that time Cartesian ideas-
available in direct translations of Descartes' works and in popularizations,
commentaries, and critiques-had passed, sometimes in debased form,
into the general intellectual currency.24
Mary Astell refers often to Descartes, but apparently she never read his
works in the original; her references are always to translations of French
popularizations.25 Perhaps because she worked with translations, or per-
haps because she lacked a rigorous training in logic, she seems unaware of
philosophical rifts or of important distinctions between philosophical
schools. She pays homage impartially to the "celebrated" Descartes and
the "ingenious" Locke, and long after More had formally broken with
Descartes she continued to link them.26 Throughout her life, Mary Astell
remained, somewhat anachronistically, a Cartesian Platonist enthralled
with a vision of an ordered universe, with an idea of God as divine
rationality. Yet from that allegiance she derived a radically new epis-
temology based on the thinking self, and this new conception of the mind's
essential independence admirably served her purposes as a champion of
women.
That science and mathematics in the seventeenth century stimulated
the literary imagination has been well attested; that science and mathe-
matics, at least in Cartesian form, encouraged a new feminist sensibility
has yet to win the recognition and study it deserves.27 Many women
dabbled in science in Restoration England, marvelled at the wonders
revealed by microscope and telescope, and eagerly stocked their curio
cabinets. Science was, after all, a fashionable pursuit. But feminists such
as Mary Astell, Hannah Woolley, Damaris Masham, Aphra Behn, Judith
Drake, and Lady Chudleigh did more than dabble. They felt a special
intellectual affinity to the new philosophy and were more interested in
theory than in amateur experimentation. Aphra Behn was the first to do
an English translation of Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds, inspired, as she
24MarjorieNicolson, "TheEarly Stages of Cartesianismin England,"Studies in

Philology, XXVI (1929), 356-74. See also Ernst Cassirer,ThePlatonicRenaissance
in England, James Pellegrove (trans.), (Austin, 1953), Ch. 2, and Rosalie Colie,
Light and Enlightenment: A Study of the CambridgePlatonists and the Dutch
Arminiams (Cambridge,1957), Ch. 4.
25Shecited Francois Bayle who wrote The GeneralSystem of CartesianPhiloso-
phy (1670) and drew even moreheavily on Arauld's TheArtofThinkingor thePort
Royal Logic (1685). The latter work providedthe Cartesian basis for Part II of A
Serious Proposal. She also referredoften to Malebranchebut her knowledgeof his
modifications of Descartes apparently came through her correspondencewith
Norris, a great admirerof Malebranche.She confessedto Norristhat she couldnot
read Malebranche in French (Letters,p. 149). For Cartesian studies available in
England, see Sterling P. Lamprecht, "The Role of Descartes in Seventeenth-
Century England,"Studies in theHistoryofIdeas, III (New York, 1935), 181-240.
26Serious Proposal, pt. ii, pp. 102, 119;pt. i, p. 144.
27Fora striking example of the link between Cartesianism and feminism, see
Michael A. Seidel, "Poulain De La Barre's The Womanas Good as the Man,"
Journal of the History of Ideas XXV (1974), 499-508. Poulain's work appearedin
English translation in 1677, but there is no evidence that MaryAstell read it.

says, by "the Author introducing a Woman as one of the Speakers."28Mary

Astell even claimed theoretical science as women's proper sphere, since
"men were made for active life and women to be retired," and "for this
reason [women were] designed by Providence for speculation... and I
make no question but great Improvements might be made in the Sciences,
were not Women Enviously excluded from this their proper Business."29
Lady Chudleigh, like Mary Astell, indulged in rhapsodic descriptions of
the newly revealed universe-its glorious orbs and limitless vistas. Some-
what bitterly she looked forward to eternal life when men could no longer
bar women from scientific pursuits, and they would be free at last to
discourse with higher rational beings on the laws that governed the
universe-"And we shall then the whole of Nature know; / See all her
Springs, her secret Turning view, / And be as knowing and as wise as
you."30In some curious way the boundless universe with its infinite worlds
served to highlight for feminists like Mary Astell the parochial circum-
scription of their private worlds, and the grand design of the universe-its
rationality and lawfulness-seemed to underscore the lack of meaning
and the lack of purpose in their own lives.
The Cartesian philosophy fostered an introspective psychology, a radi-
cal consciousness of self-important to the growth of feminism-by its
insistence on the thinking I as the touchstone of all knowledge and even of
existence. "Je pense, doncje suis": The revolutionary implications of that
statement in an age still wedded to a corporate and authoritarian world
view cannot be dismissed. Here was a philosophy that began not with
revelation or the wisdom of the ancients or even with nature and sense
experience, but with consciousness itself. And here was a philosophy
presented not in syllogisms or in elaborate academic discourse but in a
personal memoir of autobiographical fragments, anecdotes, observations,
and reflections. "Truth" in the Cartesian system was not subjective, but it
could be known only by and through the self reflecting on innate ideas or
proceeding through methodical doubt to a clear perception of truth. Self-
awareness is central to the Cartesian experience.
The shaping of a sensibility, of course, cannot be documented. Much
easier to establish is the conceptual debt that Mary Astell and other
feminists owed to Descartes and his Platonist commentators. The first and
greatest debt is to the Cartesian notion of divine rationality and its
correspondence in the human mind. Descartes had argued that reason was
by nature equal in all men, for since reason alone distinguished men from
brutes, it must be found complete in each individual-"the difference of
greater and less holds only among the Accidents, and not among the Forms
or Natures of Individuals of the same Species."31It was this notion, stated
28Quotedin Gagen, New Woman,p. 56.

29ChristianReligion, p. 296.
30[LadyMary Chudleigh] The Ladies Defence:or the Bride-Woman'sCounsellor
Answer'd:A Poem in a Dialogue ... Writtenby a Lady. (London,1701).
31ReneDescartes, Discourse on Method, Part I in A Discourse on Methodand
Selected Writings,John Veitch (trans. and ed.) (New York, 1951),p. 2.

clearly in Descartes but not developed in its social implications, that the
feminists seized upon so avidly. Mary Astell boldly proclaimed the radical
thesis that God had given all mankind the same intellectual potential-
whether ancient or modern, rich or poor, male or female. Circumstances
determine the extent to which men and women may exercise their rational
faculties, but the faculties are present in all, at least as "sleeping
powers."32
Secondly, she took from Descartes and from the Platonists the authority
of the thinking self. Looking back on his classical education and rejecting
its formalism, Descartes decided it was necessary to sweep away the
rubble and begin anew with knowledge tested in the crucible of self-
discovery. His disciple, who had never enjoyed a formal education, took
heart from this suggestion that her lack of schooling put her at no serious
disadvantage in the quest for truth. As she wrote to Norris,
For though I can't pretend to a multitude of Books, or the advan-

tages of Academical Education, yet Thinking is a Stock that no
Rational Creature can want, if they know but how to use it; and
this, as you have taught me, with Purity and Prayer, (which I
wish were as much practis'd as they are easie to practise) is the
way and method to true Knowledge.33
Later she would use that argument to bolster the confidence of women.
God who made nothing in vain had made the understanding for the
contemplation of truth and in his "Wisdom and Equity" had given all a
"Teacher in their own Bosom" to enlighten them in both human and divine
truths or direct them to the proper source of instruction. Worldly knowl-
edge was not essential. "All have not Leisure to learn Languages and pore
on Books, nor Opportunity to converse with the Learned; but all may
think, may use their own Faculties rightly and consult the Master who is
within them."34
And if occasional misgivings arose about the "Teacher in their own
bosoms,... the Master who is within," then Mary Astell's third debt to
Descartes-faith in Cartesian method-dispelled them. Mary Astell was
enthralled with methodology, with "right thinking," the rigorous analysis
and orderly progression of thought that made it possible to sweep away
preconceptions, prejudices, outworn beliefs, and false notions in the ad-
vance toward truth. Again and again in her writings she insisted on the
need for clearly defined terms, precise wording, and a simple rational
style. So strongly did Mary Astell feel about "right thinking" and its
crucial role in the liberation of women that she followed Part One of A
Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) with a Part Two (1697), which was
little more than an elaborate exposition of Descartes' Discourse on Method.
32SeriousProposal, pt. i, p. 29.

33Letters,pp. 2-3.
34SeriousProposal, pt. ii, p. 98.

Fortified thus with faith in the equal intellectual capacity of the sexes
and the authority of the thinking self, and secure in a supportive method-
ology, Mary Astell could dismiss with almost flippant ease conventional
arguments about the inferiority of women. To those who argued that men
were physically superior to women and that strength of mind accompanied
strength of body, she responded wryly, "'tis only for some odd Accidents
which Philosophers have not yet thought worth while to enquire into, that
the sturdiest Porter is not the wisest Man!" To those who argued that
history celebrated almost exclusively the deeds of men and so demon-
strated pragmatically their superiority, she responded with even heavier
irony:
Have not all the great Actions that have been perform'd in the
World been done by Men? Have not they founded Empires and
overturn'd them? Do not they make Laws and continually repeal
and amend them? Their vast Minds lay Kingdoms waste, no
Bounds or Measures can be prescrib'd to their Desires.... What is
it they cannot do? They make Worlds and ruin them, form Sys-
tems of universal Nature and dispute eternally about them."35
If women did not appear often in the pages of history, perhaps it was
because men, not women, wrote those histories. And on the rare occasions
when they condescended to record the great and good actions of women,
men usually said that such women acted above their sex, as much as to say
that not women but "Men in petticoats" had performed them.36 An un-
biased review of ages past, she contended, with innocent bias on her own
part, would reveal that nations, especially the English, had flourished
more under feminine than under masculine governance. England had
enjoyed a golden age in the reign of Elizabeth, an age in which-as
William Wotton's Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694)
had demonstrated to her satisfaction-female learning was neither un-
fashionable nor singular. Mary Astell would have the women of her day
imitate the learned ladies of Tudor times. And instead of slavishly mim-
icking French fashions in speech, dress, and the reading of plays and
romances, she would have them look to such models as Mme. Dacier, Mme.
Scudery, and the philosophical ladies of the French salons who studied so
earnestly the works of Descartes and Malebranche.37 In her fondest
dreams she imagined a new golden age that might dawn in the reign of
Anne and rival or eclipse all previous epochs of greatness.
Mary Astell prided herself on her modernity and her self-reliance, and
that pride shines through her account of how she had ventured forth
unaided by authority on the doubtful mission of rescuing her sex (she
writes here in the third person):
:'5SomeReflections,pp. 86, 60.

36ChristianReligion, p. 206.
37SeriousProposal, pt. i, pp. 18, 20.

She neither advis'd with Friends, nor turn'd over antient or

modern Authors, nor prudently submitted to the Correction of
such as are, or such as think they are good Judges, but with an
English spirit and Genius, set out upon the Forlorn Hope, mean-
ing no Hurt to any body, nor designing any thing but the publick
Good, and to retrieve, if possible, the Native Liberty, the Rights
and Privileges of the Subject.38
The spirit and genius may have been English, as she says, but the philo-
sophical inspiration for her feminist vision was undeniably French.
"The Mind is free, nothing but Reason can oblige it, 'tis out of the Reach
of the most absolute Tyrant": In describing the autonomy of the mind,
Mary Astell writes like an early prophetess of the Enlightenment. And she
sounds like a believer in unlimited secular progress when she argues that
women should be free to determine and develop their own intellectual
proclivities since intellectual variety was as exhilarating and beautiful as
physical variety.39 The student of feminism, then, must admit to consider-
able consternation on discovering what her actual program was for the
higher education of women. In A Serious Proposal she makes no plea that
the universities should admit women as well as men; she never argues that
women have as much right as men to enter the professions and take part in
the public life of the nation. Rather she proposes simply the establishment
of a "Monastery, or if you will (to avoid giving offence to the scrupulous and
injudicious, by names which tho' innocent in themselves, have been abus'd
by superstitious Practices), we will call it a Religious Retirement." To this
"Type and Antepast of Heav'n" women of gentle birth could (upon payment
of five or six hundred pounds) withdraw temporarily from the world and
devote themselves to intellectual pursuits, to corporal works of mercy, to
the cultivation of friendship, and to the celebration of the neglected liturgy
of the Anglican Church.40 In emphasis, her institution was to be "rather
Academical than Monastic."41 The "Religious" would not "trouble their
heads about such unconcerning matters, as the vogue of the world has
turn'd up for Learning...." but rather would devote themselves to a course
of study neither "too troublesome nor out of the reach of a Female Virtuoso;
for it is not intended she shou'd spend her hours in learning words but
things, and therefore no more Languages than are necessary to acquaint
her with useful Authors."42 (Elsewhere she declares that women will not
pretend to be "walking Libraries" but will rest content with a "competent
Knowledge ofthe Books of GOD, Nature I mean and the Holy Scriptures.")43
The academy would serve "to stock the Kingdom with pious and prudent
38SomeReflections,Appendix,p. 95.
40SeriousProposal, pt. i, pp. 14, 16, 21-22.
42SeriousProposal, pt. i, pp. 17-18.

MARYASTELLANDENGLISH
FEMINISM 65
Ladies, who would so inspire the rest of their sex that women might no
longer pass for those little useless and impertinent Animals."44But
women, Mary Astell stated flatly, out of convictionor a sense of pragmatic
realism, "have no business with the Pulpit, the Bar or St. Stephen's
Chapel."45
How could such radical fervor, such feminist zeal end in so tame a
proposition-a "seriousproposal"that, notwithstandingMary'sacademic
emphasis, seems to promise nothing more than a revival of Anglican
nunneries?46Perhaps a psychological explanation is in order.This femi-
nist who had advancedradical theories might be imaginedas retreatingin
fright when the time came to implement those theories; she might, in
short, be seen as sublimating her grievances in some socially acceptable
mode of behavior such as religious activity rather than daring to attack
the oppressive social order.One passage at least in Mary'swritings might
seem to supportthis view of conscioussublimation, as she urges unhappy
women to fix their gaze upon eternity:
She will discern a Time when her Sex shall be no Bar to the best
Employments, the highest Honour;a Time when that Distinc-
tion, now so much us'd to her Prejudice, shall be no more; but
provided she is not wanting to her self, her Soul shall shine as
bright as the greatest Heroe's.This is a true, and indeed,the only
Consolation;this makes her a sufficient Compensationfor all the
Neglect and Contempt the ill-grounded Customs of the World
throw on her;for all the Injuriesbrutal Powermay doher, and is a
sufficient Cordialto supporther Spirits, be her Lot in this World
what it may.47
But one passage can hardly prove a case. And the explanation of timi-
dity of spirit does not fit the personality of MaryAstell as projectedin her
own writings and as captured in characterizationsof her. When a later
commentator in discussing A Serious Proposal referredto the author as a
"fairand elegant lady of quality,"Lady LouisaStuart, LadyMaryWortley
Montagu's granddaughter,respondedwith derisive glee:
This fair and elegant lady of quality was no less a person than
Mistress Mary Astell, of learned memory, the Madonellaof the
Tatler, a very pious, exemplary woman, and a profoundscholar,

46Ballardsays that Bishop Burnet dissuaded "a certain great Lady,"perhaps
Princess Anne, from endowing the academy because the proposalseemed to be
"preparing a way for Popish Orders"(Memoirs,p. 307). Defoe, inspired by Mrs.
Astell, planned a female academythat would correctthe excesses in her proposal:
See An Essay on Projects(1697). The only schoolMrs.Astell actually foundedwas a
charity school for the daughters of Chelsea pensioners.

but as far from fair and elegant as any old schoolmaster of her
time; in outward form, indeed, rather ill-favored and forbidding,
and of a humor to have repulsed the compliment roughly had it
been paid her while she lived.48
Lady Louisa Stuart's description rings true, and it finds an echo, as we

have seen earlier, in other biographical accounts. There one feels with an
absolute certainty is the Mary Astell who in Bart'lemy Fair could de-
nounce with waspish severity the Earl of Shaftesbury and the dissolute
wits of the Kit-Kat Club. There is the Mary Astell who could needle
Richard Steele-no foe to women's rights-into ungenerous satire in The
Tatler.49 There, too, is the fearsome polemicist who trounced Daniel Defoe
for his dissenting views.50 Dean Atterbury, who had winced often enough
beneath her criticism ("She strikes me very home, you see"), would recog-
nize that Mary Astell.51 The theory of sublimation and withdrawal simply
will not do: Mary Astell was no timid lady, and her religious retirement
was no timid withdrawal from the world.52
What, then, is a more credible explanation? The answer lies in her
conservative views on social and political issues, for only these views will
illumine the true purpose of her "grand design." In this light her proposed
"Monastery" will emerge as a means of enlisting the energies of the ladies
to confront, not avoid, the problems of society in her time. Our difficulty of
understanding here may well lie in our tendency to assume that there is
necessarily a contradiction between feminism and conservatism.
Seventeenth-century political theory was traditionally grounded in the
family as the natural unit of society. The king, in a very real sense, was the
father of his people and, conversely, the family was a little monarchy,
patriarchal and authoritarian. And since the political order reflected the
social order, it might be presumed that the civil war which saw a rebellion
against the father figure, Charles I, would have significant repercussions
on family relationships. Restoration plays would seem to bear out that
presumption, for they show that the institution of matrimony and family
48Quotedin Smith, Astell, pp. 15-16. "Madonellaof the Tatler"is a referenceto

Swift's satire in Nos. 32 and 62 of The Tatler on a Female Academyof Platonists,
presided over by Madonella.The high-mindedladies are easily seducedby rakes.
49TheTatler, Nos. 166 and 253.
50AFair Way with the Dissenters and their Patrons (1704) was her answer to
Defoe's satire, The Shortest Waywith the Dissenters (1702).
5'Quotedin Ballard, Memoirs,p. 312.
52ReginaJanes in "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary Or, Mary Astell and Mary
Wollstonecraft Compared,"Studies in Eighteenth-CenturyCulture,RonaldC. Ros-
botton (ed.), V (Madison, 1976), 121-39, rightly stressed Mrs. Astell's religious
conservatism, but by ignoringher political writings is led to concludethat her work
shows "nonew orderingof thought consequentupon a new intellectual discovery,"
and that her proposalresolvedthe conflictbetween ambitionsandopportunitiesfor
women "bydroppingout this worId'[sic]."(pp.125,127). Mrs.Astell always insisted
that her "FemaleMonastery"was not "prejudicialto an Active Life;'tis as far from
that as a Ladys Practising at home is from being a hindrance to her dancing at
Court, For an Active Life consists not barely in Being in the World,but in doing
much Goodin it." (SeriousProposal,pt. ii, pp. 157-58).

FEMINISM
MARYASTELLANDENGLISH 67
authority were being submitted in the last decades of the century to

lighthearted raillery and sometimes to searching analysis. The plays
abound with women who elope with their lovers in defiance of parental
will, demand marriage contracts to guarantee their personal freedoms,
and even, in some instances, insist on the same sexual freedomsthat males
traditionally enjoyed.Some rejectmatrimonycompletely,choosingrather
to pursue their intellectual interests or their own private pleasures.53
Had her goals been secular, Mary Astell would certainly have found
reinforcement in Restoration plays. But she clearly had no wish for sup-
port fromthis quarter.Her contemporary,AphraBehn, the first successful
English woman dramatist, never appearedin her list of womenworthy of
emulation. Indeed, Mrs. Astell never spoke of plays, playwrights,or of the
theater except to denounce them. The licentiousness of the Restoration
stage outraged her. Marriage was sacred-"too sacred to be treated with
Disrespect, too venerable to be the Subjectof Raillery and Buffoonery."He
who made fun of marriage or who depicted the wife as a domestic shrew
and the husband as a tyrant or a cuckoldshould be seen for what he truly
was, "adangerousEnemy to the Publick,as well as to privateFamilies."54
God had ordainedmarriage. And furtherhe had willed that man should
rule the family. Often enough Mary Astell lashed out spitefully against
men in her writings. She chided women for deriving their image of self-
worth from male esteem and for failing to realize that they were "capable
of Nobler Things than the pitiful Conquestof some worthlessheart."Men,
she was fond of declaiming, had for centuries deliberately kept women
sunk in folly and ignorance that they might tyrannize over them. This
anti-male bias was a decided and, in most ways, unattractive feature of
Mrs. Astell's personality. Yet despite her rancor against men, she never
challenged their God-given right to rule the family. The seventeenth-
century view that the wife belonged to the husband and was his property
echoes in her statement, "Shewho has vow'dher Affectionsto one, and is
his Property, cannot without injusticeand even Perjury,parcelthem out to
more." Husbands should rule justly, rememberingthat they were images
of divine authority, but if they did not, womenhad no recoursebut submis-
sion and no refuge but religious devotions. Not the least of matrimony's
advantages, Mrs. Astell tartly observed,is the preparationit offers long-
suffering women for sainthood.55
The sole rights Mrs. Astell recognizedfor women with respectto matri-
mony were negative ones and anterior to the married state-the right to
reject a suitor whom one could not in goodfaith hope to love, and the right
to remain single. Like other feminists and moralists of the time, she
inveighed bitterly against those parents and guardians who were so con-
cerned with property settlements or social advantage that they forced
their unwilling charges into marriages beneath their social rank or into
53SeeGagen, New Woman,esp. pp. 119 ff., 129 ff., 141 ff.
55SomeReflections,pp. 12, 23-24.

68 JOURNAL
OFBRITISH
STUDIES
marriages with detested partners.56"Theyonly who have felt it, know the
Misery of being forc'dto marry where they do not love."57Morepoignantly
still, she depicted the plight of the aging unmarried woman in a society
that afforded women no real alternative to matrimony. All too often
lacking spiritual and intellectual resources to draw upon, the "superan-
nuated virgin" was a tragic figure to contemplate.Mrs.Astell's "Religious
Retirement" was designed to providea refuge forher and forotherunmar-
ried women-much like the nunneries of old, but free from compulsory
vows. There the young heiress could bide her time until her friends ar-
ranged a suitable match. There "Persons of Quality" who were "over-
stocked" with children might "honourablydispose"of them without im-
pairing their estates58or forcing their daughters into marriages beneath
their rank-which she saw as "ill Mannersto Heaven, and an irreligious
Contempt of its Favours."59There women-who chose not to marryor who
could not find husbands-might be trained in piety and useful knowledge
for service in the world.60Women did have rights before marriage, but
with marriage rights ended and duties began. "She then who Marries,
ought to lay it down for an indisputable Maxim that her Husband must
govern absolutely and intirely, and that she has nothing else to do but to
Please and Obey."61Marriage for Mrs. Astell was sacred, and the family
remained a little monarchy,patriarchaland authoritarian.
These conservative views on marriage are in full accord with Mary
Astell's political views. Certain passages in her feminist tracts may seem
to suggest that the Civil Warhad had a liberal impacton her thinking;but
when read against her extended works on religion and politics, those
passages appear in their true light as ironic arguments designed to meet
an opponent on his own grounds. Did her adversary argue that absolute
sovereignty was not necessary in the state? Then why was it necessary in
the family, "since no Reason can be alledged for the one that will not hold
more strongly for the other? If the Authority of the Husband,so far as it
extends, is sacred and inalienable, why not that of the Prince?"Here Mary
Astell is not challenging the authority of either the husbandor the prince;
she is taking logic to an extreme in orderto expose the inconsistencyof a
56SeeLady Mary Chudleigh, The Ladies Defence, preface and p. 5. "Unhappy

they, who by their Duty led / Are made the Partners of a hated Bed;/ And by their
Fathers Avarice or Pride / To Empty Fops, or Nauseous Clowns are ty'd;"and "Of
Riches" in Essays upon Several Subjects (1710), p. 70. Hannah Woolley also
attacked "the insufferable grief of a loathed bed" in The Gentlewoman'sCom-
panion, p. 89. These feminists, however, like Mary Astell, preachedrespect for
parental will and submission to the authority of even a tyrannical husband.Mary
Astell seems to have drawn her ideas on marriage and family life directly from
Richard Allestree's The Ladies Calling (1673). The parallels are too many to be
coincidental. She differs only in insisting on a serious educationforwomen.
58Forthe striking rise in marriage costs for the aristocracy,see LawrenceStone,
The Crisis of the Aristocracy1558-1641 (Oxford,1965),pp. 632-49.
6?SeriousProposal, pt. i, pp. 35, 39.
6'SomeReflections,p. 60.

double standard. Did her adversary argue the right of resistance against
tyranny? Then why not extend that right (though, again, she is not advo-
cating this) to long-suffering wives? "For whatever may be said against
Passive Obedience in another Case, I suppose there's no Man but likes it
very well in this, how much so ever Arbitrary Power may be dislik'd on a
Throne, not Milton, not B.H. [Hoadly], nor any of the Advocates of Resis-
tance would cry up Liberty to poor Female Slaves or plead for the Lawful-
ness of Resisting a private Tyranny."62 Her arguments seem reasonable,
but the ironic starkness of her reductive logic is meant to dissuade, not to
convince. Mary Astell believed passionately in the sacred and inalienable
rights of the sovereign and decried all theories of popular sovereignty and
lawful resistance. The Civil War did loom large in her consciousness-but
as a specter and a warning.
As she saw it, the Civil War was not an uprising by liberty-loving
Englishmen against a Stuart despot but an "unnatural Rebellion" against
one of the "most Virtuous and most Religious of our English Princes."
Factious sectarians, abetted by Milton, Buchanan, and those "Mercenary
Scribblers whom all sober Men condemn," had seduced the "Good natur'd
English People."63 Under the banner of popular rights and liberties, the
sectarians had set out to destroy the government in church and state and
in so doing had served unwittingly as dupes of Rome. Behind the hateful
Puritan conspiracy Mrs. Astell detected a more dangerous and more hate-
ful popish conspiracy. It was the Papists who spread seditious ideas,
hoping thereby to engineer the overthrow of English institutions and
liberties.64 Indeed, the Church of Rome continued to plot the destruction of
England, conspiring even now in the reign of Anne through "that dearest
Spawn of hers our English Dissenters."65 The "Deposing Doctrine," she
declared, was "as rank Popery as Transsubstantiation," and the theory of
popular sovereignty was another popish innovation-idol worship of
"Lord God the People."66Only God's intercession had saved England from
papist malice, sectarian fury, and the tyranny of mob rule. In the Common-
62SomeReflections,Appendix,pp. 106-07;pp. 34-35.

63ImpartialEnquiry, pp. 11, 29, 59. Mary Astell came of a strongly royalist
family. The epitaph for her doughty grandfather,William Astell of Newcastle, is a
curious and amusing political manifesto that recountshis sufferingsfor CharlesI
and his heavenly reward-union not with Godbut with his royalmaster-"Trium-
phant Charles he's gone to see" (Smith,Astell, p. 5).
64Mrs.Astell was steeped in Anglican writings on the Civil War. She praised
most particularly Clarendon's"incomparablehistory."The morebizarrenotionsof
a Catholic conspiracyshe took fromthe workof a now little knownAnglicandivine,
John Foulis, whose History of the WickedPlots and Conspiraciesof our Pretended
Saints showed how the sectaries "copyto the life after the Originalthat the Papists
have set them." She warmly recommendedto her readers his "admirableBook,"
History of Popish Treasons and Usurpations,which would convincethem of "the
Pernicious Practices of that Church"(ImpartialEnquiry,pp. 37, 23). She may have
been influenced, too, by "panicfears of Catholic Plots." See RobertClifton, "The
Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution,"Past and Present. No.
LII, (August 1971), 23-55.
65FairWay,p. 14.
66ImpartialEnquiry, p. 23; Moderation,p. 46.

70 OFBRITISH
JOURNAL STUDIES
wealth era "the Free-born People of England" had been forced to wear "the
heavy and shameful Yoke of some of the vilest of their Fellow Subjects:Till
GOD was pleas'd to restore our Monarch,and with him the Exerciseof our
Religion, and the Liberties of the English Nation."67The lesson Mrs.Astell
drew from the Civil War was that the established ordermust be preserved
inviolate to protect religion, civil rights, and property."Orderis a Sacred
Thing," she concluded-the law that Godhad decreedforHimself and had
observed from all eternity.68She enjoined her countrymen to read and
embrace the Elizabethan Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebel-
lion that defined rebellion as the sin encompassingall other sins. "Letno
Man dispise this true Reform'dDoctrine."69
Such views probablyoccasionedsome scruples about the Revolutionof
1688. Although she gloried in the Revolution Settlement and referredto
1689 as "the first year of the Nations Deliverance,"her few referencesto
James II and to the rebellion against him were oblique and ambiguous.
Nothing could be "moresevere and spiteful"than to arguethat the Revolu-
tion of 1688 could only be justified by justifying the Parliament in 1643.
But she never explained why this was so. On the oppositionof the seven
bishops, her position was even more noncommital:
Whether those Church-menwho brought about the late Revolu-

tion did Well or Ill in't?If they did Well, why is it thrownin their
Dish, why are they eternally reproach'dwith it? If ill, what'sto be
said but that they Repent, and for the future Detest and Abjure
the Men and Principles that led them into it.70
In her view, the Revolution was over. With the death of James in 1701
and the succession of Anne to the throne, even the most scrupulousnon-
juror should be satisfied. Englishmen could and should unite now behind
altar and throne, rejoicing "under the most excellent Constitution and
gentle Governmentin the World."71
England's institutions were admirable, but unfortunately human
nature--or at least male nature-was not. WhenMaryAstell reviewedthe
social order, as she did in Bart'lemy Fair or an Enquiry after Wit, she found
noble institutions and noble aims corruptedby ignoble men. "TheOppres-
sion we suffer, not from our Governours,but from our Fellow-Subjects,is
enough to make a wise Man mad."A glorious monarchywas engaged in a
just war, and yet the chocolate, coffee, and gaming houses were crowded
with irreligious cowards"whoif they were not Poltrons,wou'dbe serving
their Queen and Country in a Camp."72Dissenters openly attacked the
67ImpartialEnquiry, p. 10.
"6Moderation,p. 59.
69ImpartialEnquiry,p. 35.
70FairWay,pp. 16, 17, 22.
"Bart'lemyFair, p. 55.
Fair, pp. 55, 109.
72Bart'lemy

Church of England, so admirably settled by the wise and judicious Eliza-

bethan divines. Libertines scoffed at sacred teachings although in all ages
and all societies "it was never thought a Service to the Public to expose the
Established Religion, no not when it was ever so false and ridiculous in
itself." An Anglican House of Commons--"Men of Sense, Men of the High-
est Power and greatest Wit, and who are the noblest Actors forLiberty and
Mankind"-passed just laws only to have them perverted. The poor man
who sought justice against a rich and powerful adversary discovered to his
ruin that "mere Forms, Quirks and Subtilties" prevailed "over Reason and
the Equity of Things" and that the best cause availed less than "the
greatest Number of Friends." And the old English nobility ("not more
remarkable for their Loyalty to their Prince, than their Piety to their
God")-these natural leaders-had passed away. In their place a genera-
tion of dissolute rakes squandered their estates, unmindful of the old
obligations of charity, hospitality, and liberality.73 England lived in a
degenerate age, and reform would come not with a change in institutions
but only with a change in hearts. Englishmen, Mary Astell noted, liked to
prate of Roman liberty but failed to realize that there could be no Roman
liberty without Roman virtue.74
So a moral reformation75 was called for, and in that reformation English
gentlewomen, educated gentlewomen, had a mission to perform. Theirs
the task "to revive the ancient Spirit of Piety in the World and to transmit
it to succeeding Generations." Trained in their "Religious Retirement" to
virtue and knowledge, the ladies would go forth to counter by their wisdom
and example the rising tide of infidelity:
And then what a blessed World shou'd we have, shining with so

many stars of Vertue, who not content to be happy themselves
alone, for that's a narrowness of mind to much beneath their
God-like temper, would like the glorious Lights of Heaven, or
rather like him who made them, diffuse their benign influences
wherever they come. Having gain'd an entrance into Paradise
themselves, they would both shew the way, and invite others to
partake of their felicity.76
Their sphere of action would be the family. Mary Astell was not interest-
ed in freeing women from domestic tyranny to send them forth into the
73Bart'lemyFair, pp. 23, 54-55, 84.

74Moderation, p. 106.
75Mrs.Astell looked to antiquity for her models of reform.Her heroes were the
ancient Greek statesmen-Phocion, Aristides, Themistocles, and Pericles-and
those stalwart Romanpatriots-Cincinnatus, CuriusDentatus, Fabricius,Decius,
Fabius, and Regulus. Cincinnatusmost capturedher imagination:"AsorryRoman,
who knew no better than to return to his Plough, fromthe head of a Triumphant
Army, to dine uponTurneps,dress'dby his ownvictoriousHands."Cincinnatusand
his turnips appear in almost all of her moral exhortationsto frugality, simplicity,
and genuine patriotism (Moderationp. 1-9;Bart'lemyFair, p. 9).
7Serious Proposal, pt. i, pp. 14, 34.

72 JOURNAL
OFBRITISH
STUDIES
world. The ladies, in her opinion, were too much in the world already.
Rather, she was intent on summoning them home-home fromthe play-
houses and the pleasure gardens, home from the tea tables and the card
tables-home to their propersphere, the family and the hearth.
Although a traditionalist in her premise that families need the rule of a
male sovereign-"Nor can there be any Society great or little, from
Empires down to Private Families, without a last Resort,to determinethe
Affairs of that Society by an irresistible Sentence"77-Mary Astell was
anything but a traditionalist in her conceptionof the gentlewoman'srole
within the patriarchal structure. She belongs in the ranks of those
seventeenth-century reformers,Puritan and Anglican alike, who promot-
ed an enlightened ideal of marriage as rational and companionate,and
who elevated the status of women in marriage by assigning to them
responsibility for perpetuating those domestic virtues that alone can sus-
tain society.78Her directives for the ideal match were simple:"letthe Soul
be principally consider'd, and Regard had in the first place to a good
Understanding, a vertuous Mind;and in all other respects let there be as
much Equality as may be. If they are good Christians and of suitable
Tempers all will be well." Marriage should be based on kindness, esteem,
and, above all, on "Friendship"-that ideal of her academy that she
defined as "the greatest usefulness, the refin'dand disinterest'dBenevo-
lence, a love that thinks nothing within the boundsof Powerand Duty, too
much to do or suffer for its Beloved."79Much more than other reformers,
however, Mary Astell insisted on the need to educate women to their
responsibilities in marriage. Men acted against their own best interest,
she argued, when they set up "theScare-Crowof Ridiculeto fright women
from the Tree of Knowledge,"80for only a woman of ingenious education
could build a strong and happy marriage and reclaim, as was her duty, a
wayward husband:
She who is as Wise as Goodpossesses such charms as can hardly

fail of prevailing. Doubtless her Husbandis a muchhappierMan
and more likely to abandon all his ill Courses than he who has
none to come home to and an ignorant frowardand fantastick
Creature. An ingenious conversation will make his life comfor-
table and he who can be so well entertain'dat home need not run
into Temptations in search of diversions abroad.
None but a brute would be able to withstand "all those innocent arts,
those gentle persuasives and obliging methods"that the virtuous and
prudent wife would use to rescue him fromvice.81
77Some Reflections, p. 105.
78Stone'sthesis in The Family, Sex and Marriage is that "affectiveindividu-
alism" and "companionate marriage" slowly gained acceptance in England
between 1500 and 1800.
79SomeReflections,pp. 46, 18;Serious Proposal,pt. i, p. 33.

Equally important, an ingenious education would produce effective

mothers. Mrs. Astell decried the seventeenth-century practice of turning
the young over to "ignorant wet nurses" and "low-minded servants."
Again in the new reform tradition, she urged women to nurse their infants
and watch over their children in their formative years to "give such Form
and Season to the Tender mind of the child as will shew its good effects
through all the stages of his life."82The proper rearing of children was a
noble calling, and it was the mother's prime responsiblity:
For Fathers find other business. They will not be confined to such
laborious work, they have not such opportunities of observing a
child's temper, nor are the greatest part of 'em like to do much
good, since precepts contradicted by Example seldom prove
effectual.
(Mary Astell could never resist the feminist barb!) Like the Roman
matrons of yore, the educated gentlewomen would raise up a generation of
patriots equal to the moral obligations of liberty. As wives and mothers, or
as governesses to the children of gentle families, the ladies would carry out
their mission. For the single woman, Mary Astell saw the greatest respon-
sibilities, for "the whole World is a single Ladys Family, her opportunities
of doing good are not lessen'd but encreas'd by her being unconfin'd... her
Beneficence moves in the largest sphere." To the ladies was reserved
perhaps "the Glory of Reforming this Prophane and Profligate Age."83
Such was Mary Astell's feminist vision. And when restored to full
outline and perspective, its seeming paradox disappears-her mingling of
radical feminist zeal with a conservative program. Her feminism was not
born of liberal impulses but of conservative values. She preached not
women's rights but women's duties, not personal fulfillment or self-
expression but corporate responsibility, not a secular but a religious way
of life. Far from being a lonely critic of the established order, she was a
supporter of the Establishment and a respected and influential figure in
an aggressive Anglican resurgence.84 Her plan for a "Female Monastery"
was as much a contribution to that Anglican revival as her later polemical
tracts against the political influence of the Dissenters.85 When the Occa-
sional Conformity controversy seemed to threaten a Tory crisis in church
and state in the early years of the eighteenth century, she joined such
divines as Henry Sacheverell, Francis Atterbury, Charles Leslie, Thomas
Sherwill, and Thomas Wagstaffe in defense of the Anglican cause,
publishing in 1704 two bitter tracts against the Dissenters and those who
82Ibid., pt. i, p. 38. For the reformers'views on nursing see Stone,Family, Sex and
Marriage,pp. 426-32, and Kelso,DoctrinefortheLadyoftheRenaissance,pp. 118ff.
83SeriousProposal,pt.pp. ii, 129-30.
S4Itshould be noted that with the exceptionof AphraBehn the late seventeenth-
century feminists were devout Anglicans.
85Shefavored "the total Destruction of Dissenters as a Party"and the suppres-
sion of their schools (Fair Way,pp. 3, 6).

74 JOURNAL
OFBRITISH
STUDIES
favored toleration of them-Moderation Truly Stated and A Fair Way with

the Dissenters and their Patrons. There is no real break here between her
earlier feminist writings and these partisan attacks; they are of a piece.
Conservative thought in the late seventeenth century was marked by
creative energy and originality as men and womendevotedto churchand
throne sought intellectually to hammer out a new political mythology
(providential divine right replacing hereditary divine right) to justify the
overthrow of James II, politically to curbthe growingpowerof the Dissent-
ers, and morally to bring about that reformationof manners and morals
that alone could secure the Revolution of 1688.86Mary Astell belongs to
that revitalized conservative world.
A review of her career makes possible now a concludingstatement on
the nature and scope of English protofeminism.Feminism proper,associ-
ated with the late nineteenth century, is the doctrine of the complete
equality of the sexes. Such seventeenth-century protofeministsas Mary
Astell, Hannah Woolley, and Lady Mary Chudleigh made no such claim;
they preached only equality of "souls"and hence, accordingto the philo-
sophic understanding of the time, equality of the rational faculties God
had given to men and women alike that they might achieve personal
sanctity. As a matter of course, they seem to have accepted the idea of
distinct masculine and feminine natures. Men and women differedphys-
ically, and since emotions were rootedin the body,it followedthat the two
sexes enjoyed different temperaments, different sensibilities, and differ-
ent gifts. God had therefore alloted to each sex its propersphere:as Mary
Astell pointed out, men were made forpublic life, womenforprivate life. In
short, the sexes were equal in dignity and in moral responsibility, but
different in their equivalence-and so in their appointedtasks.
Imbued as she was with the corporateview of society,believing firmly in
the legitimacy of degree, priority, and place in the social order,enthralled
with the rational design of the universe, Mary Astell could not recognize
the antiauthoritarian and pluralistic impulses inherent in the Cartesian
doctrine of the thinking self. She preached the authority of the thinking
self only to free women from the tyranny of ignoranceand social frivolity
that they might realize in their traditional sphere their full potential as
wives, mothers, and teachers of the young. That later generations of
feminists would invoke that same authority against the established order
was beyond the reach of her imagination. In the nineteenth century,
feminists would spurn the notion of distinct natures and distinct spheres,
as they claimed for women the right to participate fully in public life; by
that time they would lookupondomesticduties and virtues as marksof the
86Forthe creativityof Anglicanthought,see GeraldM.Straka,AnglicanReac-

tion to the Revolutionof1688 (Madison,1962), esp. Ch. 6. Forthe political crisis see
Gareth Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688-1730: the Careerof
Francis Atterbury,Bishop of Rochester(Oxford,1975) and John Flaningam, "The
Occasional Conformity Controversy: Ideology and Party Politics 1697-1711,"
J.B.S., XVII(1977),38-62.Onthe reformation
ofmannersandmorals,see Dudley
Bahlman, The MoralRevolutionof 1688 (New Haven, 1957).

subjugation of women. And in our time they have attacked "the feminine
mystique" as an expression of male chauvinism, quite unaware that this
mystique had been, to a large extent, the conscious creation of the early
English feminists. Ironically, if inevitably, the later history of English
feminism has done much to obscure the conservative origins of the move-
ment, and thus to perpetuate in scholarship a liberal bias which has kept
us from recognizing that, fully as much as Puritanism, secularism, and
Lockean political theory, conservative Anglican thought also promoted
the dignity of women, educational reform, and the ideal of companionate
marriage.
TRINITYCOLLEGE,
WASHINGTON,D.C.


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Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism

Author(s): Joan K. Kinnaird

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Fri, 20 Jun 2014 19:24:47 PM

In 1675 Mrs. Hannah Woolley, schoolmistress and writer of books on

The right Education of the Female Sex, as it is in a manner

'Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman'sCompanion(London,1675),p. 2.

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establishment of an institution of higher learning for women, A Serious

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the end of the seventeenth century."Still anotherforcethat has been seen

5Jean E. Gagen, The New Woman:Her Emergencein English Drama 1600-1730

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This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Fri, 20 Jun 2014 19:24:47 PM

a number of brilliant young women. Besides Lady Catherine Jones, her

An obituary notice in 1731 describesher as "aGentlewomanvery muchadmiredfor

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The early correspondence with Norris reveals as well an identification

"Ballard, Memoirs,pp. 315, 317.

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turn of words."21Nowhere are the directness and asperity of which Atter-

For shame let's abandonthat Old, and thereforeone wou'dthink,

Perhaps not Atterbury's "civil turn of words"-but, confusedmetaphors

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pelled to dissociate himself from Descartes, whom he thereafter classified

24MarjorieNicolson, "TheEarly Stages of Cartesianismin England,"Studies in

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says, by "the Author introducing a Woman as one of the Speakers."28Mary

28Quotedin Gagen, New Woman,p. 56.

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For though I can't pretend to a multitude of Books, or the advan-

32SeriousProposal, pt. i, p. 29.

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:'5SomeReflections,pp. 86, 60.

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She neither advis'd with Friends, nor turn'd over antient or

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44SeriousProposal, pt. i, p. 17.

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Lady Louisa Stuart's description rings true, and it finds an echo, as we

48Quotedin Smith, Astell, pp. 15-16. "Madonellaof the Tatler"is a referenceto

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authority were being submitted in the last decades of the century to

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56SeeLady Mary Chudleigh, The Ladies Defence, preface and p. 5. "Unhappy

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62SomeReflections,Appendix,pp. 106-07;pp. 34-35.

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Whether those Church-menwho brought about the late Revolu-

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Church of England, so admirably settled by the wise and judicious Eliza-

And then what a blessed World shou'd we have, shining with so

73Bart'lemyFair, pp. 23, 54-55, 84.

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She who is as Wise as Goodpossesses such charms as can hardly

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Equally important, an ingenious education would produce effective

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.88 on Fri, 20 Jun 2014 19:24:47 PM

favored toleration of them-Moderation Truly Stated and A Fair Way with

86Forthe creativityof Anglicanthought,see GeraldM.Straka,AnglicanReac-