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Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Joan K. Kinnaird
Joan K. Kinnaird*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Washington, D.C.
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Extract

In 1675 Mrs. Hannah Woolley, schoolmistress and writer of books on cookery and household management, published The Gentlewoman's Companion. Her Introduction contains this unexpected diatribe:

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] therefore capable of 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 induced to believe, we are debar'd from the knowledge of humane learning lest our pregnant Wits should rival the towring conceits of our insulting Lords and Masters.

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 women from higher 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 “Battle of the Sexes” in the last decades of the century that one scholar has found in the pamphlet literature of the time “a large and well-defined movement, an early ‘liberation war’ of the sex.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , Fall 1979 , pp. 53 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1979

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References

1 Woolley, Hannah, The Gentlewoman's Companion (London, 1675), p. 2Google Scholar.

2 Upham, A.H., “English Femmes Savantes at the End of the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XII (1913), 262Google Scholar. Upham provides an excellent bibliographical guide to literature in defense of the female sex by both male and female authors. For references to the woman's question in general, see Blanchard, Rae, “Richard Steele and the Status of Women,” Studies in Philology, XXVI (1929), 325–55Google Scholar. For theoretical background of the controversy, see Kelso, Ruth, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana, 1956)Google Scholar. For studies of seventeenth-century women, see Reynolds, Myra, The Learned Lady in England 1650-1750 (1924; rpt. Gloucester, Mass., 1964)Google Scholar and Wallas, Ada, Before the Blue-stockings (London, 1929)Google Scholar. The most useful general survey is Stenton, Doris Mary, The English Woman in History (London, 1956)Google Scholar, which covers the Anglo-Saxon era to the nineteenth century. See also Adburgham, Allison, Women in Print: Writing Women and Women's Magazines from the Restoration to the Accession of Victoria (London, 1972)Google Scholar and Phillips, Margaret and Tomkinson, William, English Women in Life and Letters (London, 1927)Google Scholar, which covers the period 1650-1830. See also Clark, Alice, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1919; rpt. London, 1978)Google Scholar, and Hole, Christina, The English Housewife in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1953)Google Scholar.

3 Criticism of women's education had been growing since the sixteenth century. Others before Mary Astell claimed women's right to higher learning. Most notable were Anna Maria von Schurman, whose work appeared in English translation as The Learned Maid; or Whether a Maid May Be a Scholar (London, 1659)Google Scholar and Mrs.Makin, Bathsua, author of An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentle-women in Religion, Manners, Arts and Tongues (London, 1673)Google Scholar. Mary Astell alone proposed an institution of higher learning. Von Schurman spoke of private education and Mrs. Makin of boarding schools for “gentlewomen” of eight and nine years of age.

4 Ascoli, George, “Essai sur l'histoire des idées feministes en France, du XVI siècle à la Revolution,” Revue de Synthèse Historique, XII (1906), 168–169Google Scholar as cited in Lougee, Carolyn C., Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton, 1976)Google Scholar. Lougee's study confirms Ascoli's view; she found that the seventeenth-century French “feminists” rejected custom, tradition, and religious authority.

5 Gagen, Jean E., The New Woman: Her Emergence in English Drama 1600-1730 (New York, 1954)Google Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (New York, 1977), pp. 265, 340Google Scholar; Thomas, Keith, “Women and the Civil War Sects,” in Crisis in Europe 1560-1660, Aston, Trevor (ed.), (New York, 1968), pp. 317–40Google Scholar. Thomas discounts the view that Puritanism proper improved the status of women by attacking wife-beating, accepting divorce, and preaching the spiritual equality of the sexes. His argument is restricted to the later sects. For a more sociological explanation of the emergence of feminism in Restoration England, see Thompson, Roger, Woman in Stuart England and America: A Comparative Study (London, 1974)Google Scholar. He stresses imbalance in the sex ratio and economic dislocation as important causal factors.

6 Mary Astell's works are, in chronological order:

A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest (hereafter, Serious Proposal), 4th ed.; London, 1701Google Scholar [original ed.: Pt. I, 1694; Pt. II, 1697], rpt. New York, 1970). Part I of Serious Proposal went through four editions in 1694, 1695, 1696, and 1701. Part II appeared separately in 1697 and with Part I in a combined edition in 1701.

Letters Concerning the Love of God Between the Author of the Proposal to the Ladies and Mr. John Norris (hereafter, Letters) (London, 1695)Google Scholar. The second and third editions appeared in 1705 and 1730.

Some Reflections upon Marriage (hereafter, Some Reflections) (4th ed.; London, 1730 [original ed. 1700], rpt. New York, 1970)Google Scholar. The four editions appeared in 1700, 1703, 1706, and 1730.

Moderation Truly Stated: or a Review of a Late Pamphlet Entitul'd Moderation a Vertue with a Prefatory Discourse to Dr. D'Avenant Concerning His Late Essays on Peace and War (hereafter, Moderation) (London, 1704)Google Scholar.

A Fair Way with the Dissenters and Their Patrons (hereafter, Fair Way) (London, 1704)Google Scholar.

An Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War in This Kingdom (hereafter, Impartial Enquiry) (London, 1704)Google Scholar.

The Christian Religion as Profess'd by a Daughter of the Church of England (hereafter, Christian Religion) (3rd. ed.; London, 1730 [original ed. 1705])Google Scholar. The second edition appeared in 1717.

Bart'lemy Fair or an Enquiry after Wit…To My Lord * * *, By Mr.Wotton, [pseudonym] (London, 1709)Google Scholar. A second edition was published in 1722 under the title, An Enquiry after Wit.

An Essay inDefence of the Female Sex (London, 1696)Google Scholar is now generally attributed to Judith Drake rather than to Mary Astell. See Smith, Florence, Mary Astell (1916; rpt. New York, 1966), Appendix II, pp. 173–82Google Scholar.

7 Ballard, George, Memoirs of British Ladies… (2nd ed.; London, 1775), p. 308Google Scholar.

8 Smith, 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 biographical detail and for references to contemporary sources.

9 Ballard, , Memoirs, pp. 449–50Google Scholar. Contemporary sources refer to her as Mrs. Astell, a convention of address. For consistency, I have retained that usage.

10 The first contemporary notice of Mary Astell appears in Evelyn's, JohnNumismata (1697), p. 265Google Scholar, where she is included among the celebrated women of the age.

An obituary notice in 1731 describes her as “a Gentlewoman very much admired for several ingenious Pieces … in the cause of Religion and Virtue” and praises her “elevated mind” and “Turn of Genius above what is usual in her own Sex, and not unworthy of the most distinguished Writers of the Other.” Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, Salter, H.E. (ed.), (Oxford, 1915), X, 426Google Scholar. For individual opinions see Smith, , Astell, pp. 20, 119, 157–58, and passimGoogle Scholar.

11 Ballard, Memoirs, p. 309.

12 Thoresby, Ralph, Diary, Rev. Hunter, Joseph (ed.), (London, 1830), II, 161Google Scholar.

13 Ballard, , Memoirs, p. 312Google Scholar.

14 Some Reflections, p. 7.

15 Smith, , Astell, pp. 31–32Google Scholar.

16 Halsband, Robert, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford, 1956), p. 118Google Scholar.

17 Ballard, , Memoirs, pp. 315,317Google Scholar.

18 Letters, pp. 1-2.

19 Examples of “Learned Ladies” might include the Duchess of Newcastle, Anne Conway, Elizabeth Elstob; unconventional women—Lady Halkett, Celia Fiennes, Lady Ann Fanshawe; true feminists—Lady Mary Chudleigh, Judith Drake, Hannah Woolley, Aphra Behn, Damaris Masham.

20 Letters, p. 49.

21 Letter of Dean Atterbury to Dr. George Smalridge in Ballard, , Memoirs, p. 312Google Scholar.

22 Serious Proposal, pt. i, p. 6; pt. ii, p. 131; pt. i, p. 3.

23 Letters, p. 78.

24 Marjorie, Nicolson, “The Early Stages of Cartesianism in England,” Studies in Philology, XXVI (1929), 356–74Google Scholar.. See also Cassirer, Ernst, The Platonic Renaissance in England, Pellegrove, James (trans.), (Austin, 1953), Ch. 2Google Scholar, and Colie, Rosalie, Light and Enlightenment: A Study of the Cambridge Platonists and the Dutch Arminiams (Cambridge, 1957), Ch. 4Google Scholar.

25 She cited Francois Bayle who wrote The General System of Cartesian Philosophy (1670) and drew even more heavily on Arnauld, 's The Art of Thinking or the Port Royal Logic (1685)Google Scholar. The latter work provided the Cartesian basis for Part II of A Serious Proposal. She also referred often to Malebranche but her knowledge of his modifications of Descartes apparently came through her correspondence with Norris, a great admirer of Malebranche. She confessed to Norris that she could not read Malebranche in French (Letters, p. 149). For Cartesian studies available in England, see Lamprecht, Sterling P., “The Role of Descartes in Seventeenth-Century England,” Studies in the History of Ideas, III (New York, 1935), 181–240Google Scholar.

26 Serious Proposal, pt. ii, pp. 102, 119; pt. i, p. 144.

27 For a striking example of the link between Cartesianism and feminism, see Seidel, Michael A., “Poulain De La Barre's The Woman as Good as the Man,” Journal of the History of Ideas XXV (1974), 499–508CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Poulain's work appeared in English translation in 1677, but there is no evidence that Mary Astell read it.

28 Quoted in Gagen, , New Woman, p. 56Google Scholar.

29 Christian Religion, p. 296.

30 [Chudleigh, Lady Mary] The Ladies Defence: or the Bride-Woman's Counsellor Answer'd: A Poem in a Dialogue… Written by a Lady. (London, 1701)Google Scholar.

31 Descartes, René, Discourse on Method, Part I in A Discourse on Method and Selected Writings, Veitch, John (trans, and ed.) (New York, 1951), p. 2Google Scholar.

32 Serious Proposal, pt. i, p. 29.

33 Letters, pp. 2-3.

34 Serious Proposal, pt. ii, p. 98.

35 Some Reflections, pp. 86, 60.

36 Christian Religion, p. 206.

37 Serious Proposal, pt. i, pp. 18, 20.

38 Some Reflections, Appendix, p. 95.

39 Serious Proposal, pt. ii, p. 85.

40 Serious Proposal, pt. i, pp. 14, 16, 21-22.

41 Serious Proposal, pt. ii, p. 157.

42 Serious Proposal, pt. i, pp. 17-18.

43 Serious Proposal, pt. ii, p. 159.

44 Serious Proposal, pt. i, p. 17.

45 Serious Proposal, pt. ii, p. 123.

46 Ballard says that Bishop Burnet dissuaded “a certain great Lady,” perhaps Princess Anne, from endowing the academy because the proposal seemed to be “preparing a way for Popish Orders” (Memoirs, p. 307). Defoe, inspired by Mrs. Astell, planned a female academy that would correct the excesses in her proposal: See An Essay on Projects (1697). The only school Mrs. Astell actually founded was a charity school for the daughters of Chelsea pensioners.

47 Some Reflections, p. 84.

48 Quoted in Smith, , Astell, pp. 15–16Google Scholar. “Madonella of the Tatler” is a reference to Swift's satire in Nos. 32 and 62 of The Tatler on a Female Academy of Platonists, presided over by Madonella. The high-minded ladies are easily seduced by rakes.

49 The Tatler, Nos. 166 and 253.

50 A Fair Way with the Dissenters and their Patrons (1704) was her answer to Defoe's satire, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702).

51 Quoted in Ballard, , Memoirs, p. 312Google Scholar.

52 Janes, Regina in “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary Or, Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft Compared,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Rosbotton, Ronald C. (ed.), V (Madison, 1976), 121–39Google Scholar, rightly stressed Mrs. Astell's religious conservatism, but by ignoring her political writings is led to conclude that her work shows “no new ordering of thought consequent upon a new intellectual discovery,” and that her proposal resolved the conflict between ambitions and opportunities for women “by dropping out this world [sic].” (pp. 125,127). Mrs. Astell always insisted that her “Female Monastery” was not “prejudicial to 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 Good in it.” (Serious Proposal, pt. ii, pp. 157-58).

53 See Gagen, , New Woman, esp. pp. 119 ff., 129 ff., 141 ffGoogle Scholar.

54 Some Reflections, p. 16.

55 Some Reflections, pp. 12, 23-24.

56 See Chudleigh, Lady Mary, The Ladies Defence, preface and p. 5Google Scholar. “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. 70Google Scholar. Woolley, Hannah also attacked “the insufferable grief of a loathed bed” in The Gentlewoman's Companion, p. 89Google Scholar. These feminists, however, like Mary Astell, preached respect 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 Allestree's, RichardThe Ladies Calling (1673)Google Scholar. The parallels are too many to be coincidental. She differs only in insisting on a serious education for women.

57 Some Reflections, p. 7.

58 For the striking rise in marriage costs for the aristocracy, see Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 632–49Google Scholar.

59 Some Reflections, p. 45.

60 Serious Proposal, pt. i, pp. 35, 39.

61 Some Reflections, p. 60.

62 Some Reflections, Appendix, pp. 106-07; pp. 34-35.

63 Impartial Enquiry, 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 recounts his sufferings for Charles I and his heavenly reward—union not with God but with his royal master—“Triumphant Charles he's gone to see” (Smith, , Astell, p. 5Google Scholar).

64 Mrs. Astell was steeped in Anglican writings on the Civil War. She praised most particularly Clarendon's “incomparable history.” The more bizarre notions of a Catholic conspiracy she took from the work of a now little known Anglican divine, John Foulis, wnose History of the Wicked Plots and Conspiracies of our Pretended Saints showed how the sectaries “copy to the life after the Original that the Papists have set them.” She warmly recommended to her readers his “admirable Book,” History of Popish Treasons and Usurpations, which would convince them of “the Pernicious Practices of that Church” (Impartial Enquiry, pp. 37, 23). She may have been influenced, too, by “panic fears of Catholic Plots.” See Clifton, Robert, “The Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution,” Past and Present. No. LII, (August 1971), 23–55Google Scholar.

65 Fair Way, p. 14.

66 Impartial Enquiry, p. 23; Moderation, p. 46.

67 Impartial Enquiry, p. 10.

68 Moderation, p. 59.

69 Impartial Enquiry, p. 35.

70 Fair Way, pp. 16, 17, 22.

71 Bart'lemy Fair, p. 55.

72 Bart'lemy Fair, pp. 55, 109.

73 Bart'lemy Fair, pp. 23, 54-55, 84.

74 Moderation, p. 106.

75 Mrs. Astell looked to antiquity for her models of reform. Her heroes were the ancient Greek statesmen—Phocion, Aristides, Themistocles, and Pericles—and those stalwart Roman patriots—Cincinnatus, Curius Dentatus, Fabricius, Decius, Fabius, and Regulus. Cincinnatus most captured her imagination: “A sorry Roman, who knew no better than to return to his Plough, from the head of a Triumphant Army, to dine upon Turneps, dress'd by his own victorious Hands.” Cincinnatus and his turnips appear in almost all of her moral exhortations to frugality, simplicity, and genuine patriotism (Moderation p. 1-9; Bart'lemy Fair, p. 9).

76 Serious Proposal, pt. i, pp. 14, 34.

77 Some Reflections, p. 105.

78 Stone's thesis in The Family, Sex and Marriage is that “affective individualism” and “companionate marriage” slowly gained acceptance in England between 1500 and 1800.

79 Some Reflections, pp. 46, 18; Serious Proposal, pt. i, p. 33.

80 Some Reflections, p. 122.

81 Serious Proposal, pt. i, p. 38.

82 Ibid., pt. i, p. 38. For the reformers' views on nursing see Stone, , Family, Sex and Marriage, pp. 426–32Google Scholar, and Kelso, , Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance, pp. 118 ffGoogle Scholar.

83 Serious Proposal, pt. ii, pp. 129-30.

84 It should be noted that with the exception of Aphra Behn the late seventeenth-century feminists were devout Anglicans.

85 She favored “the total Destruction of Dissenters as a Party” and the suppression of their schools (Fair Way, pp. 3,6).

86 For the creativity of Anglican thought, see Straka, Gerald M., Anglican Reaction to the Revolution of 1688 (Madison, 1962), esp. Ch. 6Google Scholar. For the political crisis see Bennett, Gareth, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688-1730: the Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar and Flaningam, John, “The Occasional Conformity Controversy: Ideology and Party Politics, 1697-1711,” J.B.S., XVII (1977), 38–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the reformation of manners and morals, see Bahlman, Dudley, The Moral Revolution of 1688 (New Haven, 1957)Google Scholar.