Mary Astell

Mary Astell ( 12 November 1666 - 11 May 1731) was an English feminist writer, philosopher and rhetorican. She is also known as ‘England’s First Feminist’ (Springborg 1). The subjects Astell treated range from philosophical, political, religious as well as practical questions, e.g. the question of women’s education or religious toleration (Springborg 4).

Life

Mary Astell was born in Newcastle in 1666 into a gentry family. She got educated by her uncle, a clergyman, together with her brother. After her mother died, she left for London in her early twenties, where she got part of the literary scene. Astell was for a long time an independent householder because she never married. In her later years she joined Lady Catherine Jones, daughter of the Earl of Ranelagh, with whom she seemingly lived until her death. She died in 1731 because of cancer.

Feminist thoughts

In her feminist writings she often argued about marriage and women’s education.

Marriage

In Reflections upon Marriage (third edition from 1706) Mary Astell asks her famous rhetorical question: ‘If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?’ (quoted in Springborg 1). She characterizes marriage as a type of slavery, because women are subject of their husbands, who have absolute power over them. Further, she warns her readers that a man during courtship may call himself a woman’s ‘Slave a few days, but it is only in order to make her his all the rest of his life’ (quoted in Broad 718). As an alternative women could decide to not marry at all and live in a community of women without men (Springborg 21).

Education

In her writings she always states that the lack of education is the root of female inequality. Astell believed that men and women were the same and only different in the matter of reproduction (Springborg 18). Furthermore, she states that marriage prevents women from higher thoughts and moral perfection because men suppress their thoughts in a “mental state of slavery” (Broad 736). In her first writing A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest. By a Lover of Her Sex Astell tries to convince women to not waste their talents because there are as capable as men of rational thoughts and it is the women’s duty to improve their mind in order to contribute to the education of their daughters. (Sutherland, 148).

___________________________________________________________________ Springborg, Patricia. Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Broad, Jacqueline. “Mary Astell on Marriage and Lockean Slavery”. History of Political Thought 35 (2014), pp.717-738.

Sutherland, Christine Mason. “Outside the Rhetorical Tradition: Mary Astell’s Advice to Women in Seventeenth-Century England”. A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 9 (1991), pp.147-163.

Kinnaird, Joan K. “Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism”. Journal of British Studies 19 (1979), pp.53-75.