Mary Astell

If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?

– Mary Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage

Mary Astell (12 November 1666 – 11 May 1731) was an English feminist writer and rhetorician. Her advocacy of equal educational opportunities for women has earned her the title "the first English feminist."[1]

Life and career

Few records of Mary Astell's life have survived. As biographer Ruth Perry explains: "as a woman she had little or no business in the world of commerce, politics, or law. She was born, she died; she owned a small house for some years; she kept a bank account; she helped to open a charity school in Chelsea: these facts the public listings can supply."[2] Only four of her letters were saved and these because they had been written to important men of the period. Researching the biography, Perry uncovered more letters and manuscript fragments, but she notes that if Astell had not written to wealthy aristocrats who could afford to pass down entire estates, very little of her life would have survived.[3]

Mary Astell was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 12 November 1666, to Peter and Mary (Errington) Astell.[4] Her parents had two other children, William, who died in infancy, and Peter, her younger brother.[4][5] She was baptized in St. John's Church in Newcastle.[6] Her family was upper-middle-class and lived in Newcastle throughout her early childhood. Her father was a conservative royalist Anglican who managed a local coal company.[1] As a woman, Mary received no formal education, although she did receive an informal education from her uncle when she was eight, an ex-clergyman named Ralph Astell whose bouts with alcoholism prompted his suspension from the Church of England.[7] Though suspended from the Church, he was affiliated with the Cambridge-based philosophical school that based its teachings around radical philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Pythagoras.[8] Her father died when she was 12 years old,[1] leaving her without a dowry. With the remainder of the family finances invested in her brother's higher education, Mary and her mother relocated to live with Mary's aunt.

After the death of her mother and aunt in 1688, Astell moved to Chelsea, London, where she was fortunate enough to become acquainted with a circle of literary and influential women (including Lady Mary Chudleigh, Elizabeth Thomas, Judith Drake, Elizabeth Elstob, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu),[9] who assisted in the development and publication of her work. She was also in contact with the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, who was known for his charitable works; Sancroft assisted Astell financially and, furthermore introduced her to her future publisher.

She was one of the first English women to advocate the idea that women were just as rational as men, and just as deserving of education. First published in 1694, her Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest presents a plan for an all-female college where women could pursue a life of the mind.[10]

In 1700, Astell published Some Reflections upon Marriage.[11] She wittily critiques the philosophical underpinnings of the institution of marriage in 1700's England, warning women of the dangers of a hasty or ill-considered choice. The Duchess of Mazarine is used as an example of "the dangers of an ill Education and unequal Marriage". Astell argues that education will help women to make better matrimonial choices and meet the challenges of the married state: "She has need of a strong Reason, of a truly Christian and well-temper'd Spirit, of all the Assistance the best Education can give her, and ought to have some good assurance of her own Firmness and Vertue, who ventures on such a Trial".

Astell warns that disparity in intelligence, character, and fortune may lead to misery, and recommends that marriage be based on lasting friendship rather than short-lived attraction. A woman should look for "a good Understanding, a Vertuous Mind, and in all other respects let there be as much equality as may be." Astell expanded on this theme in response to critics in the third edition of Some Reflections upon Marriage.[8]

After withdrawing from public life in 1709, she founded a charity school for girls in Chelsea as a token of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, organizing the school's curriculum herself with likely financial support from her patrons Lady Catherine Jones and Lady Elizabeth Hastings. When she was 60 years old, Astell was invited to live with Lady Catherine Jones, where she resided until her death.[12]

Astell died in 1731, a few months after a mastectomy to remove a cancerous right breast. In her last days, she refused to see any of her acquaintances and stayed in a room with her coffin, thinking only of God; she was buried in the churchyard of Chelsea Church in London.[6] Astell is remembered for her ability to debate freely with both contemporary men and women, and particularly for her groundbreaking methods of negotiating the position of women in society by engaging in philosophical debate (Descartes was a particular influence) rather than basing her arguments in historical evidence as had previously been attempted. Descartes' theory of dualism, a separate mind and body, allowed Astell to promote the idea that women as well as men had the ability to reason, and subsequently they should not be treated so poorly: "If all Men are born Free, why are all Women born Slaves?"[13]

Books

Title page from the third edition of A Serious Proposal

All of Mary Astell's works were published anonymously. Astell's two best known books, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest (1694) and A Serious Proposal, Part II (1697), outline her plan to establish a new type of institution for women to assist in providing women with both religious and secular education. She suggests extending women's career options beyond mother and nun. Astell wanted all women to have the same opportunity as men to spend eternity in heaven with God, and she believed that for this they needed to be educated and to understand their experiences. The 'nunnery' style education she proposed would enable women to live in a protected environment, without the influences of the external patriarchal society.

Her proposal was never adopted because critics said it seemed "too Catholic" for the English. Later her ideas about women were satirized in The Tatler by the writer Jonathan Swift.[14] While the writer Daniel Defoe admired the first part of Astell's proposal, he believed that her recommendations were "impracticable." However, Patricia Springborg notes that Defoe's own recommendation for an academy for women as detailed in his Essay Upon Projects did not significantly differ from Astell's original proposal.[15] Despite this, she was still an intellectual force in London's educated classes.

A few years later, Astell published the second part of A Serious Proposal, detailing her own vision of women's education for courtly ladies. She broke away from the contemporary rhetorical style of the period where orators spoke before an audience for learning, and instead offered a conversational style of teaching "neighbors" the proper way of behavior. She referred only to the Port-Royal Logic as a source of contemporary influence, though still relied upon classical rhetorical theories as she presented her own original ideas. In her presentation, she offered that rhetoric, as an art, does not require a male education to be master, and listed the means of which a woman could acquire the necessary skills from natural logic, which established Astell as a capable female rhetorician.[16]

In the early 1690s Astell entered into correspondence with John Norris of Bemerton, after reading Norris's Practical Discourses, upon several Divine subjects. The letters illuminate Astell's thoughts on God and theology. Norris thought the letters worthy of publication and had them published with Astell's consent as Letters Concerning the Love of God (1695). Her name did not appear in the book, but her identity was soon discovered and her rhetorical style was much lauded by contemporaries.

List of works

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Batchelor, Jennie, "Mary Astell". The Literary Encyclopedia. 21 March 2002. Accessed 6 July 2008.
  2. ↑ Perry, 22.
  3. ↑ Perry, 23.
  4. 1 2 Smith, Mary Astell, 2.
  5. ↑ Sutherland, Eloquence, xi.
  6. 1 2 "Mary Astell". Oregon State. Archived from the original on 21 February 2015. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
  7. ↑ Donawerth, Jane, ed. (2002). Rhetorical Theory by Women before 1900: an anthology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 100. ISBN 0-7425-1717-9.
  8. 1 2 "Astell, Mary". Encyclopedia of World Biography. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
  9. ↑ Sowaal, Alice. "Mary Astell", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005), 16 December 2006.
  10. ↑ "Mary Astell". Women in the Literary Marketplace 1800–1900.
  11. ↑ Astell, Mary, 1668–1731, Some Reflections Upon Marriage, Occasioned by the Duke and Dutchess of Mazarine's Case; Which is Also Considered, London: Printed for John Nutt, near Stationers-Hall, 1700.
  12. ↑ Donawerth (2002). Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900. p. 100.
  13. ↑ Astell, Reflections, 107.
  14. ↑ "Mary Astell". The Columbia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
  15. ↑ Astell, Mary (2002). Patricia Springborg, ed. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. Peterborough: Broadview Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-55111-306-7.
  16. ↑ Donawerth (2002). Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900. p. 101.

References

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