Mary Astell

English philosopher, writer, and educator

• Born: November 12, 1666
• Birthplace: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England
• Died: May 9, 1731
• Place of death: London, England

The first English female philosopher, Astell created a rationale for women’s education, questioning and rejecting the role of “wife” as a woman’s lot and asserting equality between women’s and men’s souls. She was an early critic of the political writings of John Locke, and she helped to influence contemporary ideas on the liberal democratic state.

Early Life

Mary Astell was the eldest child of Peter and Mary (née Errington) Astell, from northeast England. Mary’s father, a coal merchant in this important coal-producing region, came from a line of barristers, clergy, and members of the powerful coal-merchants guild. They had received a coat of arms but no land through a distant uncle as a boon for fighting against the Spanish during the Middle Ages. Mary’s mother was from a wealthy Catholic family, whose nominal gentry status led its members to be Royalists, a conservative political stance Mary Astell retained throughout her life and writings.

Astell was a bright child who loved to read a wide range of literature, including classical authors and seventeenth century writers John Milton and Abraham Cowley. She also read the works of Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to be a professional writer. Astell’s uncle, Ralph Astell, a bachelor church curate and poet, might have nurtured her intellectual curiosity. Ralph was well versed, through his Cambridge education, in the Cambridge Platonists, a group of seventeenth century philosophers. It is likely that he introduced his niece to the debate between the material philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and the spiritual focus of these Platonic philosophers. Astell’s early lessons helped form the basis of her later achievements, as her writings combined logic and religion, expressed her love of learning, and strove to extend that opportunity to other women.

Astell’s father died when she was twelve; his financial legacy was not enough to sustain his family for long, however. The next year, her uncle Ralph died. She lived with her mother, aunt, and grandmother in debt and economic insecurity, revealing to Astell how difficult it was for women to support themselves without a husband, a societal problem she would address in her writings.

When she was twenty years old, Astell left for London to try to earn money as a writer and to seek support from wealthy relatives. She resided in the neighborhood of Chelsea. Unsuccessful at gaining patronage from her relations, she solicited William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, for support and showed him a collection of her poems. He responded generously with gifts and contacts, helping her meet a publisher, Rich Wilkin, to show her writings. Astell’s subsequent time in Chelsea was a period of exploring her ideas in relation to other thinkers. She developed friendships with female aristocrats, who also financially supported her work, and she continued to write and publish. She also helped open a school for girls.

Life’s Work

Mary Astell was both a product of and a departure from the late seventeenth and eighteenth century age of Enlightenment. Her writings reflect the ideas of universal truths and natural law. Considering that few women of her time were educated, it is remarkable that she was able to continue reading and to engage with leading philosophical and political ideas of the era. She studied leading philosophers such as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and John Locke, and critiqued and adapted their ideas to argue for women’s inherent abilities to reason.

In 1693, Astell initiated her most important correspondence, influential in refining her philosophy, with John Norris of Bemerton, England, a preeminent Cambridge Platonist. Shortly afterward, in 1694, Astell’s best-known work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, was published anonymously—she signed the work “A Lover of Her Sex.” The proposal calls for a religious and educational community for women, in essence, a women’s college in the Anglican tradition, which would be the first college for women anywhere. Always mindful that she did not have a formal education, Astell argued that women deserve to have their God-given reason cultivated, which in turn would benefit society.

Astell continued to correspond with Norris, who functioned as a mentor. Their letters, published in 1695, are documents of their discussions about the nature of the soul and its ability to love God through the intellect. Their discussion of the need to place love for God above human relationships was a substantial part of Astell’s rationale for developing a women’s religious community in her A Serious Proposal to the Ladies; she adapted to Anglican use the Catholic convent’s pattern of advocating singleness for women so that they could focus on improving their minds and souls, free from male authority or other distractions.

Her proposal was popular enough to warrant reprinting. In 1695 and 1696, she published a corrected second and third version, then a second part—“Wherein a Method Is Offer’d for the Improvement of Their Minds”—in 1697. This second part, dedicated to the future queen of England, Princess Anne, who supported women’s causes, lays out more specific instructions for the proposed religious and educational community. Arguing vehemently that Christianity is the ultimate way of right reason, Astell asserts that, to attain truth, one needs to rein in passions and emotions, long considered the primary attributes of the female personality.

Astell published another important work, Reflections upon Marriage, in 1700. This volume, a critical examination of the marriage customs of the day, argues against female servitude in the form of marriage. Astell condemns the scant education women receive, which prepares them to be wives only. She also condemns a particular double standard of marriage, which allows husbands but not wives to have extramarital affairs. Urging her female readers to value themselves more highly than does society, Astell admonishes women to think before entering into marriage. She radically questions the value of marriage and the desire to have a husband to attain social status, saying that many women would be happier unmarried so that they could develop themselves and their relationship with God rather than be decorative household “objects.” She herself provided a role model by remaining single.

From 1704 until 1709, Astell published a series of pamphlets, largely responding to the works of male writers (including Daniel Defoe and Lord Shaftesbury). She strongly supported the unified Anglican Church against those who would allow toleration for other religions, argued for the necessity of a central authority in church and state, defended Charles I, and countered the notion that humans were naturally good and, therefore, not in need of salvation. Her views were sometimes satirized in newspapers and other writings, but she was also admired by those within the church; by her friend Mary Wortley Montagu, a feminist writer; and by her circle of wealthy, intellectual Chelsea friends, including Lady Catherine Jones, Lady Elizabeth Hastings, Lady Ann Coventry, and Elizabeth Hutcheson.

Astell stopped writing in 1709 to open a charity school for girls in Chelsea, assisted by her friends. The school was primarily practical in focus, teaching the basics of literacy rather than philosophical and religious contemplations discussed in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. Astell ran the school, living alone in an age when living alone was not for “respectable” women. At the age of sixty, she moved into the lodgings of Lady Jones. Astell died of breast cancer five years later, in 1731.

Significance

In the 1980’s, feminist historians and literary critics rediscovered and began publishing Mary Astell’s work, helping to promote a renaissance of her thought. Her writings influenced other female thinkers from her own day, including Mary Wollstonecraft in her 1792 work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Samuel Johnson’s fictional work Rasselas featured a princess who—based on Astell’s ideas—founded a women’s college. Astell forged the way for future female philosophers and apologists for female education. Although some contemporary critics fault her for her conservative Tory views, which refused to recognize equality among the classes, she worked within the political system of her time to show that women could do far more for society than previously thought. Some question exists about whether she was a lesbian, yet her achievements extend beyond sexual identity to seeking a life free from male domination and the suppression of women’s abilities.

Bibliography

Astell, Mary. Astell: Political Writings. Edited by Patricia Springborg. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Part of the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series, this is the first complete modern edition of Astell’s Reflections upon Marriage, A Fair Way with Dissenters, and An Impartial Enquiry into the Origins of Rebellion. The text introduces overlooked aspects of Astell’s thought: She was a major critic of Locke’s writings, and her work was part of the intellectual movement that introduced the modern idea of liberal democracy.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II. Edited by Patricia Springborg. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2002. Springborg’s introduction to Astell’s work provides a strong overview of her era and philosophical antecedents.

Broad, Jaqueline. Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. The chapter on Astell places her among her female contemporaries, analyzes her works in relation to seventeenth century male philosophers, and discusses her correspondence with John Norris.

Bryson, Cynthia B. “Mary Astell: Defender of the ’Disembodied Mind.’” Hypatia 13, no. 4 (Fall, 1998): 40-62. Bryson argues that Astell was the first English feminist and that she relied on Cartesian dualistic concepts for her cultural critique.

Donawerth, Jane. Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Provides a brief biography and discussion of Astell’s rhetorical style, as linked to her use of logic.

Duran, Jane. “Mary Astell: A Pre-Humean Christian Empiricist and Feminist.” In Representing Women Philosophers, edited by Cecile T. Tougas and Sara Ebenreck. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. Hypothesizes that Astell’s writings on marriage anticipate those of David Hume.

Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. This scrupulously researched and detailed work, the only full-length biography of Astell, contains illustrations, a manuscript of her poetry, and her extent correspondence.

Weiss, Penny A. “Mary Astell: Including Women’s Voices in Political Theory.” Hypatia 19, no. 3 (Summer, 2004): 63-84. Weiss discusses Astell’s response to Thomas Hobbes’s ideas, arguing that Astell provided an early feminist critique of his works.