Eighteenth Century Feminism: Mary Astell (1666?-1731)

Truth is strong, and sometime or other will prevail. —Some Reflections upon Marriage Women need not take up with mean things, since (if they are not wanting to themselves) they are capable of the best. —A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I If GOD had not intended that Women shou'd use their Reason, He wou'd not have given them any, for He does nothing in vain. —The Christian Religion

I've just finished a Mary Astell site for Luminarium. Hundreds of years before her time, and a century before Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Astell wrote impassioned treatises on women's position in the world, a woman's right to education, male-female relations. She did all this, not because she herself would have called herself a feminist, although she is nowadays considered a proto-feminist, but because she was a brilliant mind in an era when it was socially unacceptable for women to have minds and voices to speak them—she saw an iniquity and she had to speak against it.

Many people have a skewed view of feminists as women who hate men, or treat matters unjustly to another extreme in their arguments. This is a misconception about most feminists, and should especially not be applied to Astell. Her view was that women and men were equal in capabilities, and should be treated as such. She was a forerunner for equality. Perhaps that is what we should change the moniker to — equalists. In Astell's own words:

He who will be just, must be forc'd to acknowledge, that neither Sex are always in the right. —Some Reflections upon Marriage

Her works ranged from educational to political and theological writings, all written in a marvellously fluid style. Having received an extensive education to complement her inborn intelligence, her works are rhetorical masterpieces. Her education in logic shines through everywhere, and her passion for her subject matters cannot help but sweep the reader along.

I must say I quite fell in love with Astell. It is a crime how little she is studied and how rarely included in "Survey class" curricula. With excellent new editions of Astell's works now in print by Patricia Springborg and with more forthcoming, I do not doubt but that in the future Mary Astell will be raised to the literary status she so amply deserves.