The oppression of women in the society dates back to the seventeenth century in England. During that time, men perceived women as deficient in most ways especially in their intellectual ability. Mary Astell arose as one of the core defenders of the position as well as the rights of women in the society. She also challenged some of the theories developed by other philosophers.
Mary Astell was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 12 November 1666 (Broad 99). She was the first born to Mary Errington and Peter Astell. Her father was a member of the Hostmen Company. When she was twelve years of age, her father died. He was the sole breadwinner of his family thus; his death left the family in great financial problems. Her uncle, Ralph Astell took the responsibility of educating Mary Astell. Since her family could not afford the dowry for her marriage, she knew that she could expect to marry someone of her own social standing. Therefore, she chose to pursue a career in writing as an alternative to marriage-she remained single her entire life (Eales 122). Following the death of her mother in 1684, the decided to move to London where she spent the rest of her life pursuing her career not only as a writer but also as a philosopher.
Beside the support that she received from her uncle Ralph, she was saved from hardship by the financial support and friendship group of women including Lady Anne Coventry, Lady Catherine Jones and Lady Elizabeth Hasting (Chernock 99). According to Broad, from 1690s, she lived in Chelsea where most of her friends lived (170). She lived the life of a true Cartesian teaching herself the basic principles of philosophy by studying the works of the philosophers of the time especially the works of Descartes. Since she was unable to read French, she relied on the English translations of his work (Donovan 25). This enabled her to be able to understand his popularizations as well as well as his commentaries. She also read the works of Henry More notably The Immortality of the Soul and An Account of Virtue (1690) (Eales 130). These were evident in most of her later writings or rather work. One of the aspects that she borrowed from More was the opposition of all forms of ‘atheistic’ materialism in which “the material world is entirely disconnected from the spiritual” (Broad 102).
Philosophers argue that Mary Astell was the first female in Europe who fought for the rights of women in a male dominated society. To do so, she had to not only analyze but also criticize most of the works of the English father of Liberalism-John Locke. She explored the Lockean liberalism in depth an aspect that enabled her to uncover some of the contradictions or rather bias of the theory (Sheridan 19). She pointed out the theory awarded men a higher social status at the expense of their female counterparts. She was able to show that the rights that were given to men in the theory were not extended to women in the society and that the theory was challenged by feminism at its very birth. According to Kolbrener, she strikes an approving chord among contemporary feminists, who doubt the emancipator character of the Enlightenment political orthodoxies that came to dominate the modern world (75). Astell was a constant critique of Locke’s works including Two Treaties, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Reasonables of Christianity and its Vindication (1695) (Sheridan 56; Walters 15).
She embraced the works of Descartes as a guideline to her fight against the oppression of women in the society (Eales 102). She embraced his philosophy that supported the argument of equal rational capacities and rights for both sexes i.e. those that promoted her feminist approach.
Her earliest venture into the world of philosophical writing began with her exchanges with John Norris who also believed in Cambridge Platonism. Their epistolary exchange began in 21 September 1693 (Ibid) and lasted for a year. This was later published at John Norris’ suggestion. Her stand is most evident in her letters to John Norris, the ‘English Malebranche’, who published their correspondence in 1695 as Letters Concerning the Love of God, Between the Author of the Proposal to the Ladies and Mr. John Norris (Broad 100). In her letters, she expressed that the love for God should be the most important thing that any person should seek to do above everything else (Donovan 49; Chernock 125). Additionally her letters incorporated many of her central philosophical beliefs. In one letter to Norris, dated 31 October 1693, she gives an indication of her later feminist concerns.
In 1694, she wrote A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. Her source of inspiration was Cambridge Platonism, which also inspired Anne Conway-a female philosopher during her time. Another source of inspiration was Descartes’ view that reason is by nature equal in all human beings, his challenge to ancient authorities, his mistrust of custom and unexamined prejudices, his emphasis on the self-sufficiency of the mind and his rigorous method of thought (Kourany 122). In her own works, she made reference to Locke in her A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II (1697). This was a continuation of her remarkable prospectus for a female academy devoted to learning and piety, and indictment of women of their worldly vanity and slavery to fashion (Kolbrener 79). In this particular work, she cites Locke’s Essay Concerning Humana Understanding for his advice on good grammar.
Rene Descartes formed a central part in the works of Astell. Astell has been referred to as a ‘Cartesian philosopher’ due to her constant reference to the ‘great philosopher’-Descartes. (Murphy 95). This is because she grounded her feminist views on Descartes’ Cartesian epistemological principles. This aspect of her works is evident in her first letter to the John Norris in 1693. She also applied the Cartesian theory in her response to the third Earl of Shaftesbury in 1709 (Walters 52; Murphy 102). Another example of her works, which borrowed a lot for the Cartesian theory, is in her A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II (1697) especially in its last chapter. She makes explicit reference to Descartes’ account of the passions. The discussion in the second chapter forms a very fundamental part of her feminist project as far as teaching women how to lead useful lives of virtue and wisdom is concerned.
One of her greatest achievements as a philosopher was her ability to improve the state of women in the society by pointing out the basic aspects that caused women to be oppressed in the male dominated society (Kourany 29). She pointed out that the influence of custom on the women’s moral judgment was one of the greatest obstacles that prevented women from obtaining their rightful place in the society (Osborne 102). This is the major subject in her first Proposal. According to her feminist theory, Astell posits that custom acts as the basis of human judgment: inclines people to judge an action as right or wrong for no other reason than that such an action has been deemed right or wrong by long use and by sanction of our forebears (Kolbrener 168; Murphy 130). In her second issue of the Proposal, she asserts that the cause of oppression against the women folks was not their use of the custom as the basis of their judgments but the ill structure of the custom. She believes that the custom was tailored by some male members of the community to meet the egocentric needs of the men at the expense of the women. Therefore, she argued that the freedom of women could only be achieved if the faculties of the societal customs were altered to accommodate the needs of the women in the society (Osborne 106).
Her work sought to promote the plight of women in a male dominated society. A serious Proposal to the Ladies, written by ‘a lover of her Sex’, is carefully reasoned argument for the establishment of a female academic institute. A serious Proposal to the Ladies Part II (1697) is dedicated to the princess and emphasizes that the institute for the Catholic nunneries would be more academic than monastic. . Disappointed that no one was aroused to build her college, Astell wrote this work to provide a philosophical method for women to practice at home (Taylor 147). In both the first and second parts of the Proposal, her arguments are based on the ideas borrowed from Descartes’ philosophical works notably Discourse on the Method, Principles of Philosophy and Passions of the Soul (McDonald 87).
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