Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Christine de Pizan
- 2 Women of the Italian Renaissance
- 3 From Anne de Beaujeu to Marguerite de Navarre
- 4 Queen Elizabeth I of England
- 5 From the Reformation to Marie le Jars de Gournay
- 6 Women of the English civil war era
- 7 Quaker women
- 8 The Fronde and Madeleine de Scudéry
- 9 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
- 10 Women of the Glorious Revolution
- 11 Women of late seventeenth-century France
- 12 Mary Astell
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Mary Astell
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Christine de Pizan
- 2 Women of the Italian Renaissance
- 3 From Anne de Beaujeu to Marguerite de Navarre
- 4 Queen Elizabeth I of England
- 5 From the Reformation to Marie le Jars de Gournay
- 6 Women of the English civil war era
- 7 Quaker women
- 8 The Fronde and Madeleine de Scudéry
- 9 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
- 10 Women of the Glorious Revolution
- 11 Women of late seventeenth-century France
- 12 Mary Astell
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In 1700, the same year in which Gabrielle Suchon's Du Célibat volontaire (‘On Voluntary Single Life’) appeared on the continent, an English woman known only as ‘Eugenia’ issued ‘A Plea for the just Liberty of the Tender Sex, and particularly of Married Women’. In The Female Advocate (1700), Eugenia responds to the claim that a wife should not desire anything ‘but what her husband approves of’, asserting that
This is a Tyranny, I think, that extends farther than the most absolute Monarchs in the World; for if they can but fill their Gallies with slaves, and chain them fast to the Oar, they [i.e. the absolute Monarchs] seldom have so large a Conscience to expect they should take any great pleasure in their present Condition, and that the very Desires of their Hearts should strike an Harmony with the clattering Music of their Fetters.
Like Suchon, Eugenia claims that if women cannot have freedom in their thoughts, and enjoy ‘the Liberty of Rational Creatures’, then they are certainly ‘very Slaves’. In her Preface, she urges English women to fill their minds with true knowledge and to follow the example of ‘French Ladies’, as well as a lady known only as ‘Mr Norris's Correspondent’. The English woman to whom Eugenia refers is Mary Astell (1666–1731), now one of the better-known female figures in the history of political thought.
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- Information
- A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700 , pp. 265 - 287Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009