Chapter 47: Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal – Summary & Analysis
Spoiler Notice: This page contains detailed analysis of Chapter 47: Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal. If you have not yet read the chapter, please be aware that plot details, character developments, and thematic discussions are explored below.
Summary
Mary Astell (1666–1731), the so‑called first English feminist, was born in Newcastle to a coal‑trade family that had remained staunchly royalist during the Civil War. After her father lost his fortune and her uncle Ralph—who had nurtured her intellect—died, she moved to London aged twenty‑one. Destitute and about to pawn her clothes, she wrote a witty, poised begging letter to Archbishop William Sancroft; his kindness and introductions helped her find a publisher and enter intellectual circles. In 1694 Astell won lasting fame with A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, which envisioned independent Protestant convents where girls could receive a rigorous education away from male authority. The work ran to six editions and influenced Daniel Defoe and Dr Johnson. Astell corresponded with the philosopher John Norris, publicly challenged John Locke’s social‑contract ideas, and later, under the sponsorship of wealthy female friends, founded a charity school for thirty daughters of Chelsea pensioners. Throughout her life she combined high Tory Anglican royalism—even flirting with Jacobitism—with a blistering critique of marriage as enslavement. She died in 1731 after a mastectomy and was later honoured in George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain.
Key Events
- 1666 – Mary Astell is born in Newcastle upon Tyne into a loyalist coal‑trading family.
- 1678 – Her father dies, leaving the family in straitened circumstances.
- Early 1680s – Her uncle Ralph Astell, a curate, teaches her but loses his position for drunkenness and soon dies.
- c. 1687 – At twenty‑one, Mary travels to London to seek work; facing destitution, she writes an ingenious begging letter to Archbishop William Sancroft.
- Early 1690s – Sancroft’s financial aid and introductions lead to a correspondence with philosopher John Norris and a publishing link with Richard Wilkin.
- 1694 – A Serious Proposal to the Ladies is published, arguing for female academies modelled on secularised beguinages.
- 1697 – A second volume of A Serious Proposal appears.
- 1709 – With support from wealthy Chelsea women, she establishes a charity school for thirty girls attached to the Royal Hospital Chelsea.
- 1715 onwards – She acts as a conduit for Jacobite correspondence and is tailed by Robert Walpole’s agents.
- 1731 – Mary Astell dies after enduring a mastectomy.
Character Development
Mary Astell’s trajectory moves from a clever but impoverished provincial girl to a nationally celebrated intellectual and practical reformer. The uncle‑mentored child who ‘courted Truth with a kind of Romantick Passion’ transforms into the courageous young woman who petitions an archbishop with humorous clarity. Her quick, restless mind and sharp pen earn her the respect of thinkers like John Norris, while her refusal to marry—and her frank admission of passionate feelings for women—shows a life deliberately shaped outside conventional domestic roles. She learns to navigate London’s literary and political networks while remaining a self‑described anchoress, reserving earthly love for God. Her later years demonstrate a shift from purely arguing for female education to implementing it through her Chelsea school, blending polemic with tangible action. Even as a royalist and Jacobite, she stretches conservative arguments to champion women’s rational equality, ultimately creating a distinctive voice that defies easy categorisation.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
Education as Liberation – The chapter’s central theme is the conviction that rational education frees women from built‑in ignorance. Astell’s proposal of Protestant convents symbolises a separate space where female intellect can grow unhindered.
Marriage as Enslavement – Astell repeatedly depicts marriage as a yoke, a misery of absolute male lordship. Her biting epigrams (‘If none were to Marry, but Men of strict Vertue and Honour, I doubt the World would be but thinly peopled’) transform the institution into a cautionary tale.
Rank over Gender – A recurring motif is Astell’s insistence that social hierarchy matters more than sex. She uses the reign of Queen Anne to refute the idea of inherent male superiority, arguing that the greatest queen need not obey her footman.
Royalist Political Theology – Her unwavering loyalty to the crown and Church becomes a lens through which she views all government. The Republic is a ‘Horrid fact’ born of cunning self‑seekers, and her Jacobite sympathies underscore how tightly her feminism is woven into a Tory worldview.
Anonymity and the Anchoress Identity – Publishing as ‘A lover of her sex’ and styling herself an anchoress link the private, spiritual self to public authorship, suggesting that a woman can claim intellectual authority without abandoning a cloistered self‑image.
Why This Chapter Matters
This chapter matters because it places Mary Astell at the crossroads of Enlightenment thought and early modern women’s activism, revealing a thinker whose legacy is both pioneering and paradoxical. Her Serious Proposal directly attacked the educational deprivation that kept women ‘unprofitable’ and intellectually dependent, influencing a lineage that runs from Defoe and Johnson to Wollstonecraft and the nineteenth‑century women’s colleges. At the same time, her royalism and Jacobite flirtations complicate the neat narrative of a liberal feminist foremother, forcing readers to confront how radical ideas about gender can arise from deeply conservative soil. By situating Astell within the vibrant Chelsea circle of Queen Anne’s reign—among linguists, letter‑writers, and early bluestockings—the chapter expands the map of the Enlightenment, reminding us that women’s intellectual networks were already pushing for reform long before formal academies opened.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How did Mary Astell reconcile her royalist Tory convictions with a proto‑feminist demand for women’s education?
Astell argued that rank, not gender, determined authority. She pointed to the reign of a queen—Anne—as proof that innate male superiority was false. Her politics held that the existing social order (monarchy, Church) was divinely sanctioned, and she merely insisted that within that order women deserved the education necessary to exercise reason and virtue. Thus, she could call for female academies while upholding a hierarchical, monarchist state.
2. What was the core idea of A Serious Proposal, and how did it differ from earlier educational ideals?
The work proposed Protestant secular‑style convents—what Astell might have called beguinages or Cities of Ladies—where girls could study logic, philosophy, and religion away from male influence before entering society. It differed from home‑based tutoring or conventual vocational training by emphasising a full liberal education aimed at cultivating rational independence, not just wifely accomplishments or domestic piety.
3. In what practical ways did Astell’s ideas translate into action during her lifetime?
In 1709, under the patronage of wealthy women, Astell founded a charity school for thirty girls in Chelsea attached to the Royal Hospital. The school gave military pensioners’ daughters literacy and skills for apprenticeships. Additionally, her writing and conversation galvanised contemporaries like Elizabeth Elstob, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Judith Drake, who advanced learning and published their own works.