Mary Astell and the Early Modern Debate about Women

Mary Astell (born 12 November 1666)

Mary Astell seems, at first glance, an unlikely participant in the noisy, contentious, and very public debate about women in early modern England. 

Born on 12 November 1666, Mary Astell was the daughter of Peter Astell, a successful coal merchant, and his wife, Mary Errington, who was the daughter of George Errington, another successful Newcastle coal merchant. 

As a daughter born into such a comfortably situated, well-connected family, the young Mary Astell might have been expected to marry, raise children, and live out her life quietly, in equally comfortable obscurity. But the modest good fortune of her family did not last, Mary Astell never married, she raised no children, and rather than living and dying in obscurity, she came to be one of the most celebrated women in London.

Not a great deal is known about Astell’s childhood. As a girl, she would have received conventional training in household chores and basic reading and writing skills. Although she received no formal schooling, she was tutored by her uncle, a Cambridge-educated curate who introduced the young Astell to the study of philosophy and theology, among other subjects less conventional for a young girl. 

After Astell’s father, Peter Astell, died in 1678, the fortunes of the family quickly declined; what resources could be found went to providing for her brother’s education and legal training. According to Astell’s biographer, Ruth Perry, there were “no such prospects” for Mary Astell, who “was a burden to her family, and neither marriage nor independence seemed possible.” 

What happened next, however, seems no less possible. When she was in her early twenties, Astell left Newcastle and her mother’s home, traveled to London, and made a life there for herself.  There, without the benefit of family connections, a wealthy husband, or a secure financial future, Astell found friends, intellectual companions, and supporters. And there, between 1694 and 1709, Astell published, in rapid succession, a series of works on a variety of philosophical, theological, and political issues.

But it is Astell's passionate and lifelong advocacy for women that is her most enduring legacy. Throughout her life, in her personal relationships as well as in her role as a public intellectual, Astell defended women, advocated for women, and, to the greatest extent possible, moved from advocacy for to action on behalf of women. 

Perhaps nowhere is her feminist position more clearly articulated than on the title page of her first publication, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies: she addresses herself to women, her aim is “the advancement of their true and greatest interest,” and she identifies herself as “a lover of her sex.” In this work, Astell proposed the establishment of an educational institution for women aimed solely at fulfilling their needs, a place where women could withdraw from a harsh and threatening world controlled by men and organized to suit men's desires, irrespective of women's. 

In Some Reflections on Marriage, published in 1700, she focused her attention on the institution of marriage. For Astell, marriage is a divinely ordained state, a "Christian institution," the only way to perpetuate humankind. But, she asks, "if marriage be such a blessed state, how comes it . . . there are so few happy marriages?"

When her analysis is complete, there is not much to recommend the institution, at least from a woman's perspective. Marriage is necessary since it represents "the only honorable way of continuing mankind." But, as Astell observes, the woman who marries "ought to lay it down for an indisputable maxim that her husband must govern absolutely and entirely and that she has nothing else to do but please and obey." Her radical conclusion? If she cannot accept marriage "as it truly is," then a woman might choose not to marry; perhaps, Astell suggests, it is not good for a woman to marry."

With the assistance of a number of women who would be her life-long friends and companions, Astell opened a charity school for girls in 1709. Housed in the Chelsea Royal Hospital, the school Astell founded would survive until 1862. In 1712, Astell acquired her own house in Chelsea, on Paradise Row. 

The last decades of her life were quiet. Aside from her work with the Chelsea school, she attended church every day. She made plans for a book on natural philosophy to be written for women by women. She owned a parrot. She wrote letters. In 1718, she became ill and spent several months recuperating in Sussex. As she grew older, she gave up her own home but remained in Chelsea, living with her oldest friend, Lady Catherine Jones. 

She was well enough, early in 1730, to be able to make the walk from Chelsea to St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields to hear the sermons of a new vicar, Zachary Pearce. But at some point, she developed breast cancer and had a mastectomy. She survived the surgery but died two months later, May 9, 1731, a few months short of her sixty-fifth birthday. 

In her groundbreaking biography of Mary Astell, published in 1986, Ruth Perry notes that when she first started to research Astell’s life, “only four of her letters had been preserved in the two great libraries of Britain, the Bodleian at Oxford and the British Museum, and these had been saved because they had been addressed to prominent men of the period. . . .” During her research, Perry was able to locate more letters and a “few more poems and fragments,” saved not because they had been written by “the celebrated Mary Astell,” but “because they were part of the estates of Astell’s wealthy friends.” 

At the time of Astell’s death in 1731, no one published “letters and poems in honor of the incomparable Mary Astell”; no one saved her manuscripts, her correspondence, her books, or her papers. There are no surviving likenesses of Astell. She was not buried with the famous and the great in Westminster Abbey but quietly in Chelsea, in the burial ground at Chelsea Old Church. The exact site of her grave is unknown; today her name is on a plaque inside the church. 

What survives is the work—and Astell’s singular life. 

Ruth Perry's excellent biography, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist, is now out of print, but used copies are readily available.

For my edition of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, click here. For my edition of Some Reflections upon Marriage, click here

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Hortense Mancini and "Traditional" Marriage

Hortense Mancini, duchess of Mazarin (born 6 June 1646)

The fourth of the five daughters of the Italian aristocrat (and notable necromancer and astrologist) Michele Lorenzo Mancini and his wife, Girolama Mazarini, Hortense Mancini would be celebrateded throughout Europe for her beauty, famed for her scandalous behavior, and pitied by what one contemporary called her "unhappy shipwreck" of a marriage. 

Hortense Mancini as Aphrodite,
portrait by Jacob Ferdinand Voet

Hortense Mancini's mother was the sister of Giulio Mazarini, the Italian cardinal, diplomat, and papal emissary who rose to power in France and became chief minister to Louis XIV.

As the favorite niece of Cardinal Mazarin, Hortense Mancini was destined for a politically advantageous alliance, to be arranged by her uncle. For the unfortunate Hortense, that meant marriage to a French nobleman, Armand-Charles de la Porte de la Meilleraye.

The marriage, which took place in 1661, was a spectacular failure. Armand-Charles proved to be abusive, unhinged, and profligate; Hortense at first tolerated her husband’s bizarre and controlling behavior but eventually abandoned him (and her four children) in 1668. 

Then she began an outrageous career of her own, involving herself in a series of rather swashbuckling escapades that made her the talk of Europe--there may have been no Twitter or tabloid TV in the seventeenth century, but, as Elizabeth Goldsmith demonstrates, Mancini's "itinerary" became "popular fodder for conversations, letter correspondences, and news gazettes" devoted to the scandal.

Mancini's adventures began when, while escaping from her marriage, she traveled in men’s clothing although, as she notes in her Memoirs, she and her maid were "recognized as women almost everywhere." (Interestingly, in yesterday's post we noted a similar "shocking" element in Queen Christina's departure from Sweden after her abdication in 1654--she wore men's clothing.) 

And after fleeing her husband, Mancini did not limit herself to cross-dressing. She embarked on a series of scandalous affairs with both men and women. She also managed to garner the sympathy--and financial support--of Louis XIV, who gave her a large pension that enabled her to live independently. She proceeded to do just that, setting up home in Haute-Savoie, where she became the mistress of the duke of Savoy until his death. 

At that point, having lost her protector, Hortense found that her spurned husband was able to take control of all of her finances, not only the wealth she had inherited from her uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, but also the pension she had been awarded by Louis XIV.

Penniless but not without resources, she traveled to England and arrived in London in 1675, "in the depth of winter,” dressed "as a cavalier wearing boots and spurs and an overcoat spotted with mud." Once in England, Mancini was not shy about sharing the details of her continental adventures--her account of her life up to this point, Mémoires D. M. L. D. M. (Mémoires de Madame la Duchesse de Mazarin), was published in Cologne in 1675; these memoirs were translated into English and published in England, first in 1676 and then again in 1690. 

Hortense Mancini, 1671,
by Godfrey Kneller

And her adventures had not come to an end. Mancini soon became the English king's mistress; she had arrived in London in January 1675--by August, Charles II had given her an apartment in his residence at Whitehall, one that had once been occupied by a previous mistress, Barbara Villiers. He also provided her with a handsome income.

Although their sexual relationship ended in 1677, Charles continued his friendship with and support of Hortense, and after the king's death in 1685, his brother, James II, continued  to support Mancini--after all, his wife, Mary of Modena, was Mancini's cousin. But after the abdication of James II in 1688, Hortense Mancini's circumstances began to deteriorate. 

It was at this point that Mancini's long-abandoned husband sued for divorce. Just as her earlier sexual adventures had proved food for scandal, the divorce case proved equally irresistible. A juicy account of the legal wrangling between husband and wife in 1689 appeared in print almost immediately after their divorce case was decided in the duke’s favor; the legal arguments in the case brought by Mancini’s husband to regain possession of his wife were published in 1690 by the duke’s lawyer. Another account was published in 1698, this one including the arguments of the duchess’s lawyer. An English translation of this account of the case was published in London in 1699. 

Having lost her divorce case and her royal patrons, Mancini moved to Kensington Square and then, in 1693, she moved to Chelsea, acquiring a home on Paradise Row. There, her neighbor was the English feminist and philosopher Mary Astell, who used the "unhappy shipwreck" of Mancini's marriage as the trigger for Some Reflections upon Marriage, published in 1700. Astell begins her devastating critique of "traditional" marriage with an extended analysis of the case of "Madam Mazarin."  Mancini died in Chelsea on July 2, 1699.

For Hortense Mancini's Memoirs, check out Sarah Nelson's wonderful new English translation. (The edition also includes the memoirs of Mancini's sister, Marie, whose marriage to Lorenzo Colonna was equally unhappy.)

For a biography of Hortense Mancini, I like Toivo David Rosvall, The Mazarin Legacy: The Life of Hortense Mancini, Duchess Mazarin--it's out of print, but you can find used copies. On Mancini and the contemporary “conversations, letter correspondences, and news gazettes” devoted to the scandal of her continental adventures, see Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, The Kings’ Mistresses: The Liberated Lives of Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna, and Her Sister Hortense, Duchess Mazarin.

Aphra Behn: She Made Her Living by Writing

Aphra Behn (died 16 April 1689)

Aphra Behn's life is every bit as filled with adventure as the plot of her most popular play, The Rover--at least in Behn's own telling or, rather, tellings, of her life story.

What was her "real" name? Was her father a barber or a gentleman? Did she really travel to Surinam--the setting of much of her most famous novella, Oronooko--and meet an African prince? Did she marry the man whose name she would use, Behn, throughout her literary career? 

Aphra Behn in a 1670 portrait
by Peter Lely

So many details about Behn's life are unknown or unclear or obscure. Indeed, in a roundtable discussion on Aphra Behn at the Sorbonne in 1999, Germaine Greer referred to the early-modern writer as a "palimpsest," that is, a writing surface with its text erased and reused, then erased and written on again, each rewriting leaving traces of what had been written before. Only, Greer noted, Behn was the one who had "scratched herself out." 

While Behn may (or may not) have been born in 1640, thrown into debtor's prison, or been a Catholic, what is known is that she was an English spy in Antwerp, began working for two theatrical companies, the King's Company and the Duke's Company, as a copyist, and then, in 1670, began to write.

Not only did she write, but she wrote a play, The Forc'd Marriage, a play that was produced. Unlike many early-modern women writers whom we will meet later this year--writers like Margaret Cavendish, for example--Behn wrote plays that would be staged, that attracted audiences, that would earn her money--and that, most importantly,  would earn her a place in literary history.

From 1670 until her death, Behn made a living with her pen. She wrote and published volumes of poetry, nineteen plays, and several works of fiction, shorter and longer. Her novella Oroonoko: Or, the Royal Slave, A True History, with its transnational and transatlantic appeal and its exploration of race and the horrors of slavery, is now the most widely read of her prose works, but the three-volume epistolary novel Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister is her most extensive prose work--the first volume a scandalous (and thus hugely popular) roman à clef.

Behn's output also includes translation, for example her 1688 A Discovery of New Worlds, an English version of the French writer Bernard le Bovier de Fonatenelle's Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondese, a popular work of science, in the form of a literary dialogue, explaining Copernican theory and speculating about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. At the time of her death, she was working on an English translation of poet Abraham Cowley's Latin Plantarum libri sex, six books on plants.

Although she died in poverty, Behn left women a rich inheritance. In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf notes that the notoriety of Aphra Behn was used to warn women away from attempting to live the life of a writer. "Death would be better!" these imagined scolders claimed. But Woolf does not condemn Behn for the life she led. Behn had, by "some unfortunate adventures of her own to make her living by her wits. She had to work on equal terms with men. She made, by working very hard, enough to live on. The importance of that fact outweighs anything that she actually wrote." And, finally, Woolf offers a memorable tribute to Behn: 

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, . . . for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she--shady and amorous as she was--who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you to-night: Earn five hundred a year by your wits.

There are many affordable and accessible editions of Behn's two most popular works, Oroonoko and the wonderful comedy with three adventurous women looking for love, or at least marriage, The Rover. Aside from these two works, it's easy enough to read further--free Kindle versions are available of most of Behn's work, and you can find her plays and fiction online at sites like Project Gutenberg.

I also recommend Janet Todd's excellent biography, The Secret Life of Aphra Behn. Todd is particularly good on Behn's politics--like many of the earliest women writers in England, Margaret Cavendish, Delarivier Manly, and Mary Astell,* for example--Behn was politically conservative.

For a great introduction to Behn's life and work, if you're not ready for Todd's full-length biography, there is an excellent treatment of Behn at The Poetry Foundation--biographical information, critical assessment of her work, a complete bibliography, and suggestions for further reading; to access, click here.

You may find that the best introduction to Aphra Behn--or a great supplement, if you are a Behn enthusiast--is the discussion on Melvyn Bragg's BBC Radio 4 program, In Our Time. To listen to the podcast, click here.

Should you be of a mind to "let flowers fall upon [her] tomb," Behn is buried in Wesminster Abbey.

*For Margaret Cavendish, click here; for Delarivier Manly, click here; and for Mary Astell, click here.