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‘Affliction, The Sincerest Friend’Kamille Stone StantonPublished online: 29 Mar 2007.
To cite this article: Kamille Stone Stanton (2007) ‘Affliction, The Sincerest Friend’, Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism,29:1, 104-114, DOI: 10.1080/01440350701201472
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Kamille Stone Stanton
‘AFFLICTION, THE SINCEREST FRIEND’
Mary Astell’s philosophy of women’s
superiority through martyrdom
This essay considers Mary Astell’s treatment of domestic hierarchy in Some ReflectionsUpon Marriage (1700), in order to determine if, and to what extent, Astell’s ideasconcerning obedience in the home can be understood somehow as an effort to promotewomen’s advancement. Although Astell’s concern for her gender’s low status inspired hersympathy for their limited options after marriage, her High Anglican belief demanded thatthe marriage bond was too sacred to be reformed and her faithfully Tory political stancerequired that she support A rightful Patriarch’s claims to unchallenged authority. Althoughdiscussing Astell’s apparent contradictions has become an important part of contemporaryanalysis of her work, this essay looks at how Astell unites her women’s advocacy,Anglicanism, and Toryism through the development of her idea of women’s advancementthrough martyrdom. In Astell’s attempt to merge her own seemingly conflicting personal,political and religious views, she develops a way by which women, through submission, candemonstrate their inherent moral superiority.
Keywords Mary Astell; English feminist; women’s education; women in thechurch of England; Anglican; Tory; Patricia Springborg
In contemporary analysis of Mary Astell (1666–1731), scholars tend to focus onthe separatist aspects of her advocacy for women, examining how she came to proposea secluded existence as the ideal environment in which women could improvethemselves. However, as the married state is the expected destiny of her femalereaders during the Long Restoration, it will also be useful to examine her perspectiveon the domestic roles of women, in order to better understand Astell’s approach tofeminine agency. Astell’s work shows her to be in the seemingly contradictory positionof believing strongly that domestic and social hierarchies are part of the beauty of God’sdivine plan on earth, and yet simultaneously understanding that the married state isusually incompatible with a woman’s fulfilment of her human potential. In theintroduction to the first modern edition of Astell’s Some Reflections upon Marriage(1700), Bridget Hill acknowledges Astell’s apparent inconsistencies and maps thevarious arguments as they turn upon themselves, only to conclude that attempting toexplain her arguments’ discontinuities ‘would be a mistake’ because contradictions‘were a part of her make-up’ (36). However as Astell’s work has become more widelyavailable, scholars have begun trying to understand the many influences upon her
Prose Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 April 2007, pp. 104-114
ISSN 0144-0357 print/ISSN 1743-9426 online q 2007 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/01440350701201472
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philosophy, politics and women’s advocacy in an attempt to, if not resolve, at leastfollow the logic of her seemingly discontinuous arguments.
In such a spirit, Patricia Springborg describes Some Reflections upon Marriage as ‘asatire on the manners and mores governing early eighteenth-century marriage’ andperhaps ‘the first articulated critique of the analogue between the marriage contractand the social contract’ (3, 4). Springborg’s discussion situates the work almostexclusively within the contemporary debates of political philosophers andpropagandists such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, concluding that it is ‘a trulypolitical work whose target is less the injustice of traditional Christian marriage thanthe absurdity of volunteerism on which social contract theory is predicated’ (xxviii).According to Springborg, then, Astell’s critical assessment of the customs regarding therelationship between a husband and his wife is only a metaphorical front by which theauthor can address the correlated theories concerning the relationship between a kingand his people, specifically that subjects would not voluntarily consent to a socialcontract that presupposes the surrender of their own best interests.
In this essay, however, I argue that while Astell’s Toryism is fundamental to herworldview, focusing only on her politics sidesteps the more personally complex, andoften seemingly inconsistent, aspects of her women’s advocacy, such as her unwaveringbelief in the absolute legitimacy of hierarchically prescribed authority in the home. Byasserting that the true agenda of Some Reflections upon Marriage is to make a statement ofpolitical philosophy, scholars are allowed to leave Mary Astell’s title as the first Englishfeminist unchallenged and uncomplicated, knowing that if they analyze her beliefs onobedience and authority too closely, they may actually jeopardize her credibility as afeminist. So despite Hill’s warning that to attempt an explanation of Astell’sinconsistencies would be a ‘mistake’ and despite Springborg’s confidence that Astell’sintentions are solely political, I will examine her ideas on authority and submission inorder to determine whether or not they undermine her approach to feminine agency,or if it is at all possible that obedience to authority is actually a working part of heragenda for women’s advancement.
The stated catalyst for Astell’s composition of Some Reflections upon Marriage is heracquaintance with the published court case of the Duke and Duchess of Mazarin, inwhich matters concerning their marital separation were disputed. An infamousmarriage followed by a public separation, the example of the Duke and Duchess ofMazarin provided Astell with the groundwork for her critique of marriage. HortenseMancini, Duchess of Mazarin (1646–99), spent the latter part of her life as a solitary,independent woman in Chelsea, not far from Mary Astell’s own house. Nevertheless,as is discussed by Ruth Perry in her biography of Astell, the circumstances of the twoself-reliant women could not be more different. While Astell was known for herascetic lifestyle, the Duchess’s house was ‘a scene of luxury, visited by brilliant people,stocked lavishly with fine wines, [and] adorned with priceless possessions’ (Perry 151).None the less, upon acquaintance with the Duchess’s own descriptions of her lifebefore and after marriage, it is easy to understand why Astell utilized such an‘intemperate, impulsive, and lively’ figure for her treatise about marriage (151).
According to the Duchess of Mazarin’s Memoirs (1690), during the time in whichshe grew up there was ‘nothing less thought of, than reasoning upon things,’ butdespite being in a frivolous cultural climate, the Duchess fondly remembers ‘that mygreatest Delight was at that time, to shut myself up alone, to write what-ever came into
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my head’ (Mazarin 7). Brought to France when she was six years old, it was only ‘a fewyears after’ that Mancini declared his love for young Hortense to her uncle, CardinalMazarin, who initially rejected the match. Despite imminent negotiations for herfuture marriage, the Duchess enjoyed a tranquil and thoughtful girlhood – one thatAstell would desire for all young women. Hortense recalls that as a child, in order toexercise her reasoning capabilities, she pursued ‘Doubts and Questions which Iproposed to my self, upon all things, which gave me trouble to comprehend, I couldnever sufficiently satisifie my Fancy in deciding them: But still I sought withObstinency, what I could not dive into, nor find’ (8). Hortense also cultivated the sortof intimate and mutually edifying relationships with other young women that Astellwould promote later in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694, 1697). It was just such aclose, same-sex friendship that compelled her family to find the young girl a husband.So strong and soulful were Hortense’s feelings for her friend that, when writing to her,she symbolized her love with a cross. The Duchess admits, ‘some times. . . I writ to thisLady, letters wherein there was nothing else to be seen but whole lines of Crosses, oneafter another’ (7). Unfortunately, however, such academic and loving pursuits wouldcease at her marriage to the ‘cruel and barbarous’ Monsieur Mancini (27). A great partof her memoirs is dedicated to her depictions of ‘a thousand such little malicious trickswhich he play’d me, without any manner of necessity, out of the meer pleasure he tookto torment me’ (28). Finally, her treatment would drive her to escape to England indisguise as a male courtier. As will be discussed later, the Duchess’s refusal to endurethe suffering of marriage provoked a strong response from Astell, although not in thespirit one might expect from a women’s advocate.
A brief look at the published arguments of the divorce case will help explain whyAstell was inspired to write and will also provide external links to the arguments shewould make in response. On behalf of the Duke, Herard, the Duke’s legalrepresentative, argues that the Duchess should be forced to return to the marriage,because allowing a separation would ‘destroy the handy work of God’ (St Evremont65). He advises that the Duchess ‘ought to think of those Texts of Scripture, whichbind Women inseparably to the Persons of their Husbands; which enjoins ’em to serve,and obey him’ (62). Arguing on behalf of the Duchess, by contrast, St Evremont asks,‘Must a Wife be eternally enslav’d to the Caprices, Enthusiasms, and false Revelationsof her Husband?’ (128). The Duke’s strict rules on his estate, such as forbiddingwomen to milk cows or spin with a wheel ‘because of a certain exercise of the Fingersand motion of the Foot, which may give ’em loose Ideas,’ and his instructions to hisherdsmen to keep their eyes completely averted when mating cows with bulls, bring StEvremont to question the Duke’s suitability as a master (133, 134). St Evremontargues, ‘Our first Engagements are to Reason, Justice, and Humanity, and the Qualityof a Husband can’t dispense with so natural an Obligation’ (133–35). Therefore,where Herard for the Duke argues from God and Scripture that a wife’s relationship toher husband is based on indissolubility and submission, St Evremont for the Duchessargues from reason, justice and humanity that a husband’s irrationality necessitates theloss of his authority. St Evremont’s invocation of the popular debate concerning abusedsovereign power and the resulting loss of authority was not missed by Astell. Inresponse to the published court case, Astell reworks St Evremont’s use of socialcontract theory, in order to bolster her own arguments for what she asserts is the mostrational approach to a woman’s prospect of marriage. Where Herard and St Evremont
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find scripture and reason to be opposing ideas that lead to irreconcilable views onmarriage, Astell seeks to demonstrate that, actually, they are inseparably linked and canlead to only one view on marriage. With arguments from scripture and reasonculminating in a statement of women’s superiority, Astell entered the public debate onmarriage with Some Reflections upon Marriage.
In Reflections, Astell seeks to resolve the wife’s tensions here posed: if a woman’shusband ‘abuses’ his power, ‘according to modern Deduction, he forfeits it. . .[However, a] peaceable Woman indeed will not carry it so far, she will neitherquestion her Husband’s Right nor his Fitness to Govern; but how?’ (Astell Reflections 79,my emphasis). In order to pose and answer her question of how a woman can obey apotentially irrational master without committing the treasonous act of doubting hisauthority, Astell intermittently uses the social contract terminology brought into playby St Evremont (abuse of power, forfeiture of power, right to govern, fitness togovern, tyranny). Astell maintains, ‘[T]ho’ the Order of the World requires an Outward
FIGURE 1 Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, by Gerard Valck after Sir Peter Lely, 1678.
With permission from the National Portrait Gallery, London. Hortense Mancini was a celebrated
beauty at the court of Charles II and rumored to be the King’s mistress at the time the original Lely
painting was made.
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Respect and Obedience from some to others, yet the Mind is free, nothing but Reasoncan oblige it, ’tis out of the reach of the most absolute Tyrant’ (56). Therefore, themind’s use of reason allows a woman the ability not only to justify her husband’sauthority but also to transcend it because her ‘Mind is free.’ At the same time, Astellstates definitively ‘If Man’s Authority be justly establish’d, the more Sense a Womanhas, the more reason she will find to submit to it’ (62). The apparent discontinuitybetween the arguments for women’s subordination in Astell’s Reflections upon Marriage(1700) and her earlier proposal for women’s independence in A Serious Proposal (1694)may seem impossible to shape into one consistent approach to women’s advancement.Indeed, some scholars, such as Springborg, find Astell’s approach to the marriagerelationship in this later text disappointing, as Astell’s ‘conclusion is not the liberationof women but the rather more dismal prospect of obedience to authority as a duty foreveryone’ (4). However, there is another and, I will suggest, more adequateexplanation of what happens in Reflections. As Astell leaves behind St Evremont’sinvocation of the social contract debate and moves into her own philosophy concerningsubmission to authority, she endeavors to make the reader see the glory to be had inmartyrdom, that is, the way by which women, through submission, reveal theirinherent moral superiority. I will demonstrate here that although the varyingapproaches of Astell’s own arguments often complicate their reading, from her ownperspective, the prospect of martyrdom is meant to be understood not as dismal, but asthe height of spiritual fulfilment.
Evidence that Astell’s advocacy of submission in 1700 cannot be explained away, asSpringborg attempts to do, by claiming that it is primarily politically motivated, can befound in her letters to John Norris from the early 1690s (written before the publicationof A Serious Proposal), published by Norris in Letters Concerning the Love of God (1695).Here, Astell first examines in print her sentiments concerning suffering andsubmission, as she articulates ‘the Joy that arises from the delightful Thought, that I amcapable of suffering’ (Norris 44–45). Since with Letters Concerning the Love of God thereader is given perhaps the only text by Astell that is written wholly without hercharacteristically biting wit, her opinions here can be read without the suspicion ofdouble meanings. Norris and Astell reason that pain is inflicted by God in order toproduce something good in the individual; so, therefore, ‘Martyrdom is the highestPleasure a rational Creature is capable of in this present State, a strange Paradox to theWorld’ (45–46). Pain, then, is God’s schooling on earth, the most severe enduranceof which being the most worthwhile.
An examination of Astell’s celebration of martyrdom finds that, despite thediscontinuities of thought apparent between the preface to Reflections and the rest of herwork, there is a clear and linear development of thought between the letters writtenfrom Astell to Norris in the early 1690s and the body of the text of Some Reflections uponMarriage in 1700. In fact, correspondence between the well-established Platonist andAstell was instigated because of Astell’s as yet less-developed ideas concerningmartyrdom. According to her first letter to Norris, when reading his work she waspuzzled by his assertion that God is due the unwavering love of his people because he isthe originator of all pleasure. Instead, Astell suggests that as God is the cause of allfeeling, bad as well as good, ‘Afflictions, by which we usually understand somethingPainful, are not Evil but Good,’ and God is ‘every whit as lovely when he producesPain as when he causes Pleasure’ (34–35). Therefore, instead of loving God for giving
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pleasure, as Norris proposes, Astell would have Christians love God when he isinflicting pain as well. During the pursuit of this logical exercise on pain, Astellconcludes that pain actually is pleasurable, if one considers ‘that Pleasure which thesevery inconveniencies occasion, the entire Resignation of my Will to GOD, and the Joythat arises from that delightful Thought that I am capable of suffering something for hissake, and in Conformity to his Will’ (44–45). So working from the premises that Godis the originator of all feeling, including pain, and all products of God are pleasurable,their conclusion is that pain is pleasurable. Of course, in this discussion in LettersConcerning the Love of God, Norris and Astell treat pain and martyrdom as an abstractidea, a subject for exercising propositional logic, and their conclusions are reached aftera purely conceptual debate. Five years later, when Astell returns to the subject ofmartyrdom in Reflections upon Marriage, it is so that she can apply her previousconclusions on martyrdom to the worldly subject of deepest concern to her, thesubjection of women.
Unlike the absence of wit in Letters Concerning the Love of God, satire and sarcasm arean important leitmotif in Some Reflections upon Marriage, especially in the preface addedlater to the second edition, making an absolute understanding of her opinionsproblematic for the reader. The reading is further complicated as the ideas expressed inthe preface sometimes contradict those in the main text. The disenchanted tone ofstatements from the often quoted 1706 preface such as, ‘Women are not so well unitedas to form an Insurrection. They are for the most part Wise enough to Love theirChains, and to discern how becomingly they [fit],’ undermines the seriousness withwhich her ideas concerning the glory of submission seem to be intended in the mainbody of the text (29). Most often, scholars neglect the body of the text of Reflections,choosing instead to draw from the more fiery and subversive afterthoughts added sixyears subsequent to the work’s initial publication. Indeed, the preface provides some ofAstell’s most-quoted material, including the celebrated question, ‘If all Men are bornfree, how is it that all Women are born slaves?’ (18). However, as can be seen in LettersConcerning the Love of God and the body of Some Reflections upon Marriage, the argumentsby Astell most utilized by scholars are not the most representative of her publishedthoughts and are, in fact, out of character with the trajectory of her ideas on women’sadvancement.
By the time the 1706 preface was added, Astell’s cynicism from her unsuccessfulattempts to rally women is evident. She summarizes the embittered perspective she hascome to:
And therefore as to those Women who find themselves born for Slavery and are sosensible of their own Meanness, as to conclude it impossible to attain to any thingexcellent, since they are, or ought to be best acquainted with their own Strengthand Genius, She’s a Fool who would attempt their Deliverance or Improvement.No, let them enjoy the great Honor and Felicity of their Tame, Submissive andDepending Temper! Let the Men applaud, and let them Glory in, this wonderfulHumility (30).
So while in Letters Astell finds martyrdom to be ‘the highest Pleasure a rationalCreature is capable of,’ in the 1706 preface to Reflections she attributes women’sendurance of suffering to a sense of their own ‘Meanness’ (45; 30). The most obvious
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explanation for the difference between the submission relished in Letters and thesubmission derided in the preface to Reflections is that the former is to God while thelatter is to man. However, this over-simplification ignores Astell’s belief in the divinenature of hierarchy, the very hierarchy that requires the domestic subordination ofwomen to men. In regard to earthly hierarchies, the actual text of Reflections maintains,‘For since GOD has plac’d different Ranks in the World, put some in higher and somein a lower Station, for Order and Beauty’s sake, and for many good Reasons; tho’ it isboth our Wisdom and Duty not only to submit with Patience, but to be Thankful andwell-satisfied when by his Providence we are brought low’ (52). So while the prefacereveals resentment at the perspective that women are ‘born for Slavery,’ the body ofthe text finds that not only should women be thankful to ‘Providence [that] we arebrought low,’ but most sincerely, ‘if Heaven has appointed the Man to Govern, it hasqualify’d him for it’ (30; 52; 79).
Using a similar chain of thought to her previous abstract notion that pain, as it isinflicted by God, produces pleasure, Astell in Some Reflections upon Marriage concludesof a hypothetically beleaguered wife that she was ‘never truly a Happy Woman till shecame in the Eye of the World to be reckon’d Miserable’ (40). Astell seeks to provehow ‘the Husband’s Vices may become an occasion of the Wife’s Virtues, and hisNeglect do her more real Good than his Kindness could’ (40). In order to prove theseseeming opposites, that a wife will not be happy until she is miserable, that vices canoccasion virtues and that neglect can be a kindness, Astell presents the case of an every-wife. The conditions of the hypothetical wife’s marriage being that her husband ‘willtake no delight in her,’ according to Astell’s dictates for wifely behaviour, she must notonly ‘conceal his Crimes’ and seek ‘no Consolation,’ she also ‘follows no Diversion toallay her Grief,’ ‘hardly mentions her Misfortunes to her most intimate Acquaintance,’and finally ‘retir[es. . .] from the World’ (39).
It is at this point in Astell’s argument that readers would be tempted to find herconclusion of ‘retiring from the World’ to be ‘dismal’ at worst and ‘a satire. . . onmarriage’ at best (Astell 39; Hill 36; Springborg 3). However, this is not the directionthe argument takes. Instead, Astell is confident that, although the wife will not like herisolation at first, soon it will occasion new enjoyments ‘which till now she has unkindlybeen kept a stranger to’ (40). Finally, Astell brings the rejected and lonely hypotheticalwife to a spiritual awakening and celebrates the wife’s initiation:
Affliction, the sincerest Friend, the frankest Monitor, the best Instructor, andindeed the only useful School that Women are ever put to, rouses herunderstanding, opens her Eyes, fixes her Attention, and diffuses such a Light, sucha Joy into her Mind, as not only Informs her better, but Entertains her more thanever. . . She now distinguishes between Truth and Appearances, between solid andapparent Good; has found out the instability of all Earthly Things, and won’t anymore be deceiv’d by relying on them (40).
Within a tormenting marriage, the wife is made better by her suffering and madeready for heaven, but not until the conditions of the relationship are such that she is leftto ‘Silence and Solitude’ (40). In order to reach the desired state of spiritual andintellectual nirvana, the wife must resist and be seen to resist the temptations that theDuchess of Mazarin could not.
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In the context of this approach to suffering, it is easier to understand Astell’sreaction to the case of the Duke and Duchess of Mazarin. It is now evident thataccording to Astell’s ideas on feminine superiority, the error of the Duchess in seekingearthly consolation for her unhappy circumstances has precluded her from martyrdom,and that neither the state of marriage nor the act of suffering is a sufficient condition tobring about feminine superiority. Astell is also clear that marriage itself cannot beblamed for the failings of man and wife, reiterating throughout that marriage ‘is theInstitute of Heaven, the only Honourable way of continuing Mankind, and far be itfrom us to think there could have been a better than infinite Wisdom has found for us’(36). Within this divinely painful arrangement, as seen with Astell’s hypotheticallybeleaguered wife, it is fundamental not only that ‘she sits down quietly, contentedwith her lot,’ but also that she be seen to do so – nothing should ‘sully her Vertue orbring a Cloud upon her Reputation’ (39). Addressing the Duchess’s actions specifically,Astell warns:
A Woman who seeks Consolation under Domestic troubles from the Gaieties of aCourt, from Gaming and Courtship, from Rambling and odd Adventures, and theAmusements [mixed] Company affords, may Plaister up the Sore, but will neverheal it; nay, which is worse, she makes it Fester beyond a possibility of Cure (34).
While Astell’s advice against courtship and ‘odd adventures’ may seem predictableand sound enough, her warning against just having ‘Company’ will seem harsh, untilone considers the spiritual and intellectual orientation experience Astell predicts forthe wife if she is left in solitude. However, more than the actual damage suchconsolations will do to the wife’s condition, her actions will give the appearance oflevity to others, for ‘[s]he may be Innocent, but she can never prove she is so’ (34).Thereby, the wife ‘justifies the Injury her Husband has done her,’ even though shenever may have sought such consolations had she not been ill used. While in the case ofthe Duchess of Mazarin, Astell ‘regret[s] that such a Treasure should fall into his handswho was not worthy of it,’ she is undeviating in her assertion that ‘nothing can justifythe revenging the Injuries we receive from others, upon our selves’ (33, 34). TheDuchess serves as Astell’s example of wifely suffering, and as with much of Reflections,Astell endeavors to show how such affliction can be reworked to the wife’s benefit.
However, as straightforward as this connection seems between the martyrdomlogically argued in Letters Concerning the Love of God and that descriptively promoted inthe body of Reflections upon Marriage, Astell almost undermines her own theory forempowerment when her cynicism repeatedly resurfaces toward the end of the text.Just as she did in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694), Astell famously warns womenagainst the dangerous and undignified nature of the courting process, and yet the readerwonders, how else does she expect God’s ‘venerable’ institution of marriage to comeabout (Reflections 36)? In Reflections, too, whenever a woman might be praised by a man,Astell emphatically and at length bids her to remember:
[His words] have nothing in them, this is his true meaning, he wants one to managehis Family, an House-keeper. . . One who may breed his Children, taking all thecare and trouble of their Education, to preserve his Name and Family. One whoseBeauty, Wit or good Humour and agreeable Conversation, will entertain him at
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Home when he has been contradicted and disappointed abroad; who will do himthat justice the ill-natur’d World denies him, that is,. . . sooth his Pride and Flatterhis Vanity, by having always so much good Sense as to be on his side, to concludehim in the right when others are so Ignorant, or so rude as to deny it. Who will. . .but make it her Business, her very Ambition to content him (50–51).
Astell’s description of the realities of being courted continues in the same criticaltone until she concludes that the flatterer wants nothing less than ‘one whom he canintirely Govern, and consequently may form her to his will and liking, who must be his[for] Life, and therefore cannot quit his Service let him treat her how he will’ (51).Astell’s deep suspicions of the courting process are revealed when she refuses toacknowledge the circumstances of mutual attraction between men and women. Shedenies the possible sincerity of courting men, upon the presumption that they can haveno motives other than the carnal or mercenary. In fact, the only suitable circumstancefor inspiring affection allowed by Astell in any text is if one should find ‘the Image ofthe Deity impress’d upon a generous and God-like Mind, a Mind that is above thisWorld’ (49). So, while through most of the text she argues for the sanctity of thetraditional marriage relationship, she simultaneously rejects pre-conjugal appreciation,except where the object is ‘above the world.’ Therefore, the appropriate forms of loveare divine and Platonic, but such is her opinion of men, she must concede theimpracticality of her own notions of what is appropriate love, ‘for if none were toMarry, but Men of strict Vertue and Honour, I doubt the World would be but thinlypeopled’ (50). While Astell admits that most men are, by her measure, unsuitablecandidates for marriage, she still determinedly advocates the Godly institution.
Moving then from the irrationality of men as husbands and the duplicity of men assuitors, Astell seems to further undermine her previous assertions of men’s right torule when she directly attacks the inconsistency of their governance of society.Seemingly unable to complete her argument for submission without finally utilizing herdefiant sense of irony, Astell demands of any woman:
[H]ow can she forbear to admire the worth and excellency of the Superior Sex, ifshe at all considers it? Have not all the great Actions that have been perform’d inthe World been done by Men? Have not they founded Empires and overturn’dthem? Do not they make Laws and continually repeal and amend them? Their vastMinds lay Kingdoms wast, no bounds or measures can be prescrib’d to theirDesires. . . They make Worlds and ruine them, form Systems of universal natureand dispute eternally about them. . . All that the wise Man pronounces is anOracle, and every Word the Witty speaks a Jest. It is a Woman’s Happiness tohear, admire and praise them (61).
Therefore, not only are men deemed unfit to govern the home, they are also unfitto govern civilisation or the world of letters. Why, then, does Astell argue for theirright to rule? How could she justify women’s submission to such irrational, duplicitousand inconsistent masters? After Astell has convinced the reader of man’s right togovern, only then to detail his inability, it is understandable that the reader could sensea manipulation by Astell and conclude that the arguments are not to be taken seriously,that the work is actually a satire on marriage. However, I would argue that Astell’s
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depiction of men’s irrationality is, according to her philosophy of martyrdom, furtherproof that women ought to submit, and that this can be understood by returning to theargument begun in her letters with Norris.
When discussing with Norris her perspective on the pleasurable nature of paininflicted by God, Astell determines that ‘the entire Resignation of my Will to GOD,and the Joy that arises from that delightful Thought, that I am capable of suffering forhis sake’ means that ‘the greatest sensible calamity. . . is worthy to be put in thebalance with the very least spiritual advantage’ (Norris 44–45). Once having resignedoneself to God’s will, the severest pain is worth enduring, if it will occasion theslightest spiritual benefit. Therefore, the thoroughness of her invective against menshould be understood as a way to illustrate the severity of suffering and therebydemonstrate the greater excellence of the martyr, as a strategic manner of exaltingthose who suffer at men’s hands. Her argument is developed more fully in SomeReflections upon Marriage when she applies the same tactic to the subject ofdomesticity:
Hereafter may make amends for what she must be prepar’d to suffer here, thenwill be her Reward, this is her time of Tryal, the Season of exercising andimproving her Vertues. A Woman that is not Mistress of her Passions, that cannotpatiently submit even when Reason suffers with her, who does not practice PassiveObedience to the utmost, will never be acceptable to such an absolute Sovereign asa Husband (60–61).
While asserting that the wife’s passive obedience must be ‘to the utmost,’ Astellalso reminds women that martyrs receive heavenly returns in the hereafter. So, themore severe her ‘time of Tryal,’ the better will be her reward, and, therefore, thegreater should be her incentive to tolerate her sufferings. It is, then, fundamental toAstell’s theory of women’s advancement through suffering that the source of the pain,in this case marriage, be as near to intolerable as possible.
Stepping back from the specificity of her discussion of suffering within marriage,Astell applies her logic to the broader act of endurance to assert, ‘There is not a surerSign of a noble Mind, a Mind very far advanc’d toward perfection, than the being ableto bear Contempt and an unjust Treatment from ones Superiors evenly and patiently.For inward Worth and real Excellency are the true Ground of Superiority’ (Reflections58). As encapsulated here, Astell’s argument and projected method for the superiorityof women presuppose a confident overlapping of the worldly and the other-worldly, anaspect that, of course, differentiates her approach to feminine agency from that oftwentieth- and twenty-first century feminisms. Her vision’s continuity betweenmatters earthly and ideal results in an approach to living that neither improves norundermines the traditional approach to the marriage relationship; rather, it positionsthe relationship within a larger scheme that promises returns in the future for paintolerated in the present. While Astell demonstrates a sympathetic response to the trialsof marriage, she seems unable to conceive of a marriage relationship existing uponmore equal terms, and unwilling to conceive of the institution as less than holy.However, if her philosophy of women’s superiority through martyrdom lacks theinnovative drive that usually characterizes the more individualistic, improvement-oriented feminisms, she makes up for this with her A Serious Proposal’s call for
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separatism of the sexes. All her writings on women, however, share the commonmotive of adjusting the position of her sex to suit her High Anglican perspective on thebenefits of suffering.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Vivien Jones and Elaine Hobby, for their extensive comments on thisessay, and to the Brotherton Library at The University of Leeds in England, forproviding me with space resources and a remarkable Special Collections Department toaid my work on early modern women writers.
References
Astell, Mary. Some Reflections Upon Marriage, Occasioned by the Duke and Dutchess of Mazarine’sCase (1700). Astell: Political Writings, edited by Patricia Springborg. New York:Cambridge UP, 1996, pp. 1–80.
———. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies Parts I and II, edited by Patricia Springborg. London:Pickering, 1997.
Hill, Bridget, ed. The First English Feminist: Reflections upon Marriage and Other Writings byMary Astell. Aldershot: Gower, 1986.
Mazarin, Hortense Mancini and Duchess de. The Memoirs of the Dutchess Mazarin, with Reasonsof Her Coming to England. Written in French by Her Own Hand, and Done into English byP. Porter Esq; to which is Added a Letter, Containing a True Character of Her Person andConversation. London: R. Bently, 1690.
Norris, John. Letters Concerning the Love of God, Between the Author of the Proposal to the Ladiesand Mr John Norris: Wherein His Late Discourse, Shewing that It Ought to Be Intire andExclusive of All Other Loves, Is Further Cleared and Justified. London: Samuel Manship andRichard Wilkin, 1695.
Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.Springborg, Patricia, ed. Astell: Political Writings. New York: Cambridge UP, 1996.St Evremont, Monsieur de. The Arguments of Monsieur Herard, for Monsieur the Duke of
Mazarin, against Madam the Dutchess of Mazarin, His Spouse. And the Factum for Madamethe Dutchess of Mazarin, against Monsieur the Duke of Mazarin. Her Husband. London:C. Broom, 1699.
Kamille Stone Stanton is an Assistant Professor at Savannah State University in Georgia.
She completed her PhD at the University of Leeds in England. She has also published
peer-reviewed articles on Anne Finch, Jane Cavendish & Elizabeth Brackley, Margaret
Cavendish and another essay on Mary Astell. She is currently revising a monograph on
women writers of the Long Restoration.
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