Mary Astell and Political Freedom

• In Event: Early Modern Inequalities

Abstract

Interpretations of Mary Astell tend to focus on the tensions between her conservatism and her avant la lettre feminism. This paper offers an alternative interpretive framework and argues that, instead of forces that must be disentangled, her conservatism and her feminism collide to produce a unique model of political freedom, which unfolds over the course of her first major work of political philosophy, “A Serious Proposal to the Ladies.” Astell holds that all men and women are born with an innate predisposition to gain knowledge of and serve God. Thus the development of reason – which ultimately leads to both virtue and happiness – can comfort even those women who find themselves bound to a rotten “Monarch for Life,” as she infamously describes the role of a husband. Yet Astell recognizes how custom often encroaches upon reason, preventing women from achieving the moral freedom she associates with the cultivation of the soul. In “A Serious Proposal,” Astell depicts a private retreat where young women may avoid the pressures of custom and instead focus on developing their minds and souls via the dual practices of contemplation and sociability, as modeled by learned women. I argue that the emphasis in the “Proposal” on the physical space necessary for liberty constitutes a subtle defense of a specifically political freedom in response to the pressures of custom. Defined as the capacity to act (or not act) without interference in ways which permit an individual to realize her goals, political freedom becomes the foundation of the moral freedom with which Astell’s thought is usually associated. While the choice to inhabit certain spaces, from the home to the convent, has frequently been conditioned by patriarchal authority, it has also been a way for women to refuse social expectations, most of all marriage. Astell’s plan for a women’s retreat can thus be read as a powerful claim to both moral and political freedom.

Author

• Megan Gallagher, University of Alabama