A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

301 Pages·2002·14.168 MB·English

by  Mary Astell, Patricia Springborg

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A SERIOUS PROPOSAL
TO THE LADIES
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A SERIOUS PROPOSAL
TO THE LADIES
PARTS I AND II
Mary Astell
edited by Patricia Springborg
broadview literary texts
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CO2002 Patricia Springborg
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, trans-
mitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
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CANCOPY (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency) OneYonge Street, Suite
1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5 — is an infringement of the copyright law.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Astell, Mary, 1668-1731
A serious proposal to the ladies. Parts I and II
(Broadview literary texts)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-55111-306-6
1. Feminism—Early works to 1800.
2. Women—Education—Early works to 1800.
I. Springborg, Patricia II. Title. III. Series.
HQ1596.A87 2001 305.42 C2001-903585-3
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Contents
Acknowledgments 7
Introduction 9
Mary Astell: A Brief Chronology 43
A Note on the Text 47
A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I 49
A Serious Proposal, Part II 127
Appendix A: Judith Drake, An Essay in Defence of the Female
Sex (1696) 237
Appendix B: Daniel Defoe, An Essay upon Projects (1697) 267
Appendix C: From The Tatler, no. 32 (June 23, 1709) 277
Appendix D: From The Tatler, no. 63 (September 3, 1709) 287
Select Bibliography 291
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Acknowledgments
Let me begin with grateful thanks to all those individuals and insti-
tutions who by their inspiration and assistance made this edition
possible. I wish to thank those who contributed materially, either
by supplying answers to textual puzzles, or by assisting with its pro-
cessing, especially the late Christine Ambrose, Dick Ashcraft, the
late Bruce Cochrane, Conal Condren, Ros Conyngham, Kathy
Dempsey, Jim Farr, Bridget Frost, Mark Goldie, Philip Hamburger,
Bridget Hill, Isobel Horton, Ann Kelly, Kathleen Lesko, Shareen
Matthews, John McCrystal, Carole Pateman, John Pocock, Maria
Robertson, Lois Schwoerer, Quentin Skinner, Johann and Margaret
Sommerville, Patricia Stablein, and Steven Zwicker.
The Vice-Chancellor s Publication Fund of the University of
Sydney and the Research Council of Australia, through ARC Small
Grant F10.26994 93/94/95, covered research expenses specific to
this project, for which I am greatly indebted. To the Librarian of
Fisher Library, University of Sydney; the State Library of New
South Wales, in particular Sue Thomas; the State Library of Victo-
ria; the Rare Book Librarian of the Library of Congress; Georgiana
Ziegler, Betsy Walsh and the unfailingly helpful staff of the Folger
Shakespeare Library; and Gesine Bottomley and her staff at the
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin my grateful thanks. I owe enormous
responsibility to those institutions which provided financial support
for full-time research, 1993-95 and 2000-01: The University of
Sydney; The Folger Institute; The Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars; the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.;
the John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation for a
Research and Writing Grant which the Brookings Institution
administered (1993-5); and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
(2000-01). To my programme directors at these institutions, Lena
Orlin at the Folger Institute; Jim Morris, Michael Lacey and Ann
Sheffield, at the Woodrow Wilson Center; John Steinbruner at
Brookings and Kate Early at the MacArthur Foundation, and Wolf
Lepenies, Rektor of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and his staff,
I am truly thankful for support and understanding as I juggled my
projects. Bridget Frost, my editor at Pickering and Chatto, Barbara
Conolly, Eugene Benson, and Betsy Struthers at Broadview Press
have also shown unflagging enthusiasm and exemplary patience. To
those who offered assistance on points of information and by read-
ing drafts of my material, I owe special thanks: Professors Quentin
A SERIOUS PROPOSAL TO THE LADIES 7
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Skinner, Christ's College, and Mark Goldie,Vice-Master, Churchill
College, Cambridge; John Pocock, of the Johns Hopkins Universi-
ty; Johann Sommerville, of the University of Wisconsin, and Mar-
garet Sommerville; Kathleen Lesko and Patricia Stablein, Scholars-
in-Residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library; Ann Kelly, of
Howard University,Washington, DC; and Steven Z wicker ofWash-
ington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and the late Bruce Cochrane
of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Besides a general debt to individuals and institutions, I owe
acknowledgment of specific tasks. Immense thanks to Maria
Robertson, Ros Conyngham, Isobel Horton, and Shareen
Matthews of the Department of Government, University of Syd-
ney, and to Christine Ambrose and Kathy Dempsey, senior research
assistants, who entered the text, checked and rechecked it.
This edition is dedicated to the memory of Christine Ambrose
who sadly died while it was still in press, and without whose
thoughtful work it would not have been possible.
8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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Introduction
The Woman, the Work, and the Context
Mary AstelTs Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their
True and Greatest Interest, first published in 1694, is one of the most
important and neglected in a long series of works advocating the
establishment of academies for women. Republished in 1695, its
reception was sufficiently controversial to cause Astell to respond
with a lengthy sequel, A Serious Proposal, Part II (1697). Of all
AstelTs works, this one has the most complicated textual history. It
was the cause of her great notoriety, only increased by the publica-
tion of Reflections upon Marriage in 1700. For her pains Astell was
pilloried on the stage, lampooned in the press, and publicly debat-
ed by some of the greatest wits of the land.
Such public attention could hardly have been anticipated by the
young woman who, departing poverty and obscurity, arrived in
London in her early twenties from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Born
into a declining Northern gentry family in 1666, Catholic on her
mothers side,Astell gave the lie to most received wisdom about the
prospects of an academic career for girls in her era. Once in Lon-
don, Astell entered a circle of high-church Anglican, aristocratic and
Tory women, eventually settling in the house of Lady Catherine
Jones, to whom works marking both the beginning and the culmi-
nation of her career are dedicated.1 Friendly with her Chelsea
neighbour, Elizabeth Elstob, Anglo-Saxon scholar and correspon-
dent of George Ballard and the learned Bishop Francis Atterbury,2
Astell had access to London intellectual circles and a fine library to
equip herself for a career as one of the most theologically serious
and philosophically competent theorists of her age.3
1 Letters Concerning the Love of God (1695) and The Christian Religion as
Profess'd by a Daughter of the Church (1705).
2 Both Ballard and Atterbury leave accounts of her, the former (Ballard,
Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain), constituting an important source
for the contemporary reception of her work.
3 Because her works were published anonymously they were not always
taken for the work of a woman.
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