Essay Questions

What extremely popular literary genre did Astell (as well as Mary Wollstonecraft) deem to be such a dangerous threat to the future of womanhood that it became a motivating force guiding her (and Wollstonecraft) to respond with a volume of her own?

So-called “conduct books” which aimed to teach girls and young women how to contribute to society with advice ranging from how to maintain and enhance their beauty so as to attract a proper class of suitors to refraining from expressing opinions in public to subjugating all other interests to the more practical aim of making life palatable for husband and children were among the most read books of the era. Astell was moved to write a serious proposal advising women on how to advance their own interests in large part because she recognized the self-defeating circular logic of the essential themes of a genre which encouraged half the population to seek above all else an acceptance of their own delicacy and inconstancy.

Astell does not try to argue that both sexes are equal in every individual capacity and, indeed, recognizes that just as men seem to be gifted with some talents to a greater degree than women, so is the reverse also true. To what does Astell attribute women’s greater natural gift for rhetoric?

Astell strongly supports the idea that women should be encouraged to write while also admitting that lack of proper organized education created a self-fulfilling prophecy of denial in the face of criticism over mistakes in grammar and spelling. To prove this fear ungrounded, she encourages women to realize anyone who can “speak true grammar…cannot write false, since they need only peruse what they’ve writ and consider whether they would express themselves thus in Conversation.” The capital “C” in conversation is designed for purpose as Astell proves herself firmly convinced that the art of conversation which seems irrefutably more developed among women than men holds the key to intuitive understanding of the power of rhetorical nuance. Her conclusion is that the power of speaking and the power of writing of inseparable in reality, but are judged to be different precisely because of the rules applied to latter which do not apply to the former. Thus, if one can make a point in conversation, they can make the same point in print.

Why is Astell’s book often considered classified as an example of utopian literature?

The bulk of women at the time had two choices in life: marry well or accept work in menial service positions. Ironically, for young women born into a status above the working class, these choices were reduced in half since it was considered undignified to do menial labor if it were known that they had a dowry enough to entice acceptable suitors. Astell addresses this seeming inescapable cycle by proposing the creation of a Protestant alternative to Catholic nunneries which would teach Christian values, but only within the greater concept serving as an academic and scholarly retreat to which women who chose not to marry and either could not or would not accept service employment would be instructed in the ways of conduct for improving their minds and souls rather than beauty and social manners. These women could then go out into the community in another kind of service position such as teacher or what would today be called social worker. Those who chose to marry afterwards would then be much be prepared for raising children—especially daughters—to meet the struggle of advancing their own interests in a manner much conducive than those who had been educated through existing “conduct books.” Since this idea never actually transformed from idealistic vision to anything even approaching practical reality until the establishment of women’s colleges centuries later, it is considered an example of a utopian vision.