Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

Jennie Batchelor (University of Kent at Canterbury)

Ed. by Janet Todd, University of Cambridge
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Domains

Political Science

Dates

First circulation or publication 1694 - 1697

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Essays/ Lectures (any)
Non-fictional prose

Resources

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Mary Astell's

Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of their true and greatest Interest

was published in 1694. Anticipating the conduct book's rhetoric of improvement and indebted to seventeenth-century philosophic debates on knowledge and learning, Astell's impassioned argument for women's education is one of the earliest feminist polemics. Her argument is brilliantly clear, rigorously reasoned and systematically exposes the prejudice, hypocrisy and injustice tainting the lives of women in late seventeenth-century society. Where earlier writers such as Bathsua Makin and Anna Maria van Schurman had sought to convince a male readership that women possessed reasoning faculties and therefore could benefit from a formal education,

A Serious Proposal

is built upon women's…

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1214 words

Citation: Batchelor, Jennie. "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 October 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10533, accessed 23 November 2024.]