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The Passions and Self-Esteem in Mary Astell's Early Feminist Prose

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The Passions and Self-Esteem in Mary Astell's Early Feminist Prose University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 6-1-2009 The Passions and Self-Esteem in Mary Astell's Early Feminist Prose Kathleen A. Ahearn University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Ahearn, Kathleen A., "The Passions and Self-Esteem in Mary Astell's Early Feminist Prose" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 6. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/6 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. The Passions and Self-Esteem in Mary Astell’s Early Feminist Prose __________ A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of Arts and Humanities __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Kathleen A. Ahearn June 2009 Advisor: W. Scott Howard, Ph.D. ©Copyright by Kathleen A. Ahearn 2009 Author: Kathleen A. Ahearn Title: The Passions and Self-Esteem in Mary Astell’s Early Feminist Prose Advisor: W. Scott Howard, Ph.D. Degree Date: June 2009 Abstract This dissertation examines the influence of Cambridge Platonism and materialist philosophy on Mary Astell’s early feminism. More specifically, I argue that Astell co- opts Descartes’s theory of regulating the passions in his final publication, The Passions of the Soul, to articulate a comprehensive, enlightenment and body friendly theory of feminine self-esteem that renders her feminism modern. Previously, Astell’s feminism has been viewed as elitist, effete and contradictory to her conservative political commitments as a Tory apologist in the last years of the seventeenth century. Recently, scholars have read her work in paradoxically contradictory ways -- as barely feminism at all or as prefiguring radical feminist agendas that deny women’s difference. To this point, only scant attention has been paid to Astell’s treatment of the passions and, therefore, to her attunement to the problem of women’s feminine embodiment in a Renaissance context. My analysis of Astell’s theory of feminine self-esteem follows both textual and contextual cues, thus allowing for a reorientation of contemporary analyses of her early feminism vis-a-vis contemporary feminist theory. The textual cues I analyze are found throughout her first four publications but especially in her second Serious Proposal to the Ladies, which constitutues a robust philosophical defense of her proposed academy for women. An entire chapter in this ii text is devoted to her use of Descartes’s theory of regulating the passions to render women more substantial and inherently worthy. This rendering becomes more concrete in Astell’s sarcastic fourth publication, Reflections Upon Marriage, as she employs the language of the social contract to depict wives as contractual slaves. Her assertion, I argue, is theoretically consistent when read in light of her, by then, fully developed theory of women’s inherent worth, since this theory is based on the enlightenment principles of self-mastery, independence and self-preservation. Contextually, I align Astell’s early feminism in a dialogic sense to the Continental “querelle des femmes,” especially as presented in writings by Christine de Pizan and Agrippa. Astell, I argue, contributes to the “querelle” by framing the feminist problem she wishes to solve (women’s inherent equality despite bodily “inferiority”) in a robust philosophical manner that uncannily prefigures Wollstonecraft’s call for the universalization of human virtues and the reform of of women’s education. iii Acknowledgements Without the help of my mentors, parents, and friends this project could not have been completed. I want to thank first and foremost my academic advisor, Scott Howard, for working with me diligently, steadfastly, professionally and skillfully for at least six years. His belief in my project and my ability to complete it has been unwavering and invaluable. I also want to thank Linda Bensel-Meyers, my second reader, who offered detailed and incisive criticism as well as timely encourgaement on every chapter I submitted. I want to thank my parents for their unending patience and their support of me both emotionally and materially throughout this process. Finally, I would like to thank two special friends, Cindy Haney and Sarah Townes. Both of these friends have supported me as a writer, a teacher, and a scholar with enthusiastic encouragement and sound advice. Because of those named above and many others, I now have the chance to become a professor. I couldn’t be more grateful. iv Table of Contents Dissertation Introduction………………………...………………………………………..1 Chapter One: Materialism in Astell’s Early Feminist Prose…………………………….11 The Influence of Cambridge Platonism on Astell’s Feminism…………………..15 Confession as a Style of Philosophizing…………………………………………43 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….51 Chapter Two: Defining a Woman’s “True” Worth…………………………….............53 Astell’s “Singularity” and the “Querelle des Femmes”………………………….56 Countering Renaissance Misogyny………………………………………………77 Materialism in Two early Feminist Utopias…………………………………......96 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...114 Chapter Three: Cartesian Generosity and Early Feminist Self-Esteem………………..115 The Passions and Cartesian Habituation………………………………………..117 Cartesian Generosity and Astellian Self-Esteem……………………………….141 Princess Elisabeth and Mary Astell: Two Styles of Philosophizing…………...160 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...172 Chapter Four: Marriage, “This Bitter Cup”……………………………………………173 Coequality in the State of Nature……………………………………………….177 Wives as Captives……………………….……………………………………...191 Courtship as Violence…………………………………………………………..207 Astell in Dialogue……………………………………………………………....215 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….. 244 Dissertation Conclusion………………………………………………………………...246 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….251 v Introduction Much Astell scholarship to this point has been preoccupied with the problem of contradiction within her corpus. Ruth Perry’s characterization of Astell in the following passage is typical of this trend. She writes, All the contradictions of the period we call the ‘enlightenment’ were embodied in the life and writings of Mary Astell, a feminist intellectual who lived from 1666 to 1731. She argued for women’s right to an independent intellectual life, yet she upheld absolute monarchy in the state. She believed in Reason but distrusted the materialism of the new way of ideas. (357) This approach of highlighting contradictions within Astell’s work has led to corresponding contradictions with respect to how her feminism is interpreted by contemporary scholars. For example, in a recent collection of essays Hilda Smith characterizes Astell’s feminism as “radical” while Sharon Achinstein regards Astell’s early work as barely feminism at all (204). This study, by contrast, takes part in what William Kolbrener has termed the “third phase” of Astell scholarship. He defines this stage as participating in “the recovery of the linguistic or discursive contexts of particular utterances. As ‘texts are concerned with their own questions, and not with ours’” (6). This approach, borrowing as it does from the Cambridge school of history, aims to avoid anachronism and prolepsis in the reading of early modern women’s texts, Astell’s in particular. Along these lines, a new emphasis on consistency within Astell’s corpus is 1 being highlighted, as when E. Derek Taylor writes of the “remarkable degree of consistency [Astell] maintains . throughout her major works” (179) This study is situated firmly within the third phase of Astell scholarship with its emphasis on consistency and close contextual/interdisciplinary analaysis. My goal is to more accurately understand Astell’s early feminism, her position within (as opposed to marginally opposed to) foundational philosophical and political debates of the seventeenth century, and to renew interest in her relevance to modern incarnations of feminist theory. In this manner I follow the lead of scholars like Alice Sowaal, who has presented what she calls Astell’s original “theory of mind,” and Lisa Shapiro, who discerns in the confessional style of Princess Elisabeth’s letters to Descartes a legitimate, if unsystematic, way of “doing” philosophy. Up to this point, most of the interdisciplinary scholarship concerning Astell’s corpus is concerned with her rationalist framework, including her early flirtation with materialist philosophy that she later repudiated in her final publication, The Christian Religion (1705). This dissertation, by contrast, privileges the influence of materialism upon the development of Astell’s early feminism, a topic that has received only scant attention to this point. More specifically, I argue that Astell’s early feminism anticipates modern incarnations of feminist theory because of its body-firendly orientation that arises from her original use of Descartes’s theory of regulating the passions, otherwise known as his moral theory. Astell’s use of Descartes’s moral theory in the service of her feminist goals is not explicitly stated anywhere within her first four publications. Thus, my methodology in regards to discerning
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