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252 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Book Reviews Their Homes in Order to Discover Their Opportunities for Self-Expression and Empowerment” (257) 252 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Book Reviews their homes in order to discover their opportunities for self-expression and empowerment” (257). Jessica L . Malay University of Huddersfield Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England . Ed . Jacqueline Broad . Toronto: Iter / Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013 . 344 pp . $32 00. ISBN 978-0-7727-2142-6 . There has been, of late, something of a small scholarly renaissance on the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century thinker, Mary Astell. She has long been held in high esteem for her three feminist tracts, for which we now have modern editions, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694), A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II (1697) and Reflections on Marriage (1700). Astell’s Tory politics and robust stance against Dissenters, reli- gious toleration, and all Whig principles have also engendered scholarly interest. In 1996, Patricia Springborg published two of the three polemics Astell authored in the age of Queen Anne — A Fair Way with Dissenters and Their Patrons (a response to Daniel Defoe’s More Short Ways with Dissenters) and Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of the Civil War (a response to White Kennett’s A Compassionate Enquiry into the Causes of the Civil War), all published in 1704 — in the Cambridge series on the History of Political Thought. Finally, Astell’s keen understanding of and engagement in the philosophical milieu of her time has also captured the attention of scholars such as E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New, who edited in 2004 her epistolary conversation with the Neo-Platonist, John Norris, Letters Concerning the Love of God (1694). Little wonder, then, that Astell’s magnus opus, The Christian Religion as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, has finally made it into a modern edition (while originally published in 1705, Broad based her text on the second 1717 edi- tion). In the advertisement to her book, Astell stated that her purpose was to “put women upon thinking, upon an examination of their principles, the motives and grounds of their belief and practice . To the end [that] their Book Reviews 253 religion may be their own” (Astell’s emphasis, 45). And, indeed, the book is centered on this basic principle. But The Christian Religion is also so much more. Elaborating on many of the same themes of Astell’s previous writings, this book is at once a feminist manifesto, a political tract, a philosophical treatise, a handbook on education and perhaps, above all, a work of Anglican apology. As the editor, Jacqueline Broad points out in her Introduction, The Christian Religion is “an impassioned justification for belonging to the Anglican church,” but the title “. belies the rich philosophical nature of the text and deeply feminist message” (1). This is also a text that cannot be understood properly without a solid understanding of the intellectual, religious, and political discourses of the early eighteenth century. As Broad asserts, “Astell draws upon the entire edifice of early modern philosophy, including not only epistemology, theol- ogy, and metaphysics, but also ethics and politics” (2). The Christian Religion argues that women need to use their God-given reason, come to their own conclusions, and not let others judge for them: “If God had not intended that women should use their reason, He would not have given them any, for He does nothing in vain” (50). Astell seeks to give women the tools they need to make sound judgments, using — as Broad points out — “Cartesian-Platonist theories about the true source of knowledge” (2). The Christian Religion elaborates on the same themes as Astell’s earlier feminist tracts, and Broad makes the case that it is rather like a long third part of A Serious Proposal, seeking to show women how the Cartesian method “might be applied to the study of God, the self and other people,” while also building on the Neo-Platonism of Nicholas Malebranche and John Norris (3). In short, it is a guidebook for women, instructing them on how they might lead useful, happy, Christian lives. It is also clearly written in defense of the Church of England. Astell lived in an age when many High Church Anglicans saw the Church as awash with enemies both inside and out, and she had nothing but contempt for those outside the established Church such as Dissenters, including Presbyterians, Independents, Quakers, and Baptists; or, free- thinkers, such as Deists and Socinians; and mystics, such as Jane Lead and other enthusiasts. But she was also a strong opponent of the new Latitudinarianism of the churchmen raised to the episcopate after the 254 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Book Reviews Revolution of 1688/89, epitomized by clergy such as John Tillotson and Gilbert Burnet. Astell did not believe in accommodating sectarians and resented the conciliatory tone of men like Tillotson. She was further incensed by the minimalist Christianity put forth by Tillotson’s friend, John Locke, in his The Reasonableness of Christianity (1696), which argued that the fundamental articles of faith must necessarily be “few, plain and simple” since the “greatest part of mankind” cannot understand theology (Broad, p. 13). Worse still were the ideas of John Toland, whose infamous Christianity not Mysterious (1696) applied Lockean epistemology to argue that Christianity possessed no mysteries. Thus, Astell’s text is very much a response to the new circumstances in which Anglicans like herself found themselves in the “age of the Church in danger.” Astell envisioned Anglicanism as a middle way between the “cor- ruptions of Rome and the imperfections of Geneva” (77). She may have harbored Jacobite sympathies, but she was nonetheless a thorough believer in the reformed religion and maintained that the Established Church was the one true catholic and apostolic church on earth. The Church’s eccle- siastical structures, its rituals and ceremonies, were not merely “things indifferent” to be diluted or disposed with every new fashion or even for the sake of peace among Protestants. Astell’s ardent defense of the tradi- tions and mystery of the Church went hand in hand with her royalism: the divinely ordered political state was sustained and nourished by the divinely ordered episcopal Church. Religious heterodoxy, on the other hand, bred political disaffection and radicalism; Socinians and Deists had their political counterparts in Whigs and republicans. Women needed to use their own natural reason to discern between these competing groups. Astell was confident that a learned, judicious mind would shun the new- fangled philosophies of fashionable wits as well as the emotional appeals of nonconforming religions. Broad is the perfect editor for this rich text. She has published numerous works on early modern women’s philosophical and political thought, many focused on Astell. Her Introduction is extremely sound, placing Astell squarely in her milieu. At over 300 pages, this is certainly not a text for undergraduate classroom use; it also requires some knowledge of early eighteenth-century intellectual and religio-political history, although Book Reviews 255 Broad’s notes provide essential information even for those scholars familiar with the work’s context. But this text will be indispensable for the growing number of scholars interested in philosophy and epistemology in the early Enlightenment; in Anglicanism in the “Age of Danger”; in feminism in the early modern era; in Locke and his critics; and, in short, in Mary Astell. Melinda S . Zook Purdue University Women in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: Intimate, Intellectual and Public Lives . Eds . Katie Barclay and Deborah Simonton . Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013 . 293 pp . $124 95. ISBN 978-1-4094-5046-7 . In the acknowledgments of Women in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, editors Katie Barclay and Deborah Simonton note that in 2009 they, and many of those who would be contributors to this volume, were invited by Katharine Glover to give papers on eighteenth-century Scottish women’s lives at a symposium at the University of Edinburgh, and the idea for this collec- tion was born from that invitation. The resulting volume contains thirteen essays, divided into considerations of women’s intimate, intellectual, and public lives. These three designations were carefully chosen; as the editors point out in the Introduction, “an earlier generation of scholars would have titled this [first] section ‘private lives,’ but this term has been problema- tized, both when referring to women’s role within the family and domestic sphere, and in its implications to selfhood” (3). Thus, the first section of the book investigates the roles of performance, clothing, and emotion in the construction of women’s intimate lives. Growing out from this, the second section, “Intellectual Lives,” explores how women used their intel- lectual efforts, often developed in the “privacy” of their own homes, to gain a place on the public stage. The third and final section explores the role of women in public life. The first section opens with a discussion of perhaps one of the most intimate experiences of a woman’s life, in “Female Birthing Customs and Beliefs,” by Anne Cameron. This wide-ranging essay explores birthing cus- toms and beliefs in Scotland from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, .
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