A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

Introduction

Astell published the first part anonymously in 1694, signed “by a Lover of her Sex”; a second part followed in 1697. The first part proposes a “religious retirement” for unmarried women: a community without vows where they could study, pray and teach, a kind of women’s college. The second part is a guide to thinking well, drawing on Descartes and the Port-Royal Logic, so that women can educate themselves without such an institution. The proposal was never realised; a later report says that Bishop Gilbert Burnet talked a wealthy patron out of supporting it, because it looked too much like a convent.

Connections

Builds on

• Discourse on the Method1637 · René Descartes

More works by Mary Astell

• 1700Some Reflections upon Marriage