The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (9.1896)

Mary Astell

By Mrs. J. E. H. Gordon

Shelley’s mother-in-law, the famous Mary Wollstonecraft,
vindicated the rights of women in a powerful and somewhat
disagreeable book, which was published in 1792. For many years
she has been believed to be the first pioneer of the higher educa-
tion of women, and the first wailer over their wrongs, of any power
and distinction ; but Mary Wollstonecraft, though she possessed
many merits as a writer, was herself too much absorbed by her
own private matrimonial troubles to make her a competent judge
of the wrongs of other women.

A century before Mary Wollstonecraft there lived another Mary
whose surname was Astell, who never married, and who, as far as
we can gather from her writings, had no private grievances of her
own to ventilate in print, and therefore her arguments have a
special value. Two centuries ago this remarkable woman strove to
rouse the consciences of her sister women, and tried lustily to make
them take up a healthier attitude of mind towards the opposite sex.

Mary Astell was born at Newcastle, and the appreciative Ballard
in his memoir records of her,* “ that she had a piercing wit, a solid

judgment,

* “ Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain who have been
celebrated for their writings, or skill in the Learned Languages, Arts,
and Sciences.” George Ballard : Oxford, 1752.