The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (9.1896)

io8

Mary Astell

of Education upon Mary Astell and her influence over Defoe,*
points out that Defoe writes of this book by the title of “ Advice
to the Ladies,” and that he asserts in the Preface to his cc Essay
on Projects” that he was not influenced in any way by Mary
Astell’s ideas upon education. I have carefully read over Defoe’s
essays and compared them with the “ Serious Proposal,” and I
feel sure that any fair-minded person who has examined these
two books (as well as Defoe’s and Mary Astell’s respective writings
upon the lives and characters of the country gentleman of those
times) must acknowledge the remarkable resemblance of their
ideas, and methods of expressing them. But Mary Astell’s
“Serious Proposal ” was published three years before the famous
cc Essays on Projects,” and therefore it is difficult to give whole-
hearted credence to Defoe’s assertion, that his ideas were formed
long before Mary Astell’s were made public. But whatever con-
troversy the curious may like to engage in as to the priority of
these ideas, it is at any rate a remarkable fact that a woman writer
in those days should have attracted the notice of a man like Defoe,
and that he should have condescended to review her schemes in
his book. Though the accordance of many of his ideas with those
of Mary Astell is so apparent and so remarkable, there was yet
one prominent point in the ladies’cc Proposal ” of which the gentle-
man could not, and did not approve, for with regard to the monas-
tery for u Religious Retirement and Mental instruction,” Defoe
observes :

“ Saving my respect to the sex, the levity which perhaps is a little
peculiar to them (at least in their youth) will not bear the restraint ;
and I am satisfied nothing but the height of bigotry can keep up a
nunnery. Women are extravagantly desirous of going to heaven, and

will

Journal of Education, April I, 1891.