Three Women, Two Spheres, and A Contract: A Comparative Study of Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft Through the Lens of Carole Pateman's "The Sexual Contract"

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Three Women, Two Spheres, and A Contract: A Comparative Study Three Women, Two Spheres, and A Contract: A Comparative Study

of Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft Through the Lens of of Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft Through the Lens of

Carole Pateman's "The Sexual Contract" Carole Pateman's "The Sexual Contract"

Robyn Burke Dabora

Dominican University of California

https://doi.org/10.33015/dominican.edu/2017.hum.02

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Recommended Citation

Dabora, Robyn Burke, "Three Women, Two Spheres, and A Contract: A Comparative Study of

Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft Through the Lens of Carole Pateman's "The Sexual

Contract"" (2017).

Graduate Master's Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

. 271.

https://doi.org/10.33015/dominican.edu/2017.hum.02

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Three Women, Two Spheres, and A Contract:

A Comparative Study of Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft

Through the Lens of Carole Pateman’s The Sexual Contract

Robyn Burke Dabora

A culminating thesis submitted to the faculty of Dominican University of California in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

in Graduate Humanities

San Rafael, CA

May 2017

ii"

This thesis, written under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor and approved by the

department chair, has been presented to and accepted by the department of Graduate Humanities

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. The content and

research methodologies presented in this work represent the work of the candidate alone.

Robyn Burke Dabora 05/1/17

Candidate

Joan Baranow, PhD 05/4/17

Department Chair

Christian Dean, PhD 05/2/17

Thesis Advisor

Thomas Burke, MA 05/1/17

Secondary Thesis Advisor

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Acknowledgements

This thesis is dedicated to David, Rachel, Joshua, and Choco Dabora. It is also dedicated to my

Mom, Dad and sister, Anna and Robert Burke, and Rhay Christou. Thank you for your love and

support while I completed this project and my masters. You all are the best, and I love you very

much.

Thank you Professor Dean for sharing with me your time and energy. Thank you for introducing

me to the study of philosophy. I appreciated your patience as I struggled to understand certain

texts and to hone in on what I wanted to say. I so enjoyed your classes and the time I spent

working with you on this project.

Thank you Sr. Pat and Professor Ross for introducing me to the dynamic and fierce, English

women of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- Astell, Montagu, Behn, and

Wollstonecraft. I will always treasure my tenure at Dominican, a time when I was afforded the

opportunity to learn from six outstanding women.

Thank you Professor Burke for your support as I searched for a thesis topic, and for your time

and energy as a reader.

Final thanks to the folks at Dominican Library – you all are terrific.

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Table of Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1

Chapter 1: Carole Pateman: The Tale of the Sexual Contract ..................... 10

Chapter 2: Mary Astell: An Unexpected Liberator ....................................... 24

Chapter 3: Mary Wollstonecraft: Creator of SuperMom ............................. 41

Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 56

Note ..................................................................................................................... 61

Works Cited ....................................................................................................... 62

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Abstract

This project examines the writings of Mary Astell (1666-1731) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-

1797) regarding women in light of ideas articulated by Carole Pateman (1940- ) in her book, The

Sexual Contract (1988). In her work, Pateman critiques the prescriptions for the management of

society suggested by classic contract theorists such as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John

Locke (1632-1704) and cites that their solutions focus solely on men in the public sphere of

society. Pateman illuminates the condition of women in the private sphere of the home, and

asserts that this realm operates by mechanisms radically different from those of the public

sphere. Pateman contends that the inequities experienced by women in Western society will not

be eliminated by prescriptions simply reforming the operation of the public sphere, but requires

solutions that address the particular circumstances of women in the home. Astell’s and

Wollstonecraft’s depictions of the plight women in society are quite similar. However, as they

articulate their prescriptions, their ideas diverge. Wollstonecraft’s recommendations are radical

and seek to include women in the public sphere as free and equal workers and citizens. Astell,

loath to criticize society’s institutions, calls for individuals to reform. Pateman’s lens exposes

the limitations of Wollstonecraft’s radical reform, and reveals that Wollstonecraft, like her

conservative predecessor Astell, clings to certain societal norms and structures that she believes

important to the functioning of the private sphere and society.

Introduction

Throughout the ages, philosophers have attempted to comprehend what it means to be

human, and to articulate prescriptions based on these understandings for how best to structure

relations between individuals within societies. A survey of the history of philosophy quickly

demonstrates the dominance of men in the effort to answer these questions. Mary Ellen Waithe, a

Professor of Philosophy at Cleveland State University, in her series A History of Women

Philosophers, illuminates a tradition of women thinkers exploring philosophical questions

predating the efforts of Socrates and Plato. Waithe wonders what issues would have been

considered and prescriptions embraced had women’s ideas and writings been accepted within the

discipline of philosophy. For instance, Waithe chronicles the early endeavors by Pythagorean

women philosophers (600 BCE to 300 AD) to study and apply the concepts of justice and

harmony, the basis of men’s interactions in the public realm, to the management of the family

(XI 17).

In a similar vein, Wendy Gunther-Canada, Chair of the Department of Government at the

University of Alabama, argues that for centuries women have participated in debates and written

about political theory, but that their contributions, if initially receiving public recognition, were

generally excluded from further consideration within scholarly disciplines. She stresses the

importance of including women’s voices in attempts to gain a richer understanding of the

implications of dominant political theories on the lives of individuals, particularly women, in

society."She continues, “Our understanding of the historical movement from city state to

republic, and from absolutist monarch to social contract, is greatly enhanced by the addition of

women’s voices to the conversation of political thought” (Gunther-Canada, “Teaching

Wollstonecraft” 23). To fully discern the ideas of these women, she encourages the study of their

works in discourse with the works of other scholars of their period. She states, “When we study

their writings within the discursive context in which they were written, instead of artificially

separating their texts from those of the other individuals who formed their circle, we can better

understand women’s contribution to intellectual history as well as gain a richer comprehension

of the intertexuality of political thought” (21).

The comments of Waithe and Gunther-Canada became the inspiration for my project. I

initially believed my project would examine selected works of two English women, Mary Astell

(1666-1731) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) regarding the potential for education to

improve the plight of women. In their works, Astell and Wollstonecraft focus on the condition

of women in society, and explore the causes of their oppression. Both maintain that women,

similar to men, are born with the capacity to reason, and both were proponents for women’s

education as a means to improve their condition. However, as my project proceeded, it became

apparent that these women were not simply advocating for women’s education, but were

grappling with the implications of a new political theory on the lives of women. Astell and

Wollstonecraft wrote not only on women’s education, but also publically participated in their

generation’s debates regarding political theory, philosophy and religion. The texts of Astell and

Wollstonecraft are in discourse with other leading political thinkers of their time as they consider

what is at stake for women resulting from these new ideas.

The period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in which these two women wrote

was a time of great change in the philosophy of political thought. Social contract theorists such

as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704) began to question the old rules of

social relations and governing based on status, patriarchy and the divine right of kings. In

support of their ideas, these men postulated the attributes of the earliest individuals, and the

conditions that led them to create communities and societies. Such thinkers offered narratives of

the individual’s original state in nature as their starting point, and justification for their proposals

of the mechanisms that should manage the relations of individuals in civil society, and the form

that government should take. These social contract theorists suggest an image of the individual in

the state of nature as free and equal with all others. Though they differ in important ways, they

nonetheless share the belief that individuals create civil societies for their mutual security and are

willing to forgo some of their freedom for this protection. Building on this original story of the

social contract, the classic contract theorists denounce the old notions of status, patriarchy and

monarchy, and claim that consent and agreement or contract are the legitimate mechanisms in

society for relations between free and equal individuals, and among citizens and government.

Almost 200 years after the works of Astell, Wollstonecraft and the male social contract

theorists, Carole Pateman (1940- ), Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of

Political Science at UCLA, published her book, The Sexual Contract (1988). Like her female

predecessors, Pateman’s concern is the plight of women during her time. In particular, she

considers the plight of women in the modern capitalistic societies of Australia, Great Britain and

the United States, and wishes to understand why the inequities that they face remain so

“persistent and intractable” (Pateman x). As she pressed for understanding, she explains, “My

discussion began to push against the confines of social contract theory by noting that the classic

theorists had left a legacy of problems about women’s incorporation into, and obligation within,

civil society that contemporary arguments failed to acknowledge” (x).

Pateman asserts that the mechanisms that prevent women’s full equality in the public

sphere, and perpetuate their subordination in the private sphere are foundational to the original

contract envisioned by such thinkers as Hobbes and Locke. To make her case, she returns in her

book to the transformative period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to examine the

ideas and assumptions made by each theorist as he developed his version of the social contract.

Pateman states, “We hear an enormous amount about the social contract . . . a theory that claims

that free social relations take a contractual form” (Pateman 1). However, Pateman contends that

the narrative of the social contract tells only half the story. The missing piece, what she labels

“the sexual contract,” explains the treatment of women. Pateman argues, “The social contract is

a story of freedom; the sexual contract is a story of subjection” (Pateman 2).

Many scholars applaud Pateman’s exposure of the fallacies and contradictions of the

social contract and of modern contract theory for women. They consider her articulation of the

operations and interdependencies of the public and private sphere as insightful and

groundbreaking. However, 200 years earlier, both Astell and Wollstonecraft grappled with the

very dynamics outlined by Pateman. In their works, they struggle with the implications of the

social contract for women in both the public and private sphere. They identify that changes to the

institutions and structures of society justified by the ideas of the classic contract theorists impact

women, and their prescriptions reflect and respond to this realization.

For many years, feminists hailed Wollstonecraft’s prescriptions in their embrace of the

rights of women as free and equal individuals, while discounting Astell’s work as conservative

and traditional. Many lament that Astell’s solutions uphold the constructs of status within a

society ruled by patriarchy in the private sphere and by absolute monarchy in the public. Mary

Astell born in 1666 was a Tory conservative embracing the authority of the monarchy and the

established Church of England. She denounced the Glorious Revolution, bringing William III

(1689-1702) to power, that provided greater control to parliament at the expense of the

monarchy. She approved of the stances and actions of non-jurors,

clergy she deemed defenders

of the established church. Born to an upper class family that saw its prosperity decline, she held

tight to her status and as an adult, her established group of women friends and supporters were

“high-church Anglican, aristocratic and Tory women” (Springborg, Introduction 9). In her

youth, she received instruction in mathematics, philosophy and logic from her uncle, an ex-

Anglican clergy (Perry, The Celebrated Mary 46).

Astell set off alone for London at the age of twenty with few resources and an insecure

future. Upon arriving in London, she requested financial support from the conservative

Archbishop of Canterbury and later non-juror, William Sancroft (1617-1693) (66). She sought

the mentorship of the last of the Cambridge Platonists, John Norris (1657-1711). The Cambridge

Platonists were a group of scholars mainly concerned with issues of religion and theology.

Their calling was to defend the “true religion” of the Anglican Church (“Cambridge Platonists”).

Beginning in 1693, she began a series of exchanges with Norris involving the genesis of

knowledge (Springborg, Introduction 10, 18). She embraced the ideals of Rene Descartes (1596-

1650), and the theory of logic proposed by Descartes “constructive critic,” Antoine Arnauld

(1612-1694) (31). She critiqued and debated the works of Hobbes and Locke. In her works,

Astell rejects the ideas of materialism, natural rights and the proper authority of the government

proposed in Locke’s treatises. In “Mary"Astell"(1666-1731),"Critic"of"Locke,”"Patricia

Springborg maintains that much of Astell’s work includes some of the earliest critiques of both

Locke’ Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) and Two Treatises of Government

(1690) (622).

At the other end of the spectrum, Wollstonecraft’s stances and politics are very different.

Wollstonecraft became involved in the causes of a radical faction of the Whig party that

embraced the ideas espoused in the American and French Revolutions. Mary Wollstonecraft,

born in 1759, also came from a prosperous family that saw its fortunes plummet during her

childhood (Taylor, Feminist Imagination 5). She received a smattering of an education from her

mother in early childhood, and at a day school in one of the towns that her family migrated to as

its fortune declined (Todd 12-13). Like Astell, Wollstonecraft left home unmarried at the age of

nineteen, and she became a lady’s companion in Bath (Johnson 16).

In London, Wollstonecraft promoted the ideas of and identified with the causes of the

preacher Dr. Richard Price (1723-1791) and the publisher Joseph Johnson (1738-1809) (59).

Both men established radical groups opposing the doctrine and primacy of the established

Church of England. Price, her mentor, corresponded with Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and

Thomas Jefferson (Johnson 42). Joseph Johnson printed Wollstonecraft’s first educational work,

and she worked as a writer for his Analytical Review in the 1780s (Taylor 7). While Astell

denounced the Glorious Revolution, Wollstonecraft supported Price’s praise of the French

Revolution and suggestion “that Britain ought to follow its example and thereby complete the

political process that had begun in England’s so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’”(Johnson 59). In

her A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke;

Occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), she rebukes Burke’s (1729-

1797) rejection of the French Revolution and elevation of monarchy, aristocracy, and the

established church (Johnson 60).

This essay considers the arguments of Astell and Wollstonecraft, two women holding

divergent philosophical and political views, from a different perspective. Heeding Gunther-

Canada’s recommendations, the paper presents the works of Astell, Wollstonecraft, and Pateman

in discourse regarding the implications of the social contract for women. The project examines

Astell’s and Wollstonecraft’s understanding of the problems facing women in society and their

prescriptions for improvement in light of Pateman’s sexual contract. Astell’s and

Wollstonecraft’s depiction of women in the private sphere are quite similar. However, as they

articulate their remedies their ideas diverge. Wollstonecraft’s solutions are radical and seek to

include women in the public sphere as free and equal workers and citizens. Astell, loath to

criticize society’s institutions, calls for individuals to reform. Pateman’s lens exposes the

limitations of Wollstonecraft’s radical reform, and reveals that Wollstonecraft, like her

conservative predecessor Astell, clings to certain societal norms and structures that she believes

important to the functioning of the private sphere and society.

Chapter 1 details the underlying assumptions of the social contract that Patemen critiques

and the implications of her sexual contract for women. It examines Pateman’s appraisal of

contemporary efforts to improve the plight of women in Western society. The chapter also

considers the potential of using Pateman’s ideas to evaluate past prescriptions and contemporary

efforts to ameliorate the inequities experienced by individuals in society.

Chapter 2 outlines Astell’s identification of the conditions of seventeenth century women

in society and a critique of her prescriptions for their predicament. The paper focuses on three

works by Astell. In her books, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Parts I and II (1694, 1697),

Astell asserts that women have the capacity to reason and impresses upon them the importance

of education in the cultivation of this capacity. In A Serious Proposal, Part I, Astell lays out her

justification and plan for a women’s school she calls a Religious Retirement (A Serious Proposal

73). Astell in Proposal II delves deeper into her arguments regarding women’s capacities and

outlines her rigorous curriculum for women based on the work of Descartes and Arnauld

(Springborg, Introduction 31). In Some Reflections Upon Marriage: Occasion'd by the Duke &

Dutchess of Mazarine's Case; Which Is Also Consider'd (1700), Astell counsels women

regarding the realities of marriage and attempts to convince them to carefully and reasonably

consider this decision. Finally, in the 1706 printing of Reflections, Astell in her preface sharply

critiques men’s demands for rights in the public sphere as they enslave women in the private.

Patricia Springborg states, “The works [A Serious Proposal I and II, together with Reflections

upon Marriage] stand to one another in an organic relationship, the central argument of Astell’s

work on marriage already fore-shadowed in her proposal for a woman’s place of academic

retirement” (17).

Chapter 3 turns to Wollstonecraft’s identification of and prescriptions for the

improvement of the condition of women in her eighteenth century society. While Astell

articulates her concerns and prescriptions through several works over time, the breadth of

Wollstonecraft’s project is available in her 1792 work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Following closely on the heels of her 1790 work, A Vindication of the Rights of Men,

Wollstonecraft’s Rights of Woman begins with a summarization of her political support for the

ideals of the social contract and the natural rights of all men. In this work, Wollstonecraft details

women’s capacities, the causes of women’s oppression, and her prescription for its remedy,

which includes her plan for a system of national education.

The paper concludes with a brief distillation of the views of Pateman, Astell and

Wollstonecraft regarding the predicament of women in the private sphere. However, as these

women philosophers sought to understand and remedy the plight of women during their time, the

focus of the conclusion shifts from the past to an examination of contemporary marriage and

what remains at issue for individuals within the private sphere. The conclusion explores whether

insights garnered by an analysis of selected writings by Astell, Wollstonecraft and Pateman on

women can contribute to the amelioration of the lingering problems facing women and men

operating within the private realm.

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Chapter 1: Carole Pateman: The Tale of the Sexual Contract

In her book, The Sexual Contract, Carole Pateman asserts that the idea, originating in the

tale of the social contract, that free and equal individuals consent to their government and secure

their economic needs through agreement with others holds sway in Western democracies.

Pateman states:

An explanation for the binding authority of the state and civil law, and for the legitimacy

of modern civil government is to be found by treating our society as if it had originated in

a contract. The attraction of the idea of an original contract and contract theory in a more

general sense, a theory that claims that free social relations take a contractual form is

probably greater now than at any time since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

when the classic writers told their tales. (1)

However, Pateman contends that there is a missing piece to the story of the social contract that is

not told by the classic contract theorists. Pateman states:

The story of the original contract tells of the genesis of a society that is structured into

two spheres – although we are usually told only half the story and so we only hear about

the origin of the public “universal” sphere. (112)

Pateman elaborates the part of the story that she contends the classic contract theorists ignore, the

story of the private sphere. Her tale exposes the dichotomy of the public and private sphere.

While the narrative of the social contract envisions a paradigm of consent and agreement of free

and equal individuals in the public sphere, the private sphere of the home does not operate by

these mechanisms, but rather by those of the sexual contract. As important, her tale illuminates

that the two spheres are inextricably linked, and that the existence of the private sphere operating

by the sexual contract is essential if the public sphere is to operate as envisioned.

Pateman shares that the motivation for her book is a concern that feminists attempt to

alleviate women’s inequality in Western societies by simply focusing on reforms that further

their participation as free and equal individuals in the public sphere. She struggles with the

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implications of the social contract for women, and questions the potential for them to gain

equality and freedom through institutions based on it. For Pateman, classic and modern contract

theory is problematic when dealing with issues regarding women. “I began to appreciate the

depth and character of the failure only when I asked specifically feminist questions about the

texts and about actual examples of contractual relations” (x). Pateman maintains that reforms that

focus on women’s inclusion in the public sphere or changes to contracts involving women will

not eliminate the inequities women experience because they do not address the underlying

assumptions and unique conditions that perpetuates women’s inequality in the private sphere and

hampers their potential in the public realm.

Pateman begins her tale of the sexual contract by questioning the foundational premise of

the narrative of the social contract. The classic contract theorists hold that universally free and

equal individuals consent to the original agreement establishing their community. Pateman

counters that these male thinkers exclude women from the original contract creating society that

is an exclusive agreement among men. Underpinning the social contract is an assumption that

the natural state of women is that of subordination to men."Pateman maintains that the social

contract theorists believe that “men alone have the attributes of free and equal ‘individual’” and

“insist that men’s right over women has a natural basis” (41). She concedes that Hobbes grants

that women are initially free and equal to men in the state of nature, but that over time, the men,

being stronger, conquer women. She states “The assumption must necessarily be made that, by

the time the social contract is made, all the women in the natural condition have been conquered

by men and are now their subjects (servants)” in Hobbes’ family confederations (49). In Hobbes’

narrative of the originating contract, women enter civil society in a subordinated position to men.

(49).

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Pateman grants that Locke promotes many progressive limits on men’s power over

women in his writings, but in the end, he too defends the subordination of women to men as

natural. Pateman states, “Locke insists that Adam was not an absolute monarch, so that Eve’s

subjection was nothing more ‘but that Subjection [wives] should ordinarily be in to their

Husbands’” (52). She continues, “We know that wives should be subject, Locke writes, because

‘generally the Laws of mankind and customs of Nations have ordered it so; and there is, I grant,

a Foundation in Nature for it’” (52). Locke suggests that women’s subordination to men result

from a lack of strength and ability (52). Women, lacking the necessary capacities, are excluded

from Hobbes’ and Locke’s originating contracts. “Only men who stand to each other as free and

equal master of ‘families’ will take part” (49) in the originating agreement to create society.

Though Pateman acknowledges that the ideas of the social contract theorists paved the

way for the establishment of a new form of relations among citizens and government by limiting

the arbitrary power of the monarch, she rejects the notion that these theories contributed to the

demise of patriarchy and status in Western society. She recognizes that a classic form of

patriarchy, a “social order structured by kinship and the rule of the father” (30), disappeared, but

insists a new form took its place. The classic form “was transformed by contract theorists . . .

into modern patriarchy” (25) that maintained relations based on status in the private sphere. The

narratives of the social contract paved the way for an exclusive fraternal order of males operating

by consent and agreement in the public realm. This new order has its own version of absolute

power affording each brother the conjugal or male-sex right to a single woman. Women,

assumed inferior and subordinated to men, are excluded from the public sphere, and relegated to

the private sphere. Men are liberated in society from “the old world of status” (165) dictated by

birth to become equal citizens in government and to freely contract with others. While in the

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home, status remains intact. Men and women are born into roles of husband and wife with

specific duties based on their sex. She states, “To become a ‘husband’ is to attain patriarchal

right with respect to a ‘wife’” (158). The sexual contract is this story of women imprisoned in the

private sphere governed by patriarchy and status.

In her article “Male Power and Contract Theory: Hobbes and Locke in Carole Pateman’s

The Sexual Contract,” Joanne Boucher criticizes the credibility and the usability of Pateman’s

paradigm of the sexual contract to explain and ultimately contribute to solutions remedying

women’s inequality because of the fictions it propagates. Boucher contends that the “law of

male sex right” (Boucher 24) underpinning Pateman’s theory overly simplifies the complex

factors resulting in women’s oppression. She states, “The use of the notion leads Pateman to

focus on sexuality as the lynchpin of women’s oppression at the expense of other equally

important dimensions, such as child bearing and child rearing” (24). To cripple Pateman’s

overall argument, she attacks Pateman’s interpretations that the narratives of Hobbes and Locke

protect the male sex right to women’s bodies, contributing to the subordination of women in the

private sphere.

She rejects Pateman’s assertion that Hobbes’ family confederation is the result of men’s

violence and dominance of women. Boucher states, “Hobbes does, contrary to Pateman’s

contention, argue that there is a natural basis to familial relations – natural sexual attraction

between women and men and a natural affection of parents for their children are the foundations

of unions which develop in the state of nature and are institutionalized in the family in political

society” (27). She quotes Hobbes’ passage from Leviathan (1651) as evidence of his position,

“the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small Families, the

concord whereof dependeth on natural lust, have no government at all” (27). Boucher asserts that

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Hobbes’ “natural lust” is love, which bond men and women to each other and to their children in

the family (27). In “Women and the Making of the Sentimental Family,” Susan Moller Okin

disagrees with Boucher’s depiction of familial caring between members of Hobbes’ family

contending that for Hobbes, the stakes in the family are the same as in the commonwealth. Okin

argues that in the relations of child to parent and wife to husband, there is not affection, just fear

and power (66).

With regards to Locke, Boucher takes exception with Pateman’s argument that within

his works he “concealed” (31) the condition of women in the private sphere. She cites Locke’s

acknowledgement in his first of the Two Treatises on Government (1689) that conquest and male

aggression may be involved in sexual relations between men and women as evidence that he did

not suppress the condition of women in his works. Boucher quotes Locke, “God in his infinite

Wisdom has put strong desires of Copulation into the Constitution of Men, thereby to continue

the race of Mankind, which he doth most commonly without the intention, and often against the

Consent and Will of the Begetter” (qtd. in Boucher 31). Boucher concludes, “This blunt

statement of the possibility of male sexual aggression against women undercuts Pateman’s

contention that it is concealed in his version of contractualism” (31).

Pateman does not suggest that Locke purposely concealed the narrative of the sexual

contract operating in the private sphere or that Hobbes set out to legitimize sexual conquest of

males over females, but rather that they along with other scholars of their time considered the

condition of women within the private sphere as natural, and did not require discussion. Pateman

states, “In these stories, marriage and the patriarchal family appear as the natural, necessary

foundation of civil life” (Pateman 110). “The natural foundation already exists (the sexual

contract is presupposed) so there is no need to tell a story about its origins” (110). The labeling

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of women’s natural state as inferior and subjugated to men rendered women’s inequality and

oppression as normal and acceptable, not warranting consideration. This dismissal of the private

sphere also reveals the subtle assumptions about the relative importance of the private sphere and

its wifely inhabitant. The social contract and its proponents deem the public sphere as important

to society. These male thinkers ponder, consider and study its operations, while they consider

the private sphere unworthy of consideration. What occurs in the private realm is unimportant,

and can be handled by those of an inferior nature as long as they are absolutely ruled.

Boucher’s critique of Pateman’s sexual contract is oversimplified because it assumes that

Pateman’s concern is only with men’s access to women’s body for sex. Boucher continues that

sexual conquest of men by women in the family is not Locke’s main emphasis (Boucher 33).

His concern was primarily with procreation, caring for children and most importantly the

accumulation of property for the next generation (33). Pateman’s argument is not simply that

men’s conquest of women giving them access to their body for sex is the cause of women’s

oppression. Pateman’s concern is the underlying assumptions regarding the status of husband

and wife that justifies the sexual dominance of men over women.

The assumptions underlying the status of husband and wife determines the occupants’

role in the private sphere, but also their potential in the public one. Husbands are independent,

rational, and capable, wives are creatures of dependence, sensibility and lack the natural ability

to participate in the public realm. In the private sphere, the status of husband bestows on the man

the conjugal right not only to access a woman’s body for sex, but also to demand her obedience

and to control her labor, her property, and her wealth. A wife, a woman, because she is inferior

must be obedient, and accept the rule of a husband. Pateman’s paradigm of the sexual contract

explains how husbands acquired not merely the right to sex, but a host of services from an

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unpaid laborer. Pateman’s women, born a wife, forgotten, non-participants of the originating

contract, are relegated to the private sphere, operating as in the state of nature where the strong

conquer and control the weak, under absolute rule of the husband, a man.

The status of husband in the private sphere signifies that men own the attributes allowing

for their participation as free and equal individuals in the public sphere. The status of husband

allows men to move freely between the spheres. The status of wife signifies that women

inherently lack the attributes of the free and equal individual necessary for public participation.

Only the efforts of the husband ruling in the private sphere and participating as a citizen and

economic agent in the public sphere have value. The status of wife becomes a position of little

value or worth in the public sphere deemed important for the proper functioning of society. This

status to which women are born into simultaneously imprisons her in the private sphere, and

greatly limits her participation in the public sphere. As important, this status defines her worth in

both realms.

Remaining in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Pateman demonstrates how a

woman’s status as wife became established in law. Pateman explains that women during this

period were allowed to freely enter into the marriage contact. This public sphere contract

governed by the legal principle of coverture upheld the “patriarchal political right” of a husband

over his wife in the private sphere, and denied women a civil identity in the public sphere

(Pateman 114, 118). The legal principle of coverture, dating back to the medieval period,

maintains that a woman upon marriage forfeits her legal identity, which her husband subsumes

(Kesselring and Stretton 7). In Married Women and the Law: Coverture in England and the

Common Law World, Krista J. Kesselring and Tim Stretton point out, “Upon marriage a wife lost

the ability to own or control property, enter into contracts, make a will, or bring or defend a

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lawsuit without her husband” (7). Pateman concurs, “Under the common law doctrine of

coverture, a wife, like a slave, was civilly dead” (119).

In the private sphere, these contractual and civil policies established the division of labor

between husband and wife. Pateman states, “A sexual division of labour is constituted through

the marriage contract” (118), “a division of labour in which women are subordinate to men”

(119). In marriage, women became wives performing labor in the home for their husband. The

wife, like a slave, did not work for a wage, but for subsistence. Pateman acknowledges that in

larger, wealthier households wives often occupied an elevated position over slaves and servants,

but maintains that the civil policies of the period equated the relationship of husband and wife to

that of master and servant (125). Pateman anecdotally adds, “Mary Astell’s pointed comment

was that a woman ‘has no Reason to be fond of being a Wife, or to reckon it a Piece of

Preferment when she is taken to be a Man’s Upper-Servant’” (125). Men had the right to sell

their wives and to sue in civil court for third-party injuries that prevented his wife from

performing housework, childcare or providing sexual services (127). These policies not only

established the right of husbands to wield absolute authority over wives, but also constituted the

status of wife as a position of inferiority, dependence and subordination. As wives, women,

forced to provide labor, like a slave, for subsistence were stigmatized as born to a role of little

importance or value.

These policies, directly impacting the lives of married women, affected the lives of all

women. Kesselring and Stretton note that coverture impacted the legal, economic and civil

rights for single women as well. Often authorities denied the rights of single women, because, as

Kesselring and Stretton state, “She may be independent now, but that is liable to change” (6).

The marriage and civil policies of coverture restricting the access of all women to governmental

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institutions and industry of the public sphere forced women from it and coerced them into

marriage (Pateman 132). For most women, given the lack of available education and limited

potential to participate in industry, marriage was their best, if not only, economic opportunity.

Pateman quotes the “utilitarian socialist” William Thompson (1775-1833):

So by male-created laws, depriving women of knowledge and skill, excluding them from

the benefit of all judgment and mind-creating offices and trust, cutting them off almost

entirely from the participation, by succession or otherwise, of property, and from its uses

and exchanges – are women kindly told ‘they are free to marry not.’ (qtd. in Pateman

132).

Women were allowed to freely enter into the marriage contract, a contract of subordination to a

husband where they exchanged freedom for the only subsistence available to them (Pateman

132-133). These civil policies institutionalized the assumption that the natural state of women is

the status of wife subjected to the authority of the husband in the private sphere. This

assumption also justified the denial of opportunities and participation in the public sphere. The

belief that all women are born to the status of wife, a status of subordination and inferiority,

perpetuated their imprisonment in the private sphere by denying them access to the public

sphere.

Some critique the limitations of Pateman’s framework that illuminate the inequities

experienced by a narrow spectrum of women, white, middle to upper class. In “Women as

Wives, Servants and Slaves: Rethinking the Public/Private Divide,” Barbara Arneil accuses

Pateman of attempting to create a universal theory of women’s subordination that does not

account for the different experiences of women due to class and race. Arneil’s complaint is

similar to that lodged by Pateman against the classic contract theorists who proposed principles

supposedly universal to all individuals but applied only to white males. For example, instead of

exploring Locke’s treatment of the different classes of women, Pateman simply ignores this

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condition. “For Locke, women exist as wives, servants and slaves, but perhaps most critical to a

full analysis of his views of women in the private sphere are the different levels of authority he

accords these three groups . . .” (Arneil 37). She quotes Locke:

That the Master of the Family has a very distinct and differently limited Power, both as to

time and extent over those several Persons that are in it; for excepting the Slave . . . he

has no Legislative Power of Life and Death over any of them, and none too but what a

Mistress of a Family may have as well as he. (qtd. in Arneil 37)

Arneil’s work makes evident that the inhabitants of the private sphere are not a

homogeneous group, and probably encountered radically different conditions of inequality and

oppression. A limited or partial understanding of the oppression and inequity encountered by

women in the private sphere results from theories that do not consider the experiences of women

of different classes and races. Arneil concludes, “When one begins a commentary by

incorporating both gender and race into an analysis of the private sphere, both historical and

theoretical differences between women become immediately clear” (Arneil 50). Race and class

often trumps gender as the factor contributing to oppression and inequality, and Arneil contends

its absence and the universality of women’s experience in the private sphere Pateman assumes

limits the applicability of her paradigm.

Janice Richardson in The Classic Social Contractarians warns of the dangers that “false

universals” and abstraction pose when attempting to extrapolate a theoretical framework to

incorporate divergent groups of people (Richardson 12). Pateman mentions the elevated position

of wives over servants and slaves in the private sphere, but does not explore its implications.

Pateman concedes that her examinations does not cover all aspects the problem. She

acknowledges:

In order to bring out as sharply as possible something of what is at stake in alternative

readings of the original contract, I have exaggerated and described the sexual contract as

half the story. The story of political genesis needs to be told again from yet another

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perspective. The men who (are said to) make the original contract are white men, and

their fraternal pact has three aspects; the social contract, the sexual contract and the slave

contract that legitimizes the rule of white over black. (Pateman 221)

However, this critique does not negate the potential of Pateman’s framework to provide a

richer understanding of the inequity and oppression experienced by women and by extension

other groups in Western societies. The social contract proclaims the universality of the

individual, “the idea of the individual as owner, an individual whole is so like all other to be

interchangeable” (223). “Freedom is enjoyed by all ‘individuals’, a category that potentially,

pertains to everyone, men and women, white and black alike” (222). Pateman reveals that the

universally free and equal individual of the originating contract and the public sphere is a

husband, a man. Her framework calls into question any attempts to alleviate conditions of

inequality in society based on this abstraction, the supposed norm representing the condition of

all individuals in society. Her study makes evident that the prescriptions for society outlined by

the social contract theorists assumed a norm that is not only a fallacy for women, but for other

groups.

Pateman recognizes that changes to the marriage contract and reforms in the public

sphere to include women as citizens and workers have improved the conditions of women in

Western society. In her 2008 article, “Golden Anniversary Reflections: Changes in Marriage

After Fifty Years,” Ann Laquer Estin printed in the Family Law Quarterly of the American Bar

Association points out that as late as 1958 many statutes upholding the common law principle of

coverture remained in effect in the United States. Families generally consisted of a man and a

woman fulfilling the gender roles of bread winning husband and homebound wife (Estin 333).

The number of people obtaining marriage was high, and the ability to obtain divorce remained

difficult except in particular circumstances (333). Estin in her article reflects on the changes that

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have occurred in the realm of marriage and family law in the United States, and details the

legislative and court efforts that have reformed the marriage contract and dismantled the laws of

coverture over the last 50 years. Pateman concurs, “After a century or more of legal reform

women are near juridical equality with men and all but a few reminders of coverture have been

swept away” (227).

Pateman still cautions that efforts to improve the plight of women by giving them access

to the rights of free and equal individuals in the public sphere that has “males in mind as the

‘norm’” of the individual will not achieve the equality desired (Richardson 12). Richardson

notes that the problem with using “false universals” to create prescriptions for social ills “comes,

not from abstraction per se, but from the way in which some abstractions operate to lose details

that do matter” (13). Efforts to reduce inequities experienced by women in society by merely

making them free and equal individuals of the public sphere do not consider the unique position,

conditions and history of women. Patemen claims that, to be fully free, women must have

autonomy, but with “the caveat . . . that women’s equal standing must be accepted as an

expression of the freedom of women as women, and not treated as an indication that women can

be just like men” (Pateman 231).

The illumination of the sexual contract, the private sphere of modern patriarchy and

status, highlights the unique obstacles that must be surmounted if women are to achieve full

equality. Reforms to include women as participants in the public sphere do not address the

interdependency between the spheres that sustains the inequality of women in the home.

Pateman states, “The private and public spheres of civil society are separate reflecting their

natural order of sexual difference, and inseparable, incapable of being understood in isolation

from each other” (131). She continues, “Or to make this point another way, the construction of

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the ‘worker’ presupposes that he is a man who has a woman, a (house) wife, to take care of his

daily needs” (131). The worker in the capitalist economy of Western society assumes that

women fulfill their status of wife in the private sphere providing their husbands free labor in the

form of management of home and family. Pateman argues that changes to the marriage contract

and women’s entry into the public sphere have not disrupted this interdependency between

public and private sphere.

Further, reforms to include women in the public sphere as free and equal individuals do

not address the pernicious assumptions regarding the status of wife to which women are born.

This status once constituted by law is now supported by tradition. The status of wife remains

one of subordination to the husband and his needs. The division of labor in the private sphere

remains a family matter, and Pateman asserts that these duties remain primarily the responsibility

of the wife (228). Women still fill the traditional role of wife, mother and caregiver. If women

work, they are typically labeled working mother or wife. In society, wages or payment for work

connotes value and this payment occurs in the public sphere. Work in the private sphere remains

unpaid and does not have quantifiable value. Though not paid, the work of childrearing,

household management and elder care is work, important work. Women as working wives are

valued for the worked performed in the public sphere, and not always for the duty and

obligations they fulfill as wives in the private. Pateman suggests that women’s equality can be

achieved only by freeing women from their status of wife, a birthright burdened with

assumptions of subordination and inferiority.

In The Sexual Contract, Carole Pateman exposes the dichotomy of the public and private

sphere. She explains how the theories of the social contract theorists articulating the universality

of free and equal individuals agreeing to create community resulted in two very distinct spheres

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operating very differently. The social contract freed men to become equal citizens and producers

in the public sphere, and husbands ruling over wives in the private sphere. Women born to the

status of wife were excluded from the public sphere and relegated to the home. The condition of

women in Western societies has improved through reform of the marriage contract and

attainment of rights. However, Pateman concludes that full freedom and equality cannot be

obtained for women merely through their inclusion as free and equal individuals, and solutions

must address the persisting assumptions regarding women’s status as wives that hamper them in

both realms. Pateman’s critique of the social contract and exposure of the sexual contract makes

space for the consideration of theories, ideas from the past and present, in a different light, a light

not tinged by the aura that the social contract of free and equal individuals is available to

everyone, or the prescriptions it justified are the right solution for all.

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Chapter 2: Mary Astell: An Unexpected Liberator

Recent research on Astell explores the complexity of her arguments that scholars

previously dismissed or labeled as examples of late seventeenth century religious and political

conservatism. These studies evaluate Astell’s work within the context of the dynamic changes

occurring in Western society during this period. In “‘Call No Man Master upon Earth’: Mary

Astell’s Tory Feminism and an Unknown Correspondence,” Sarah Apetrei concurs, “Astell’s

own contradictions and complexities point to the possibility that some of the greatest theological

and political tensions of the period were also working themselves out in the minds of

individuals” (520).

Though they applaud her early articulations of the plight of women in Western society,

many still struggle to understand her solutions that appear to leave women trapped in the

situation she so insightfully identifies. They have difficulty reconciling Astell’s conservative

views of religion, monarchy and patriarchy with the feminist stances she takes regarding

women’s education and marriage. They question the possible benefit of her prescriptions given

her focus on the predicament of upper class women. Astell’s arguments are complex and in stark

contradiction to solutions that embrace the liberal tenets of Western democracy. However, her

works anticipate the potential of the perpetuation of women’s oppression resulting from the split

of the public and private sphere underwritten by the premises of the classic contract theorists.

Her prescriptions to improve the conditions of women through reform within the existing

institutions reflect her realization, and Pateman’s concern, that the tenets of the social contract

are not available to all and particularly not to women.

In her writings, Astell exposes the injustices suffered by women in marriage subjected to

the will of husbands who act as absolute rulers, and often tyrants. Astell proclaims that women

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are powerless both in the affairs of courtship and marriage. A woman does not choose or select a

husband, but rather “all that allow’d her, is to Refuse or Accept what is offer’d (Astell, Some

Reflections 23). She makes clear to her upper class women, that a husband’s prerogative has no

bounds. In marriage, a woman not only gains an absolute ruler, but loses all rights to her wealth

and property. Astell states:

She who Elects a Monarch for Life, who gives him an Authority she cannot recall

however he misapply it, who puts her Fortune and Person entirely in His Power . . . she

had best stay till she can meet with one who has the Government of his own Passions and

has duly regulated his own Desires, since he is to have such absolute Power over hers.

(32-33)

She warns upper class women against marrying a man from a lower class. Her nobility

and status will not protect her from her chosen absolute ruler, and regardless of differences in

birth, his right will not be denied. Women have no recourse from the abuses of their selected

master for men have all the power to force their wives into submission. Astell cries, “He who

has Sovereign Power does not value the Provocations of a Rebellious Subject, but knows how to

subdue him with ease, and will make himself obey’d” (28). Law and custom grant husbands the

right to demand obedience of their wives in all matters. Astell points out, “Because she puts her

self entirely into her Husband’s Power, and if the Matrimonial Yoke be grievous, neither Law

nor Custom affords her that redres which Man obtains” (28).

Pateman illuminates the classic contract theorists’ contention that the natural state of

women is that of subordination to men. She details their arguments that women’s inferiority

justified their relegation to the private sphere under the dominion of a husband. Astell

corroborates Pateman’s assertions. Astell denounces the claims that women by nature are inferior

to men and should be subjugated to their rule. She challenges those holding this position to

prove their claim using Reason. Astell protests, “She [Astell] was ignorant of the Natural

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Inferiority of our Sex, which our Masters lay down as a Self-Evident and Fundamental Truth”

(The First English Feminist 71). “She [Astell] saw nothing in the Reason of Things, to make this

either a Principle or a Conclusion, but much to the contrary” (71).

Astell wonders how men can accept the leadership of their current female monarch if

women are naturally inferior. She cries out, “It wou’d be a Sin in any Woman to have Dominion

over any Man and the greatest Queen ought not to command but to obey her Footman, because

no Municipal Laws can supersede or change the Law of Nature” (71). When men cite scripture

to support their claims that women are by nature inferior, Astell counters with Bible examples of

women in positions of leadership and authority. She proclaims, “Whatever other Great and Wise

Reasons Men may have for despising Women, and keeping them in Ignorance and Slavery, it

can’t be from having learnt to do so in Holy Scripture” (84).

Astell claims that women’s servitude to men is not the result of their natural inferiority.

Similar to Hobbes and Locke, Astell points to men’s strength and power as a primary reason for

their initial dominance. However, unlike the contract theorists, Astell does not accept that men’s

strength justifies their power over women. Astell compares the subjection of women under men

to that of the Jews and Christians under the Romans. She states, “But will any one say that these

had a Natural Superiority and Right to Dominion? that they had a superior Understanding, or any

Pre-eminence, except what their greater Strength acquir’d” (75). She likens that the arbitrary rule

of men over women to the power of a highwayman or thief over his victims. Astell states, “And

if mere Power gives a Right to Rule, there can be no such thing as Usurpation; but a Highway-

Man so long as he has strength to force, has also a Right to require our Obedience” (76).

Astell grants that men’s capabilities currently surpass those of women. However, she

maintains that this condition is not natural. On the contrary, men receive a generous education,

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while women receive none. She states, “It undeniably follows, that Men’s Understanding are

superior to Women’s, for after many Years Study and Experience they become Wise and

Learned, and Women are not Born so!” (85). Further, Astell argues that to men goes all

opportunity and advantage. She explains:

Men are possess’d of all Places of Power, Trust and Profit, they make Laws and exercise

the Magistracy, not only the sharpest Sword, but even all the Swords and Blunderbusses

are theirs, which by the strongest Logic in the world, gives them the best Title to every

thing they please to claim their Prerogative. (85)

With time, tradition and custom enshrined the notion of men’s superiority over women

and became an accepted truth. She points out, “That the Custom of the World has put Women,

generally speaking into a State of Subjection, is not deny’d” (72), while “his Prerogative is

settled by an undoubted Right and the Prescription of many Ages” (Some Reflections 45).

Women’s inferiority and subordination is not natural, but rather men’s dominance of women was

initially the result of their physical strength and power, became established through opportunity

and advantage, and ingrained as truth by custom and tradition.

Though she identifies these inequities, Astell’s prescriptions and solutions seem to

recommend that women contently and obediently accept their situation. Astell makes clear that

her intention is not to destabilize the institutions, the structures, and the status of participants in

society. She exclaims, “Nor can she [Astell] imagine how she any way undermines the

Masculine Empire, or blows the Trumpet of Rebellion to the Moiety of Mankind” (The First

English Feminist 70). Though she counsels women of the importance of their marriage decision,

Astell refuses to condone the rebellion of wives against husbands. She admonishes:

But if she goes on to infer, that therefor he has not these Qualifications, where is his

Right? If he misemploys, does he not abuse it? And if he abuses, according to modern

Deduction, he forfeits it, I must leave her there. A peaceable Woman indeed will not

carry it so far, she will neither question her Husband’s Right nor his fitness to Govern.

(Some Reflections 97)

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Astell suggests to women upon discovering the poor qualities of their marriage partner to

consider it an opportunity to cultivate virtue. She explains, “If Discretion and Piety prevails upon

her Passions she sits down quietly, contented with her lot, seeks no Consolation in the Multitude

of Adorers since he whom only she desir’d to please, because it was her duty to do so, will take

no delight in her Wit and Beauty” (15). She asserts that the “Affliction” the wife suffers resulting

from her husband’s neglect provides her the best instruction in virtue. This situation is “the

sincerest Friend, the frankest Monitor, the best Instructer and indeed the only useful School that

Women are ever put to” (17). She instructs that their cultivation of virtue will make them better

mothers, wives and members of society. She guides women to regard any difficulties in marriage

as the trials that they must endure in preparation for what is the true end purpose of any

reasoning being, to spend eternity with their God.

Given her seeming acceptance of the plight of women and prescription for wives to

obediently submit to the rule of their husbands, is there nothing more to be garnered from

Astell’s writings? Astell simply provided insightful understandings of women’s condition very

similar to those suggested two hundred years later by Pateman. In “Gendering the Modern: Mary

Astell’s Feminist Historiography,” William Kolbrener maintains that Astell lashes out against

what she sees as the inequality and inauthentic culture of her period and desires to return to the

“integritas” of a previous era that he defines as a nostalgic view of the past as one of wholeness,

completeness and integrity (2). Astell’s prescription for women is not simply a return to

Kolbrener’s past of nostalgic wholeness, completeness and integrity, but is a pragmatic reaction

to the changing political dynamics of her period that she believes jeopardizes the precarious

position of women in society. Astell identifies Pateman’s concern that the social contract

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envisioned by thinkers such as Locke and Hobbes excludes women and her solutions reflect this

understanding.

In the introduction to The First English Feminist: Reflections Upon Marriage and other

Writings by Mary Astell, Bridget Hill advances that Astell wanted the best for women. Astell was

a woman that loved women; she cared about them and demanded much of them (14). Astell

professes, “My earnest desire is, That you Ladies, would be as perfect and happy as ‘tis possible

to be in this imperfect state; for I Love you too well to endure a spot upon your Beauties, if I can

by any means remove and wipe it off” (A Serious Proposal 56). In The Celebrated Mary Astell,

Ruth Perry agrees that Astell loved women as a “statesmen of whom it could be said ‘loved his

people’” (18).

However, Astell was also practical about their current, neglected position. Given their

weakened and ill-prepared state, she does not demand their rebellion. Astell tempers, “I do not

propose this to prevent a Rebellion, for Women are not so well united as to form an Insurrection”

(The First English Feminist 86). Women, lacking education and training, are at severe

disadvantage. She defends, “There are strong and prevalent Reasons which demonstrate the

superiority and Pre-eminence of the Men” (84). “For in the first place, Boys have much Time

and Pains, Care and Cost bestow’d on the Education, Girls have little or none” (85). She

understands their reluctance to agitate for change and sympathizes, “They are for the most part

Wise enough to Love their Chains, and to discern how very becomingly they set” (86). In this

light, Astell’s statements criticizing the idea that women should rebel against their masters can

be viewed not simply as efforts to protect the status quo, but rather to protect women who are not

adequately prepared for such a revolt.

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Though she loves women and thinks the utmost of their potential, her views of men are

not so positive. Men cannot be trusted, do not act with reason, and are slaves to their appetites.

Astell argues:

If Mankind had never sinn’d, Reason wou’d always have been obey’d, there wou’d have

been no struggle for Dominion, and Brutal Power wou’d not have prevail’d. But in the

laps’d State of Mankind, and now that Men will not be guided by their Reason but by

their Appetites, and do not what they ought but what they can. (75)

Astell denounces the efforts of these men to garner their freedom in the public sphere, while

treating their wives at best as upper class servants and at worst as slaves. She questions the right

of men to demand obedience of a wife in the private sphere that she claims is contrary to men’s

demands for liberty and freedom in the public arena. She asks, “If Absolute Sovereignty be not

necessary in a State, how comes it to be so in a Family? Or if in a Family why not in the State”

(76). Astell wonders how men can demand freedom from their monarch as they grip tight to

their monarchy at home. Astell presses, “For whatever may be said against Passive-Obedience

in another case, I suppose there’s no Man but likes it very well in this; how much so ever

Arbitrary Power may be dislik’d on a Throne, not Milton himself wou’d cry up Liberty to poor

Female Slaves, or plead for the Lawfulness of Resisting a Private Tyranny” (Some Reflections

29).

Astell fears the outcome for women of a government of free and equal men justified by

the social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke. In “Mary Astell and Feminist Critique of

Possessive Individualism,” Ruth Perry argues that Astell was an early critic of the theories of

Hobbes, Locke and other social contract theorists that justified the new forms of government

given their stance regarding women. Perry states, “To her mind [Astell], republicanism licensed

an ever-changing groups of men to compete and fight with one another for political power with

inevitable bloodshed and suffering for all (“Possessive Individualism” 448). Astell believes that

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these factions will lead to disruption and instability in society. Astell exclaims, “By how much

100000 Tyrants are worse than one” (Preface 76).

Given the limits of their bodily strength and their current disadvantages, women will be

the victims of the instability resulting from the fighting between groups of men vying for

political power. In her view, the best political structure is that of a single ruler, a monarch, with

the authority to mitigate the fighting amongst men, to keep order and peace, and more

importantly to protect women. Astell states:

Nor can there be any Society great or little, from Empires down to private Families,

without a last Resort, to determine the Affairs of that Society by an irresistible Sentence.

Now unless this Supremacy be fix’d somewhere, there will be a perpetual Contention

about it, such is the love of Dominion, and let the Reason of things be what it may, those

who have least Force, or Cunning to supply its will have the Disadvantage. So that since

Women are acknowledg’d to have least Bodily strength, their being commanded to obey

is in pure kindness to them for their Quiet and Security, as well as for the Exercise of

their Vertue” (75).

She urges men to honor the institutions and maintain their allegiance to their monarch in the

public sphere as they demand of their wives in the private sphere, “She heartily wishes that our

Masters wou’d pay their Civil and Ecclesiastical Governors the same Submission, which they

themselves extract from their Domestic Subjects” (70).

Astell’s prescriptions for women not only reflect her concern for their peace and security

in a society fomenting from factions of unreasonable men competing to govern, but for the loss

of what little power women have in society given the possibility of these changes. Perry states,

“She recognized from the beginning that the rhetoric of the ‘government of the people’ was

never intended to include women” (“Possessive Individualism” 447). Astell’s ideas derived from

her belief that the individualism spawned by the social contract theorists were selfish,

detrimental to the condition of women, and would result in the erosion of women’s political

power (448). Perry argues that Locke’s ideas in his Second Treatises on Government

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“announced a paradigm shift from a political world populated by men and women involved in a

web of familial and sexual interconnection to an all-male world based solely on contractual

obligation” (449-450). She cites Linda J. Nicholson’s work, Gender and History: The Limits of

Social Theory in the Age of the Family, suggesting that the creation of the public sphere reduced

the power and autonomy of women of Aristocracy by disrupting the court and kin relations

where women had a seat (450). Astell’s positions do not merely embrace the past, but are the

result of the political upheavals and changes in the ideas of her time that she considered

detrimental to women’s conditions and further eroded what limited political power they had.

Astell in her writings anticipate the detrimental outcome to women of this public and

private sphere split. Her response is a rejection of the individualism spawned by these new

theories and an embrace of community, obligation and duty. Astell’s vision of community is not

the social contract theorist’s group of solitary individuals negotiating with others through

contract, but rather is a group of individuals with duties and obligations to each other. Astell

states, “When we consider that we are but several parts of one great Whole, and are by Nature so

connected to each other, that whenever one part suffers the rest must suffer with it” (A Serious

Proposal 211).

Within this paradigm, Astell attempts to protect the position of aristocratic women.

Within the community, the individual’s obligations and duties to others derive from her

capacities, and the opportunities and advantages afforded her. She states:

For unless we have very strange Notions of the Divine Wisdom, we must needs allow

that every one a placed in such a Station as they are fitted for. And if the necessity of the

world requires that some Person shou’d Labour for others, it likewise requires that others

shou’d Think for them. (201-202)

Those having greater capacity and advantage have greater duties and obligations to the

community. Those having greater responsibility to their community must be given greater

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authority to ensure that the needs of the community are met. Given that God has bestowed upon

them advantages and capacities not available to others, Astell believes that her upper class

women have significant obligations to society, and therefore must have authority in it. In her

community of obligation and duty, Astell’s upper class women retain their political power.

Astell fears that upper class women are in no position to use or protect this authority. She

laments the derogatory view of upper class women as emotional, frivolous and spoiled that she

believes they are culpable in creating. Astell seeks to reform the insidious behaviors of her

women that she perceives results from their blind acceptance of custom and tradition. Astell

laments, “‘Tis Custom therefor, that Tyrant Custom, which is the grand motive to all those

irrational choices which we daily see made in the World, so very contrary to our present interest

and pleasure, as well as to our Future” (67-68). The disrupter of the disastrous hold of custom on

women is education. To this end, Astell calls for the establishment of an institution of higher

learning for young, upper class women that she calls a “Religious Retirement” (73).

Granted education for Astell is to prepare women for what she sees as any reasoning

beings ultimate purpose, to be with their God in the hereafter. However, Astell also has an

earthly motive for educating upper class women. Astell’s plan is to provide women the tools to

think rationally and independently. In “Mary Astell: Defender of the ‘Disembodied Mind,’”

Cynthia Bryson argues that Astell proposes an educational method of reasoning based on “clear

and distinct ideas” devoid of “Prejudice and Passion” reflecting her reading and adoption of

Descartes’ methods (42). Astell refines Descartes’ ideas and the theories of Antoine Arnauld into

seven rules of reasoning on a particular subject of interest (Springborg 31). Astell’s instructions

advise her women to disregard all outside influences. Astell recommends, “Disengage our selves

from all our former Prejudices, from our Opinion of Names, Authorities, Customs and the like,

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not give credit to any thing any longer because we have once believ’d it, but because it carries

clear and uncontested Evidence along with it” (A Serious Proposal 133). She directs her

students to carefully consider a problem before them by exercising their mind and unleashing

their innate ability to reason and think. She explains:

Reason will that we shou’d think again, and not form our Conclusions or fix our foot till

we can honestly say, that we have with our Prejudice or Prepossession view’d the matter

in Debate on all sides, seen it in every light, have no bias to encline us either way, but are

only determined by Truth it self, shining brightly in our eyes, and not permitting us to

resist the force and Evidence it carries. (135)

The goal of her educational plan is to disrupt the hold of custom and tradition on women, and to

imbue them with independence by training them to think and to judge using their innate

capacities. Astell proclaims:

And by that Learning which will be here afforded, and that leisure we have, to enquire

after it, and to know and reflect on our own minds, we shall rescue our selves out of that

woful incogitancy we have slipt into, awaken our sleeping Powers and make use of that

reason which GOD has given us. (95)

Bryson asserts, “What Astell sees in Descartes’s method is the opportunity for self-

determination, a goal which any individual who feels her or his social group has been denied it

would wholeheartedly embrace” (43). Bryson maintains that Astell gravitates toward Descartes’

ideas not only because of the autonomy that it affords women, but also for the equality that

Cartesian duality provides them. She states, “One of the main reasons why women, such as

Astell, had so widely accepted and embrace Descartes’s philosophy was ‘that his rule and

method for discerning truth could be used by anyone of either sex’” (46). She continues, “His

dualistic separation of mind and body strengthened the . . . concept of mind as a place ‘where

there is no sex’” (46). Education provides Astell’s upper class women the potential for

intellectual equality with men, and the freedom to think, to reason, and to judge.

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Education is not merely to make women obedient to men and content with their plight,

nor to simply enable them to think and judge rationally. Her plan is to empower upper class

women to determine using Reason their future, and to institute change where they can. Astell

prescribes two viable choices for her upper class women. They marry by selecting a partner

based on their use of Reason rather than bowing to Custom, or forgo marriage. Regardless of

decision, Astell maintains that women have obligations and duties that must be fulfilled. “Permit

us only to understand our own duty, and not be forc’d to take it upon trust from others; to be at

least so far learned, as to be able to form in our minds a true Idea of Christianity” (A Serious

Proposal 81). Imbued with the autonomy to decide and an understanding of their duties and

obligations, Astell believes her educated women can reform their position, reform men, and

change society.

Astell frees her unmarried women from the tyranny of men in the private sphere. She

states, “She will not here be inveigled and impos’d on, will neither be bought nor sold, nor ford’d

to marry for her own quiet, when she has no inclination to it” (102). These unmarried women

can remain at her Religious Retirement to study and to create “virtuous friendships” with other

women. Participation in her community of women requires no religious obligations or vows

(89). Further, Astell questions the right of just any man to assert dominion over unmarried

women. She declares, “Only let me beg to be inform’d, to whom we poor Fatherless Maids, and

Widows who have lost their Masters, owe Subjection?” (The First English Feminist 85). She

continues, “It can’t be to all Men in general, unless all men were agreed to give the same

Commands; do we then fall as Strays to the first who finds us” (85). Perry concurs that Astell

arguments support the right of unmarried women for self-determination and autonomy. Perry

argues:

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Astell’s construction of herself as a free British citizen, subject to no one but her

monarch, was a radical reconception of women’s place in the polity. In bypassing the

political contract made by men, Astell at once invoked the earlier doctrine of the divine

right of monarch over all subjects alike and at the same time denied the power of all men

over all women. (452)

Astell’s unmarried women do not retreat from the world. Much to the contrary, Astell

unleashes these women to actively engage in the world. Astell points out, “Your Retreat shall be

so manag’d as not to exclude the good Works of an Active, from the pleasure and serenity of a

contemplative Life, but by a due mixture of both retain all the advantages and avoid the

inconveniences that attend either” (A Serious Proposal 76). She continues, “It shall not so cut

you off from the world as to hinder you from bettering and improving it” (76). Astell’s

prescription for her women forgoing marriage is to cultivate their capacities in order to work

actively with other women in the world. For her unmarried women empowered with autonomy

and self-determination, Astell envisions, “To all great things that Women might perform,

Inspir’d by her Example [Queen Anne (1702-1714)], Encourag’d by her Smiles and supported by

her Power!” (The First English Feminist 87).

To those choosing marriage, Astell’s prescription for women on closer inspection is not

one of simply advising women to submissively obey and accept their plight. Her prescriptions do

embrace the institutions of society that she sees lending to its stability and the protection of

women in their current condition. Astell does not suggest any radical changes to the institution

of marriage. She maintains that marriage is a sacred institution and states, “The Christian

Institution of Marriage provides the best that may be for Domestick Quiet and Content, and for

the Education of Children; so that if we were not under the tye of Religion, even the Good of

Society and civil Duty would oblige us to what that requires at our Hands” (Some Reflections

11). Similarly, she does not call for radical change in the status of husband and wife, and

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upholds the authority of the husband in the private sphere. Instead Astell endeavors to reform

the participants of marriage, in particular men, who she believes are not fulfilling their duties and

obligations either in marriage or in society given their advantage and capacities. “Not upon the

State it self, if they are just, but upon the ill choice, or foolish Conduct of those who are in it, and

what has Marriage, considered in its self, to do with that?” (9).

In her article, “Mary Astell on Virtuous Friendship,” Jacqueline Broad suggests Astell’s

promotion of virtuous friendship between women at her institution of learning is an example of

her vision of reform. Broad points out that Astell’s concept of virtuous friendship has much in

common with Aristotle’s highest form of friendship in Book 8 of Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle

describes this friendship:

But complete friendship is the friendship of good people similar in virtue; for they wish

goods in the same way to each other insofar as they are good, and they are good in their

own right. [Hence they wish goods to each other for each other’s own sake.] (122)

Astell’s friendship is also unselfish and one in which each participant wishes the best for the

other. Broad quotes Astell:

The greatest usefulness, the most refin’d and dinteress’d Benevolence, a love that thinks

nothing with the bound of Power and Duty, too much to do or suffer for its Beloved; And

makes no distinction betwixt its Friend and its self except that in Temporals it prefer her

interest. (A Serious Proposal 99)

However, Broad maintains that Astell’s goal is for the friends to not only want the best

for one another, but to encourage the other to improve and reform. Broad asserts, “Astell’s

programme for feminist reform does not consist in self-transformation alone, but also

transformation of other women’s moral values” (67). Astell’s “virtuous friendship” is not merely

one of companionship or mentorship, but a relationship that encourages the participants to take

an active interest in the betterment of their friend. Astell states:

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What shou’d hinder them from entering into an holy combination to watch over each

other for Good, to advise, encourage and direct, and to observe the minutest fault in order

to its amendment. The truest effect of love being to endeavour the bettering the beloved

Person. (A Serious Proposal 100)

Though Broad demonstrates the transformative power of Astell’s “virtuous friendship”

between women, she does not consider whether Astell extends the potential of reform through

friendship to the relationship of men and women in marriage. Broad points out that in the

seventeenth century many thinkers believed in the power of friendship to reform the moral

values of individuals (73-74). One of these thinkers is Astell’s mentor John Norris. While many

male scholars believed that friendship could lead to moral reform, they limited the possibility of

reform to friendship between men. They discounted the possibility of true friendship between

men and women due to what they perceived as women’s limited capacity and inferiority. Broad

advances that Norris held different views and he “affirms the possibility of male-female

friendship when he observes that marriage is the ‘strictest of Friendship’” (76).

Similarly, Astell does not dismiss the importance of friendship in marriage. Given her

refusal to accept the inferiority of women and her educational plan that develops the capacity of

a woman to be a reasoning being equal to a man, friendship becomes an important criteria in

marriage. She states, “He who does not make Friendship the chief inducement to his Choice, and

prefer it before any other consideration, does not deserve a good Wife” (Astell, Some Reflections

10). A friendship in marriage is what Astell envisions for her educated women. In a marriage of

friendship, she hopes that her graduates of her institutions of education can improve the overall

morality and behavior of men.

She advocates not for a submissive relationship between men and women in marriage,

but one of equality though each partner’s authority, obligations and respective duties may differ.

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A man by qualification may have more authority in the family, but this authority does not allow

him to rule arbitrarily or to neglect his responsibilities. Astell states:

Nor will it ever be well either with those who Rule . . . even from the Throne to every

Private Family, till those in Authority look on themselves as plac’d in that Station for the

good improvement of their Subjects and not for their own sakes; . . . but as the

Representative of GOD whom they ought to imitate in Justice and Equity of their Laws,

in doing good and communicating Blessings to all beneath them.” (47-48)

Though Astell admonishes a woman not to question “Her Husbands Right or fitness to

govern” (97), she does urge her to question how he governs. She demands that men should not

govern “as an absolute Lord and Master, with an Arbitrary and Tyrannical sway, but as Reason

Governs and Conduct a Man, by proposing what is Just and Fit” (97). She argues that women

should only obey what is reasonable, not what is arbitrary. Astell states:

A blind obedience is what a Rational Creature shou’d never Pay, nor wou’d such an one

receive it did he rightly understand its Nature. For Human Actions are no otherwise

valuable than as they are conformable to Reason, but a blind Obedience is an Obeying

without Reason, for ought we know, against it.” (87)

Armed with the self-determination and autonomy to think, to judge and decide, Astell suggests

that the duty of the wife is to reform the practices of the husband. In a marriage of friendship

wanting the best for the other, the wife should attempt to improve the moral understandings of

her husband. She asserts, “This would shew her what Human Nature is, as well as what it ought

to be, and teach her not only what she may justly expect, but what she must be Content with;

would enable her to cure some Faults, and patiently to suffer what she cannot cure” (86). To her

educated women accepting marriage, Astell proclaims, “To their destroying those worst of

Tyrants Impiety and Immorality, which dare stalk about in her own Dominions” (The First

English Feminist 87).

Astell’s ideas and thoughts do appear conservative and in some cases, regressive.

However, as argued by Apetrei, her thinking is complex and nuanced, and the result of the

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dynamic changes occurring during her period. Astell anticipates Patemen’s sexual contract and

the detrimental implications for women of the changes to society underwritten by the ideas of the

social contract theorists. Astell does embrace the conservative stances of monarchy, patriarchy

and status, but not for nostalgic reasons. In Astell’s view these structures provide the best means

to protect women given their disadvantaged state. Her writings focus on the plight of upper class

women because she fears the erosion of their power. Astell believes that given their advantages

and capacities, these upper class women have the authority and duty along with upper class men

to manage their society. Her prescriptions are not radical, but she does not believe women are in

a position to execute on radical proposals. Her project is to educate women to use Reason, to

understand their duty and obligations, and to empower them to reform others in their family and

community. Her solutions reject the individualism promoted by the social contract theorists, and

require individuals to understand their duties and obligations to the whole. Her desire is to

peacefully and orderly reform society so that men and women can live harmoniously. Astell

wishes:

In a word, to those Halcyon, or if you will Millennium Days, in which the Wolf and

Lamb shall feed together, and a Tyrannous Domination which Nature never meant, shall

no longer render useless if not hurtful, the Industry and Understandings of half Mankind!

(87)

However, true to the complexity of her thought, she hints at the possibility of more radical

actions. If conditions do not improve and when the time is right for women, she urges them:

If they have Usurpt, I love Justice too much to wish Success and continuance to

Usurpations, which tho’ submitted to out of Prudence and for Quietness sake, yet leave

every Body free to regain their lawful Right whenever they have power and Opportunity.

(Some Reflections 95)

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Chapter 3: Mary Wollstonecraft: Creator of SuperMom

Astell’s work focuses on the plight of aristocratic women, suggests solutions that

embrace monarchy, and critiques the social contract that she considers detrimental and

unavailable to women. Wollstonecraft’s strategy is radically different. In her effort to improve

the plight of women, Wollstonecraft rejects the structures of monarchy and aristocracy. She

believes that these structures degrade society by elevating the pursuit of sensual pleasure over the

development of virtue, and obedience to authority over freedom and equality. She cries out, “It is

the pestiferous purple which render the progress of civilisation a curse, and warps the

understanding, till men of sensibility doubt whether the expansion of intellect produces a greater

portion of happiness or misery” (19). Her ideas uphold the natural rights of men and women.

She states, “That the society is formed in the wisest manner, whose constitution is founded on

the nature of man, strikes, in the abstract every thinking being so forcibly” (14). While

Wollstonecraft labels aristocracy as corrupt, she promotes the “middling” class of people that she

claims acquires virtue through industry. She advocates for an egalitarian society of industrious,

virtuous citizens that through civil participation manage society.

In “Mary Wollstonecraft: Eighteenth-Century Commonwealth Woman,” G.J. Barker-

Benfield argues that the primary purpose of much of Wollstonecraft’s writings was to fight for

the liberty and freedom of the common man and his inclusion in the social contract (103). In her

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft declares that the goal of her project is “to

render . . . the social compact truly equitable, and in order to spread those enlightening

principles” to women (Wollstonecraft 190). Astell identifies in the ideas of the social contract

theorists the coming divide between the public and private sphere, and the loss of what little

power women possess in society. Wollstonecraft too identifies this coming divide between

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public and private sphere. However, Wollstonecraft embraces the tenets espoused by the social

contract theorists, and demands women’s inclusion as free and equal individuals of the

originating contract. Wollstonecraft’s plan grants women the rights and responsibilities of

workers and citizens in the public sphere. However, she perpetuates their status as wives based

on their sex in the private sphere. For their rights in the public sphere, Wollstonecraft obligates

women alone to bear the duties of the home, and subordinate their needs to those of their

husband and family.

Like Astell, Wollstonecraft rails against the tyranny of men over women in society.

Throughout A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft equates a woman’s condition

to that of slavery. In “Mary Wollstonecraft and the Problematic of Slavery,” Moira Ferguson

suggests that Wollstonecraft employs the imagery of slavery to communicate a variety of

messages regarding women’s circumstances. She asserts that in her text, Wollstonecraft

“favored a discourse on slavery that highlighted female subjection” and that “the constituency

Wollstonecraft champions – the white middle-class women – is constantly characterized as

slaves” (Ferguson 82).

In the private sphere, Wollstonecraft decries a wife’s status in society as that of “trusted

servant” to her husband. She laments the instruction young women receive from their selfish and

indulgent parents that prepare them “for slavery in marriage” (168). She bemoans that the

desired outcome of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712-1788) curriculum for the education of a

young woman is to make her a “coquettish slave in order to render her a more alluring object of

desire” (28). Employing this imagery, Wollstonecraft makes apparent that her concern is not

only for women’s experience in the private sphere, but also in the public. Wollstonecraft extends

the imagery of slavery to denounce the treatment of women in the public sphere (Ferguson 92).

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She puts forth, “When, therefore, I call women slaves, I mean in a political and civil sense”

(Wollstonecraft 183). Through the imagery of slavery, Wollstonecraft articulates the existences

of the private and public sphere divide and the inequity experienced by women in both realms.

Wollstonecraft illuminates women’s predicament in the private sphere as servants, slaves, and

coquettish objects of desire, but also illustrates that in the public sphere, women, like slaves,

have no civil or political rights.

Like Astell before, Wollstonecraft’s prescription to abolish the slave-like conditions that

women experience in both realms stresses the importance of a proper education for women.

Astell advocated for schools dedicated exclusively to the training of young, upper class women.

Her plan removes young women from the corrupting influences of society, develops their

capacity to reason and think critically, and encourages “virtuous friendships” with other women.

Wollstonecraft’s method moves away from instruction such as Rousseau’s focusing on

obedience and sensuality toward an emphasis on the cultivation of women’s capacity to think

and reason. However, her plan does not advocate for a separate education for young women

meeting their specific needs. Her plan is to teach girls alongside boys. Wollstonecraft

rhetorically poses the question, “Girls and boys still together? I hear some readers ask” (184).

She replies, “Yes” (184).

Many scholars contend that the objective of Wollstonecraft’s educational plan is to make

women into men. As evidence for their assertions, they cite Wollstonecraft:

But if it be against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the

attainment of those talent and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human

character… all those who view them with a philosophic eye must, I should think wish

with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine. (2)

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They point to her views of marriage, criticism of sensual love, devotion to simplicity of dress and

orderliness of thought and manners as examples of Wollstonecraft de-feminizing women. In her

introduction to Wollstonecraft’s work, Barbara Taylor asserts that to free woman, Wollstonecraft

stripped her of any sexuality or sensibility leaving her a masculinized, asexual identity

navigating solely by reason (Introduction xxxi).""

Wollstonecraft’s educational plan is not simply to make women into men. She

understands that this step is not enough, and that many men, common men, are in the same

predicament as women. She states:

I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently

observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the

result? – a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the

grand source of the misery I deplore. (Wollstonecraft I)

Wollstonecraft seeks to rectify the detrimental conditions that she believes plagues many of both

genders. She states, “I have sighed when obliged to confess that either Nature has made a great

difference between man and man, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the

world has been very partial” (Wollstonecraft I). She equates the condition of inequality between

men and women to that among different classes of men. A primary cause is the poor education

received by all women and lower class men.

In “Cultivating Virtue: Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft on Civic

Education,” Wendy Gunther-Canada argues that Wollstonecraft’s project is sweeping. Gunther-

Canada asserts that Wollstonecraft’s educational ideas are revolutionary, and her plan is “geared

toward creating virtuous citizens of both sexes” (“Cultivating Virtue” 58). In the eighteenth

century, most men along with women did not participate at all in the affairs of government (49).

Wollstonecraft’s vision calls not only for the education of girls with boys, but also for upper with

lower classes. Wollstonecraft argues that “to make men citizens” of the social contract,

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children’s instructions must occur in an environment where they spend a “great part of their time,

on terms of equality, with other children” (173). Her educational aspirations for children aligns

with her project “to render . . . the social compact truly equitable” for all people of all classes,

not just women.

Wollstonecraft’s prescriptions attempting alleviate the inequity of all people explain the

scholars’ divergent opinions regarding the women to whom Wollstonecraft speaks. Astell spoke

of the experiences of upper class women and to them. Moira Ferguson suggests that the women

to whom Wollstonecraft speaks are those of the middle class. In A Vindication of the Rights of

Woman, Wollstonecraft speaks of and to many categories of women. She derides upper class

women for their vice and corrupt natures, and praises middle class women as the most virtuous.

At other times, she scolds her middling group for vying to be just like the upper class women

that she detests.

In her dedication to the M. Talleyrand – Perigord, Late Bishop of Autun, Wollstonecraft

throws open the possibility that she does not speak to any particular class of women, but to all

women. As she requests for the gentleman to wisely consider her plan for women’s rights and

education, she states, “I plead for my sex” (Wollstonecraft 7). In “Vindicating Paradoxes: Mary

Wollstonecraft’s ‘Woman,’” Kirsten R. Wilcox argues that in her work, Wollstonecraft actually

creates an abstract version of woman that does not correspond to any form of reality. She states,

“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman seeks to vanquish these insidious preconceptions and to

emphasize the gross disparity between ‘women’ as they are and the abstract ‘woman’ of her title,

the form women would take in a more just world” (Wilcox 44).

But Wollstonecraft project reaches further and she wishes a just and egalitarian world for

all people. In this vein, Wollstonecraft stresses the common humanity of women and men. In

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her introduction to A Vindication to of the Rights of Woman, she derides the characterization of

females “as women” rather than “human creatures” (Wollstonecraft I). Yet again, Wollstonecraft

groups women with men. Wollstonecraft speaks to all classes of women along with all classes of

men. Like her educational plan for children, Wollstonecraft does not suggest prescriptions

specific to women and their plight in the private sphere. The ultimate aim of her project is to

provide prescriptions that ensure to all the rights of free and equal individual of the social

contract.

Though she prescribes solutions available to all people, central to her plan is to rectify a

problem she considers particularly vexing to women. Invoking yet again the imagery of slavery,

Wollstonecraft asserts that women’s lack of proper education makes them slaves to their senses.

Wollstonecraft exclaims, “Let me return to the more specious slavery which chains the very soul

of woman, keeping her fore ever under the bondage of ignorance” (156). She continues, “Their

uncultivated understanding make them entirely dependent on their senses for employment and

amusement” (31). The result of this slavery of ignorance and reliance on their sensibilities is

their dependence on men. Women are not only slaves to men, but are dependent on them for

advice, for judgment, and for protection. Wollstonecraft derides, “And, made by this amiable

weakness entirely dependent, excepting what they gain by illicit sway, on man, not only for

protection, but advice” (66). She sneers, “In the most trifling danger they cling to their support

with parasitical tenacity, piteously demanding succor; and their natural protector extends his

arms” (66-67). An outcome of her effort to educate women properly is to free women from their

slavery of dependence on their senses, and ultimately on men.

A key component of her educational plan is to cultivate women’s independence. She

expounds, “Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every

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virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my want, though I were to live on a

barren heath” (7). Independence plays a prominent role in the lives of Wollstonecraft’s women.

For Astell, independence to reason, to judge and to decide is the primary goal, but for

Wollstonecraft that is simply not enough. Wollstonecraft expects her women to be independent

in all regards. To be free and equal individuals participating with others in the public sphere,

women cannot be dependent on others for their judgments and decisions, but more importantly,

they cannot be dependent on another for their economic subsistence. Wollstonecraft argues that

women, whether married or single, must be economically independent. A wife, she claims “must

not be dependent on her husband’s bounty for her subsistence during his life, or support after his

death” (158). Her goal is to not to make her women into men, but rather her goal is for them to

be rational individuals, independent of thought and economically self-sufficient.

Wollstonecraft bestows on her independent women the status of free and equal individual

of the social contract holding rights in the public sphere. She exclaims, “But to render her really

virtuous and useful, she must not, if she discharge her civil duties, want individually the

protection of civil laws” (158). She continues, “I really think that women ought to have

representatives instead of being arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed in

the deliberations of government” (158). Astell rejects the social contract theorists’ vision of

individuals conducting relations in the public sphere through contract as selfish and prone to

instability as individuals fight for their rights and for power. She laments that the social contract

elevates the needs of the individual and disrupts society by dismantling the individual’s

obligations and duties to society. However, Wollstonecraft does not envision an individualistic

society devoid of duty and responsibility.

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Wollstonecraft also believes that as members of their community individuals have duties

and obligations to one another. With the freedom and rights that she demands for her

independent women, come obligations and duties. Astell maintains that education will enable her

upper class women “to understand our own duty” (A Serious Proposal 102). For Wollstonecraft

the individual’s acquisition of her rights imposes on her the obligation to perform her duty to

community and family. She states, “For without right there cannot be any incumbent duties”

(Wollstonecraft 156), “take away natural right, and duties become null” (158). Like Astell,

Wollstonecraft’s world is one of duty and obligation. However, an individual, a woman, must be

given their rights in the public sphere before they can expected to perform these duties.

Cornerstone to these duties is the responsibility of parents to their children.

Wollstonecraft considers marriage to be “the cement of society,” and the family key to the

education of children (181). Wollstonecraft advances the importance of friendship in marriage.

After years of marriage the initial passion cools, and if there is friendship there is the potential

for a lasting relationship. Further, she believes that friendship, versus passion, between husband

and wife produces a calm family environment that is the best for the nurturing of healthy

children. Many scholars assert that Wollstonecraft advocates for equality in her marriage of

friendship. In “Back to the Future: Marriage as Friendship in the Thought of Mary

Wollstonecraft,” Ruth Abbey points out, “She [Wollstonecraft] envisages a form of marriage that

incorporates the major features of the classical notion of higher friendship such as equality, free

choice, reason, mutual esteem and profound concern for one another’s moral character” (79).

Others concur citing Wollstonecraft’s emphasis on providing women equal education,

demanding their rights in the public sphere and promoting their economic self-sufficiency. The

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husband and wife of equal standing and relating to one another as friends will fulfill their duties

and obligations to the family and to their children.

In “The Radical Ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft,” Susan Ferguson maintains that

Wollstonecraft’s prescriptions depend on the link between private virtue and the public good.

She argues that for Wollstonecraft, the family provides a vital role in ensuring that public good

prevails. Key to the preservation of the common good in the public sphere is the cultivation of

the bond and relationships nurtured in the family of the private sphere. Wollstonecraft contends

that “to make men citizens . . . which seem directly to lead to the desired point” that “the

domestic affections, that first open the heart to the various modifications of humanity would be

cultivated” (173). Ferguson concludes, “In their reformed state, the household becomes the

fundamental social unit, morally and economically of the new society: the preservation of

‘private virtue’ is ‘the only security of public freedom and universal happiness’”

(446).

Wollstonecraft does not suggest that children should be sent away to private institutions

far from home, but believes that children beginning at the age of five should receive their

schooling at “national establishments” close to home. (178). Wollstonecraft firmly believes that

the development of good citizens essential to the public good requires the nurturing environment

of the home. She states, “If you wish to make good citizens, you must first exercise the affections

of a son and a brother” (177). She continues, “This is the only way to expand the heart; for

public affections, as well as pubic virtues, must ever grow out of the private character” (177).

Thus, the success of the public sphere depends on the development of virtue in the private.

In the public sphere, the duties and obligations are those of citizen in participation with

others to provide for the management and functioning of the community. Astell believes that

those of the upper class given the advantages and opportunities of their status should have

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greater authority in and obligation to their community. Wollstonecraft derides as corrupting and

detrimental to society the titles, position and status granted to individuals because of heredity.

She states, “For whilst rank and titles are held of the utmost importance, before which Genius

‘must hide its diminished head’” (Wollstonecraft 14). In the public sphere she does not

relinquish the concept of position within society. Instead of status based on birth, Wollstonecraft

demands that merit, “Genius,” determines the individual’s position and respective authority and

duty within society (14).

In this competition for position based on merit, Wollstonecraft does not dictate how

women will fair. She even considers that men may prove superior. Kirsten R. Wilcox asserts

that Wollstonecraft’s agenda is not to insist “on the equality of the sexes but on the equality of

expectation and opportunity” (452). Wollstonecraft states, “If women are by nature inferior to

men, their virtues must be the same in quality, if not in degree, or virtue is a relative idea;

consequently their conduct should be founded on the same principles, and have the same aim”

(Wollstonecraft 28). Wilcox notes Wollstonecraft’s willingness to cede that woman may not

have the capacities of men, and that men may prove themselves superior (451). Wollstonecraft

continues:

Further, should experience prove that they cannot attain the same degree of strength of

mind, perseverance, and fortitude, let their virtues be the same in kind, though they may

vainly struggle for the same degree; and the superiority of man will be equally clear, if

not clearer; and truth, as it is a simple principle, which admits of no modification, would

be common to both. (39)

Given Wollstonecraft’s demand for equitable education, equality in marriage and participation in

the public sphere as citizen and worker, the chance for parity between men and women seems

possible.

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However, in the private sphere, Wollstonecraft forgoes her demand for equality in the

division of duty and promotes family responsibility based on gender. Women in the public

sphere are free and equal individuals competing alongside men for position based on merit. In

the private sphere, Wollstonecraft’s women are born to Pateman’s status of wives.

Wollstonecraft’s free and equal participant in the social contract of the public sphere becomes a

gendered individual in the private sphere. She states:

The being who discharges the duties of its station is independent; and, speaking of

women at large, the first duty is to themselves as rational creatures, and the next, in point

of importance, as citizens, is that which includes so many, of a mother. (157)

Women to garner their rights in the public sphere and participation in government must be

economically independent. To make a wife economically independent of her husband,

Wollstonecraft suggests, “Women might certainly study the art of healing, and be physicians as

well as nurses” (159). Given their rights in the public sphere, Wollstonecraft imposes on them

gender based duties and obligations in the private sphere. Wollstonecraft does not eliminate a

wife’s duty to act as physicians and nurse to her family in the home. Wollstonecraft grants

women title of citizen, worker and mother. She places women in a triple bind of providing for

her community, her family and herself.

In “Teaching Mary Wollstonecraft: Women and the Canonical Conversation of Political

Thought,” Wendy Gunther-Canada argues, “Wollstonecraft did indeed focus on women’s duties

as mothers but she always emphasized that these were secondary duties’ a woman’s first duty

was to herself alone” (25). For Wollstonecraft, the duty of a rational creature is to unfold their

capacity to reason, to gain their economic independence and their rights. Such a first duty, once

she becomes a citizen does not seem to alleviate her of the duties of mother. In “Freedom as

Independence: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Grand Blessing of Life” Alan M. S. J. Coffee

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concurs, “It is not that we have a duty to ourselves to be independent that takes precedence over

our other duties.” He continues, “The duties of motherhood are not subordinated by

independence. They are made possible” (Coffee 916).

Though Wollstonecraft suggests friendship between men and women in marriage, and

scholars point to the potential for equality in this relationship, Wollstonecraft’s division of labor

in the family appears far from egalitarian. Of men she demands their performance of their duty

as citizen, but of women she demands so much more. She states:

By supposing that society will some time or other be so constituted, that man must

necessarily fulfill the duties of a citizen, or be despised, and that while he was employed

in any of the departments of civil life, his wife also an active citizen, should be equally

intent to mange her family, educate her children and assist her neighbors. (Wollstonecraft

158)

The reason that Wollstonecraft gives for assigning these duties to wives over husbands is

because they are the “peculiar duty of their sex” (Wollstonecraft 196). The role of wife remains

a status to which Wollstonecraft’s women are born to fulfill.

What familial duties does Wollstonecraft impose on the husband? Coffee states,

“Nevertheless, although it is encouraging to read that men have natural duties within the family,

without further specification we cannot assume that both sexes would be burdened equally”

(Coffee 916-917). How does Wollstonecraft in her text express the duties required of the

husband? Wollstonecraft depicts:

The chastened dignity with which a other returns the caresses that she and her child

receive from a father who has been fulfilling the serious duties of his station is not only a

respectable, but a beautiful sight. I have seen her prepare herself and children, with only

the luxury of cleanliness, to receive her husband, who, returning weary home in the

evening, found smiling babes and a clean hearth. (Wollstonecraft 154)

The husband comes home from a long day to angelic home prepared by his wife, the citizen, the

worker, his children’s mother.

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Wollstonecraft seems to perceive the triple bind and heavy expectations she places on

women. Her attempt to alleviate this burden reveals the limitation of prescriptions based on

Richardson’s “false universal” (12) of women rather than one that considers the particular

conditions of a group, be it gender, class or race. Wollstonecraft knows that upper class women

will be able to manage the additional duties of citizen. She scoffs at the abundance of ill used

time and resources that upper class women have. She states, “Women, in particular, all want to

be ladies” (Wollstonecraft 159). “Which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they

scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what” (159). Wollstonecraft realizes that the effort she

imposes on her woman of “middling” class may require that they receive additional help and

support. She states, “I have then viewed with pleasure a woman nursing her children, and

discharging the duties of her station with perhaps merely a servant-maid to take off her hands the

servile part of the household business” (154). But what of the servant-maid, what support will

she have? Susan Ferguson points out that Wollstonecraft’s prescriptions do not encompass lower

class women who must also work to maintain their subsistence and do not have help fulfilling

their responsibilities as citizen, worker, and mother (432).

Coffee argues that the additional duties that Wollstonecraft places on women will be

alleviated by support from the community (Coffee 917). Coffee makes this suggestion, but does

not provide any evidence from Wollstonecraft’s text demonstrating that she expects community

support for her citizen wives. He continues, “This does not mean, however, that mothers are

compelled to take up demanding careers while also meeting their childcare responsibilities as

one horn of ‘Wollstonecraft’s dilemma’ would have it” (Coffee 917). His position is that

independence is compatible with “mutual interdependence,” and all that is required is that the

parties can relate to one another as equals (Coffee 917). His assertion holds no weight. In the

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public sphere, Wollstonecraft’s economically, independent women must compete based on merit

for their position, while they maintain home and hearth. This situation highlights the true link

between public and private sphere, the detrimental one that Wollstonecraft imposes on her

women. She burdens her woman born to her status of wife with the primary responsibilities of

the home, while in her universal role of citizen and worker, she must compete for position and

economic self-sufficiency against men in the public sphere. Wollstonecraft’s plan places women

in a no-win situation. Wilcox concurs, “Wollstonecraft is prepared to accept the consequences of

an ‘unbalanced’ social order in which ‘the superiority of man’ is a given and women ‘vainly

struggle’ to achieve parity’ (451).

Two hundred years later, Pateman asserts that the interdependency of the public and

private sphere hampers women in modern society. A man’s success as a worker and citizen in

the public sphere is dependent on the existence of a woman in the private sphere to take care of

his needs and those of the children and the home. Wollstonecraft’s vision for abolishing

women’s slavery in society by making them free and equal individuals of the social contract fails

to free them because as Pateman warns she does not take into consideration their unique

condition as women. Barbara Todd asserts, “Wollstonecraft identified the dilemma at the center

of all feminism past and present: how is it possible to be both a woman and a full and equal

human subject?” (viii). Wollstonecraft plan demonstrates the dangers of making women free and

equal, while ignoring the specific conditions of their womanhood.

Wollstonecraft advocates for the education of women and the opportunity to cultivate

their reason. She demands for women the rights of free and equal individual in the public sphere,

while in the private sphere she encourages friendship in a marriage between equals. Her

prescription expects women to compete with men in the public sphere, and simultaneously fulfill

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their obligations of wife and mother. Wollstonecraft leaves women trapped in the home in their

role of wife born to specific duties based on their sex. Though she demands that women perform

the “peculiar duties” (196) of their position, she fails to acknowledge the burdens that these

duties place on them. As she races to reformulate women into reasoning, economically

independent citizens, she, like the social contract theorists, dismisses the realities of their

condition. She leaves her women alone in the private sphere to act as mothers, educators,

caregivers, and household managers. For the man of the house, she retains the benefits of

Pateman’s sexual contract. The man of the house, the worker and citizen, retains access to the

physical labor of his woman. Wollstonecraft leaves intact the right of a husband to the labor of

his wife in the home, while his duties are simply citizen and provider of his half of the family’s

subsistence.

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Conclusion

In the book The Sexual Contract, Carole Pateman critiques the prescriptions of the classic

contract theorists that focus solely on the public realm of society, while dismissing as irrelevant

the private sphere. Her work illuminates the private sphere, and the condition of women

residing within it. She argues that the private sphere does not function by the same mechanisms

of the public sphere in Western society. While consent and agreement or contract direct relations

between free and equal individuals, and among citizens and government in the public sphere, the

private sphere operates by a modern form of patriarchy and status. This modern form of

patriarchy affords a man, the husband, a political right to the being of a woman, a wife. As

wives, women are relegated to the home, and denied participation in government and industry.

The status of wife to which a woman is born is one of inferiority and subordination to a husband.

Pateman explains how this status of subordination was constituted through the marriage contract

in Western society. Pateman questions the efforts to improve the plight of women that simply

look to provide them participation in the public sphere as free and equal individuals without

addressing their wifely status in the private sphere, and the assumptions of inferiority

underpinning it. Pateman’s work demonstrates the limitations of solutions that do no consider

the totality of society, its public and private spheres, and do not account for the unique histories

and experiences of individuals.

In their writings, Astell and Wollstonecraft focus on women’s subordination to men in

the private sphere and suggest prescriptions to remedy their predicament. Both proclaim the

capacity of women for rational thought and advocate for their education to counteract the

assumption that their natural condition is that of inferiority to men. Both seek to make women

independent and autonomous beings through education. These women of divergent political

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views grapple with the implications of the social contract for women. Astell’s solution does not

call for the rights of women in the public sphere, but encourages her upper class women to

decide independently whether to live in community with other women or to accept a husband

based on their judgment of his capacities. In either case, her goal is for women to live in

harmony, peace and stability, and where possible to reform those around them. Wollstonecraft

recommends a different approach and embraces the tenets of the social contract as a way to free

women from their condition. She demands for her educated, independent women access to the

public sphere as workers to earn their subsistence and as citizens with rights.

These women believe that marriage is important to the proper functioning of society.

While Wollstonecraft demands individual rights for women, she, like Astell, asserts that

individuals have duties and obligations to their community and family. Both women view the

private sphere not as one of free and equal individuals operating by contract, but rather one in

which participants perform their duties and obligations as members of a family. In marriage,

Astell accepts that men and women are born to fulfill the status of husband and wife, and

upholds the authority of the husband over the wife. However, she suggests friendship between

them, asserts the equality of their intellectual capacity, and attempts to reform both to behave in

marriage by the principles of Reason. Wollstonecraft also advocates for a marriage of friendship

between husband and wife. As friends, Wollstonecraft believes that each parent will uphold their

duty and obligation to the family and to the children. Though many argue that Wollstonecraft

advances equality in marriage, Wollstonecraft’s women are gendered entities fulfilling the wifely

duties of mothers, caregivers and household managers. Though Astell and Wollstonecraft argue

that the status of wife should not be one of inferiority, neither frees their women from the status

of wife or reforms the duties and obligations of this role in the private sphere.

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In her review of the changes to marriage over the last 50 years in the United States, Estin

asserts, “The law has largely abandoned the moral discourse that once surrounded marriage and

divorce, and the status norms that once defined the rights and obligations of husbands and wives”

(335). She asserts that the hegemony of the traditional, religious view of marriage and family has

been upended as people enter into unique marriage contracts, cohabitate, establish single parent

households, and engage in no-fault divorce. Estin suggests, “Americans still place a high value

on marriage” and cites studies indicating that 90% of people in the United States believe at some

point in their lives they will get married (352). She asserts that in their effort to process these

changes to the institution of marriage, Americans are working out how to balance competing

priorities, the desire for “social stability and tradition” with concerns for “their own freedom to

form and leave unions and further their own individual happiness” (351). Americans wrestle, as

did Pateman, Astell and Wollstonecraft, with the delicate balance between their needs as

individuals versus their obligations and duties to their family.

In comments regarding marriage in a paper presented at the Aristotelian Society in 2013,

Clare Chambers states, “Currently, it [marriage] is associated with gendered division of labour,

with women taking on the lion’s share of domestic and caring work and being paid less than men

for work outside the home” (125). Though the legal status of wife as a subordinated position has

been overturned, tradition dies hard, and women are still expected to perform the majority of

family duties. To ensure their individual happiness and to promote the freedom and equality of

women is it best to extend rights and contract to all levels and sectors of society, public and

private? Should the justice of the public realm be applied to the management of the private

sphere as the Pythagorean women philosophers recommended centuries ago? Ruth Abbey in her

article suggests feminist hold a variety views with some advocating for the extension of justice

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into the private realm, while others fear the imposition of the state in the private affairs of the

family (78 80). Pateman too wonders if people truly want to implement a “contractarian

conception of social life,” one that maintains that “there is contact ‘all the way down’; social life

is nothing more than contract between individuals” (Pateman 59).

In the United States, Estin maintains that efforts have been made to encourage marriage

given evidence that suggest, “children raised within marriage generally do better than children

raised in other settings” (346). However, many factors impact the success of a child, and in the

same article Estin maintains that higher rates of marriage occur amongst wealthier and more

educated people (352). Many would also consider the level of parental education and

availability to economic resources as contributing to the success of a child. Another attribute of

marriage that may contribute to a young person’s success and well-being is the commitment,

duty and obligation that members exhibit to one another within a family. Does this commitment

require traditional marriage or does a loving committed relations of individuals co-habitating

provide such an environment? Perhaps full women’s equality and liberation from the status of

wife will only occur if society through legal reform and cultural changes accepts and embraces

all families, opposite-sex, same-sex, cohabitating, single parent and grandparent households. In

these families, the assumption-laden status of husband and wife becomes irrelevant and is

replaced with caring parent and significant other.

And what of relations between individuals in the family? Is it best to dispense with

obligation, duty, and care for other members in the family, be it child, spouse or parent. Is it best

to apply justice to all aspects of the private realm or should the idea promoted by Astell and

Wollstonecraft that family members have a duty and obligation to care for each other be retained

in the private sphere? But what of the individuals who accept the responsibilities of the private

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sphere obligations without compensation for their energy of love and for the loss of their own

economic well-being in the public sphere?

Pateman and Wollstonecraft recognize the interdependency of the public and private

sphere. Both suggest that the operation of the public sphere depends on certain functions in the

private sphere. Pateman suggests that the worker in the public sphere of Western capitalistic

societies assumes a wife in the private sphere providing free labor to support her husband.

Wollstonecraft argues that good citizenry in the public sphere depends on the cultivation of

virtue in the private sphere. Astell and Wollstonecraft are correct that obligation and duties of

family members to care for their loved ones is important. Equally important is to ensure the

well-being and the future potential of those family members, men and women, that remain in the

private sphere or limit their opportunities in the public sphere to fulfill these duties. In this case,

perhaps the operation of the public sphere must be modified to ensure the cultivation of this duty

and obligation so essential to the dynamics of the private sphere and the well-being of all

individuals.

" "

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Note

1. Non-jurors were Anglican clergy that refused to swear allegiance to William III crowned in

1688 after the abdication of the Roman Catholic James II. William Sancroft was a key leader in

this movement of passive disobedience.

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