The Study Of Mary Astell’s Feminism

Mary Astell(1666-1731),was one of the earliest true feminists in Britain, even inthe world, and also she was the first writer who focused on exploring and defending thefemale thoughts. With the two most famous books, Reflection upon Marriage and ASerious proposal to the Ladies, Astell won the name of “the first modern feminist”.In western world, feminism is a social thoughts which has a tremendous influence.From its development, the liberal feminism in early stage is the first school in which thethoughts of Astell had extraordinary representation.From the angles of family, marriage, politics and education etc, Astell analyzed andillustrated the feminism deeply. From the position of females, she challenged theauthority of males, attacked the traditional thoughts of treating women as “seniorservants”, and criticized the relationship of administrative subordination in marriage.She thought females and males had intellectual equality, and called for the women toface themselves, and appealed the society to give more opportunities of education forthe women. The aim of Astell was to let the women give up on scissors, needle worksand embroideries, and made them become to the Amazon Warrior Women, which meansthe independence persons in emotional and ideologically. Astell described an academicmonastery for women where separated away from men’s power and shelter. And themonastery was the prototype of latter women’s collage. Her thoughts influenced thewomen in her era whose thinking to themselves, and caused the panics in male criticsthat they worried Astell had the half human rebellion been horn sounded. Astell hadhuge contributions to feminism, she played a key role in guiding the women to seek theliberation and create the equal, respective, understanding and harmonious genderrelationship.