McGrath and LeDoeuff, in their articles, seem to agree with the assumptions of Astell and Cavendish that in order to attain pleasure, education, or both, women must remove themselves from society in a very literal and physical way. This idea of seclusion echoes both Woolf’s “Room of One’s Own” and the utopias put forth by the writers in last class’ readings. However, each woman sees solitude as necessary for a slightly different purpose. For instance, the purpose of Astell’s solitude is to remove the woman from the temptations of society; her focus is not on quiet, except in the sense that quiet is a relief from “the noise and trouble, the folly and temptation of the world.” In Astell’s view, the world and its associated noises are all instruments of temptation.
Obviously the question of women’s places in society and the public world is one discussed by almost every reader who addresses women. Therefore, it is possible that Astell is responding to the view of women held by writers such as Vives, who claims that in order to preserve her reputation and not act as a temptation for men, “a woman should live in seclusion.” Vives’ claim happens in the context that a woman in public is doomed from the start, since any choice she makes will prove that she is not good, virtuous, and chaste. For example, he claims that “if you speak a little in public, you are thought to be uneducated; if you speak a lot, you are light headed.” While the framing of Vives’ statements seems to acknowledge the double standard contained within them, he does nothing to implicate the structure of his society in this frustrating contradiction, but places the responsibility squarely on the heads of the women being judged. It is possible that Astell, exasperated by his impossible demands, subverted his demand for women’s seclusion in order to further her own arguments. Vives’ demand seems almost self-contradicting in light of McGrath’s view of “women’s participation in pleasure and privacy as means to subjectivity.”
LeDoeuff, in her focus on women gaining access to male circles of thought, seems ambivalent about seclusion as promoting thought. In relation to the male philosophers she writes about earlier in the article, solitude is something that is “needed” and termed “precious.” On the other hand, as she discusses the theme of solitude in the writing of Gabrielle Suchon, she seems to see the isolation of “the poor woman” as a “tragic position if there ever was one.” I have to wonder if her own resentment at being excluded, as a woman, from the community of French philosophers colored her reading of Suchon’s position. Indeed, Suchon did not seem to feel this kind of pity for herself; LeDoeuff admits that she even “advocated solitary reflection as the proper starting point of intellectual development.” Suchon went even further to imagine societies of women that would nurture thinking and conversation, and to engage in “a conversation with both past and contemporary authors.” While it is lamentable that Suchon did not have the external intellectual community that she desired, she seemed to be able to own her solitude in a way that, in the context of all of our reading this term, can only be called feminine.
Gabrielle Suchon’s image of a world where women could talk, argue, debate, and learn from each other echoes the demand for women’s spaces and communities in the context of women’s learning that seemed to flourish in the seventeenth century. However, they did so with varying levels of practicality, from Astell’s practical ideas for funding her monastery to Cavendish’s obviously fantastical convent. In LeDoeuff’s framing, Suchon seemed to call upon women themselves to begin this process of learning and thinking and society-forming; LeDoeuff does not mention Suchon’s calling for a changing of any kind of structure that currently prevented women from doing so. Astell’s proposal addresses some of these issues. While Devereaux points out that Astell adheres to “conventional structures of masculine hierarchy,” in developing her “feminotopia” (and indeed, her occasional use of phrases like “stock the kingdom with pious and prudent ladies” is, from a feminist point of view, problematic), we should not be too quick to criticize this aspect of her work.
Astell was obviously aware that her piece would be read by people of many minds; she would be read by women who supported her cause, by those who were still steeped in the time period’s patriarchal and Christian views of women’s roles in the world, and by men who had the money and influence to make real changes in their societies. In order to appeal to all of these demographics at once, Astell mobilized an impressive arsenal of persuasive tools that makes this piece simply fun to read. Her use of rhetoric is clever and, at times, biting, but she manages to address her readers in ways that would persuade even the hardest of hearts.
First and foremost, Astell keeps her arguments strongly grounded in the Christian ideology that surrounds her. She appeals to the stereotypical desire of woman to make those around her happy and the world around her a better place; with this, and not personal fulfillment as the ultimate goal of education, she keeps her demands clearly within the lines of what is acceptable at the time. She also echoes the ideas that Speght so passionately put forth in Mortalities Memorandum in prioritizing the soul’s afterlife over the body’s earthly life. She bases her logical appeals on a Christian belief system, arguing that a woman “who is a Christian out of Choice, not in conformity to those about her” – who isn’t just good, but can “give a reason why she is so” - will not be easily tempted by sin. Another logical appeal she makes actually addresses one of the more practical aspects of this separate society: funding. As made clear in Devereaux, one of the points of educating women (according to Astell) was to help society and make the women into good wives. Astell proposed that fathers pay their daughter’s intended dowry as her tuition; since these funds would be used to educate the women, therefore making them more valuable as wives, it is seen as a gain, not a financial loss. While this idea could be seen as perpetuating the commodity exchange view of women, it is unarguably a solid, logical argument for the education of women. Astell also uses her logic to point out the irony present when women are denied advantages but then reproached because they lack the skills those advantages produce. Furthermore, she implies that if a woman is useless to a man or to mankind, it’s men’s own faults for denying her a proper education.
The more emotional parts of her appeals continue to address the idea of education as conducive to better Christianity. For instance, she appeals to the emotions of parents by implying that neglecting to educate children is “wicked,” then influences them by asking the rhetorical question “is Charity so dead in the world that none will contribute to saving their own and their neighbours’ souls?” (hoping, obviously, that the answer is “no”). Astell’s imagery is also closely tied to religion; the images of a soul so pure that it would be like an antidote to evil, able to “expel the poison in others” would have surely been appealing to a good Christian of her time. Furthermore, her allusions to the Garden of Eden that place men in the traditionally female role, implying that they will resent the idea that women are “invited to taste of that Tree of Knowledge [men] have so long unjustly monopolized.” By doing so, she subtly implicates men in the fall from Eden, perhaps to emphasize that they do not have an exclusive claim on knowledge and education. Additionally, Astell’s metaphors echo Biblical metaphors that use common, recognizable images of nature to make her points; for instance, she posits that a woman’s piety may be large and visible, but if it lacks roots a temptation can knock it down, or it may wither of its own accord. Her argument also likens women to rich soil that, if cultivated properly, would yield a bountiful harvest; readers would have immediately recognized this image, along with the previous one, as familiar from the book of Mark, which talks about seeds falling on rich soil providing a plentiful crop as a metaphor for Jesus’ parables: only those “in the know” would be able to understand the parables and learn from them. Astell’s use of this familiar imagery makes her readers feel like “insiders” who understand her message; this understanding, hopefully, would make them more likely to agree with her points.
Astell wraps up her textbook-thorough use of rhetorical devices by dropping a few snappy and quotable aphorisms into her writing, making claims like: “were the world better, there would be more Friendship, and were there more Friendship we should have a better world.” The confidence implied in this phrasing would ideally inspire confidence in her readers.
While it has been a recurring theme of the writers we’ve read this term that many are not aware of or do not address issues of class in their time, limiting their subjects and audiences to middle or upper class women, I was surprised to see the same kind of elision of class issues in one of the modern writings. Michele LeDoeuff, in her discussion of seventeenth-century women writers, does not acknowledge the challenges that women faced in accessing knowledge and information; she claims that in the “post-Gutenberg era,” when printed books were more affordable than they had previously been, even “a lower-middle-class woman could invite herself to discussions held in the filed without anyone’s permission.” McGrath obviously believes that it was not that easy; if an “eloquent, educated woman bore a worrying kinship to the curious Eve in pursuit of… knowledge,” it would take more than a few coins for her to have easy access to education. While I don’t want to diminish the difficulty that LeDoeuff and her peers may have faced gaining access to the inner sanctum of the philosophy community, it seems that her struggle and waiting for the male philosophers to break “the sacrosanct male contract” so that she and other women philosophers could sneak into the discussion was a much more manageable task than the consciousness-development that women of the seventeenth century would have to undergo in order to demand access to education. LeDoeuff believes that “every woman had always had a natural right to learning and philosophizing. But this right remained dormant until the concrete means (affordable books) came along.” However, even though the physical tool of learning, the book, may have come within reach, there was as yet no infrastructure in place to support women’s learning.
One last point that I found interesting, but that I’m not sure is important or not, was the positive and negative connections made between clothing and education and each of their relationship to frivolity throughout the readings. For instance, McGrath makes a point that in the seventeenth century, women’s learning was often posited as analogous to dressing frivolously; this devaluation and trivializing of women’s learning perhaps acted as a rhetorical argument against it. However, Astell counters this point by arguing the very opposite; she says that learning will help women resist such frivolous talk, and people who want to gossip about fashion will have nobody to talk to if women choose to be educated. In light of these, I was a little conflicted about Cavendish’s work; her description of the Convent of Pleasure seemed rather decadent, as if the imaginings of an aristocratic lady in her spare time. However, if, at the time, the opinion was that “For a woman, the ‘desire for information’ always risked the appearance of frivolity, perhaps of self-indulgence,” could Astell’s virtuous monastery of learning be viewed as no more chaste than Cavendish’s luxurious pleasure convent?
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