Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

Jennie Batchelor (University of Kent at Canterbury)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

Mary Astell's

Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of their true and greatest Interest

was published in 1694. Anticipating the conduct book's rhetoric of improvement and indebted to seventeenth-century philosophic debates on knowledge and learning, Astell's impassioned argument for women's education is one of the earliest feminist polemics. Her argument is brilliantly clear, rigorously reasoned and systematically exposes the prejudice, hypocrisy and injustice tainting the lives of women in late seventeenth-century society. Where earlier writers such as Bathsua Makin and Anna Maria van Schurman had sought to convince a male readership that women possessed reasoning faculties and therefore could benefit from a formal education,

A Serious Proposal

is built upon women's…

1214 words

Citation: Batchelor, Jennie. "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 October 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10533, accessed 19 March 2024.]

10533 A Serious Proposal to the Ladies 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.