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Heroes of Progress, Pt. 46: Astell and Wollstonecraft

Blog Post | Gender Equality

Heroes of Progress, Pt. 46: Astell and Wollstonecraft

Introducing the English 17th and 18th century thinkers widely considered to have been the earliest pioneers of feminist philosophy, Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Alexander C. R. Hammond —

Today marks the 46th installment in a series of articles by HumanProgress.org titled Heroes of Progress. This bi-weekly column provides a short introduction to heroes who have made an extraordinary contribution to the well-being of humanity. You can find the 45th part of this series here.

This week, our heroes are Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft–two 17th and 18th century English thinkers, who are widely considered to have been the earliest pioneers of feminist philosophy. The works of Astell and Wollstonecraft gained popularity in the 19th century and helped to provide the philosophical foundation for suffragette and women’s rights movements all over the world.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Western European women were often poorly educated and had very little protection under the law. In a series of prominent works, Astell argued that women should have equal educational opportunities as men. Astell was also the first thinker to base her arguments for gender equality in philosophy, rather than historical evidence, as had previously been the norm.

Wollstonecraft took Astell’s call for equal education between the sexes a step further. The former argued that, since both men and women were endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, women should also be granted the right to vote and allowed to pursue whatever career they wished.

Mary Astell was born on November 12, 1666, into an upper-middle-class family in Newcastle, England. Her father managed a local coal company, but despite her family’s wealth, Astell did not receive any formal education. Instead, she was taught at home by her clergyman uncle, Ralph Astell. Ralph was heavily involved in the philosophical school called Neoplatonism, which taught rationalist beliefs based on the works of the Greek philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras.

At the age of 12, Astell’s father died and left her without a dowry, which meant that her prospects for marrying someone of a similar social class became unlikely. A year later, her uncle Ralph died, leaving her without a teacher. Yet, throughout her teenage years Astell continued to teach herself many subjects and discovered that she had a particular aptitude for political philosophy.

In 1684, Astell’s mother died. That spurred Astell to move to Chelsea, a suburb of London. In Chelsea, Astell became quickly acquainted with a circle of literary and influential women. Astell’s new friends, along with William Sancoft, the former Archbishop of Canterbury who provided her with financial support, helped Astell to develop and publish her writings.

In 1694, Astell published her first book Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest. Six years later, her second book titled Some Reflections upon Marriage was published. Both of these works were published anonymously. In them, Astell argued that women should receive an equal education to men. She averred that the existing intellectual disparity between men and women was not due to a natural inferiority, but due to the latter’s lack of educational opportunity. Astell also argued that women should be able to choose whom they marry or to refrain from marriage if they so desired.

Through these works, Astell became one of the first writers to advocate in favor of the idea that women were just as rational as men. By using Descartes’ theory of dualism (the idea that the mind and body are distinct and separable), Astell argued that both genders had an equal ability to reason irrespective of their physical differences. As such, women should be treated as equals. Astell famously wrote “If all men are born free, why are all women born slaves?”

Later in life, Astell left the public eye. In 1709, she became head of a charity school for girls. Astell designed the curriculum and it is thought that hers was the first school in England to have an all-women Board of Governors. After a mastectomy to remove a cancerous breast, Astell died in her Chelsea home on May 11, 1731.

Throughout her life Astell encouraged both genders to fight for women’s rights. After her death, Mary Wollstonecraft continued the advocacy for educational reform for women that Astell began.

Mary Wollstonecraft was born on April 27, 1759, in London, England. Like Astell, she was born into an upper-middle-class family that became significantly poorer over time. Wollstonecraft’s father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, was a violent man who frequently beat his wife in drunken rages. As a child, Mary would often intervene and try to prevent her father’s abuse. Over time Wollstonecraft’s father gradually squandered the family’s money, causing the family to move several times during her childhood.

Early in Wollstonecraft’s life, she befriended Jane Gardiner, née Arden. The pair would often read the then new “Enlightenment Era” books together. They also attended lectures by Arden’s father, John Arden, who was a scholar of natural philosophy and one of Wollstonecraft’s early teachers.

Unhappy with her home life, Wollstonecraft decided to move. Throughout the late 1770s and early 1780s, she worked in several different jobs across England and Ireland, including as a governess, needle-worker and teacher.

Wollstonecraft became frustrated with the limited career options open to women. In the late 1780s, she embarked on a career as an author, which was seen as a radical choice for a woman at the time. In 1787, Wollstonecraft wrote her first book titled Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. The book resembles an early version of a modern self-help book and offers advice on female education. It also included segments on morality, etiquette and basic child-rearing.

In 1788, Wollstonecraft was employed as translator for the publisher Joseph Johnson, who published several of her early works. Wollstonecraft had a great interest in the French Revolution. After the English philosopher Edmund Burke published a book titled Reflections on the Revolution in France, which challenged the principles of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft decided to respond.

In 1790, Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Men, which criticized the despotism of France’s Ancien Régime, welcomed revolutionary reform, and argued that humanity’s natural rights must be protected by a government. In the book, Wollstonecraft also criticized the arbitrary nature of government power.

In 1792, Wollstonecraft published her best-known work titled A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In the book, Wollstonecraft expanded on Astell’s work and argued that the education system trained women to be frivolous and incapable. Wollstonecraft noted that there are no mental differences between men and women. If women were given the same educational opportunities as men, she argued, the former would be capable of doing many professions and elevating themselves in society.

Unlike Astell, Wollstonecraft believed that the betterment of women should be sought through radical political change, with reforms required in both the educational and voting system. Wollstonecraft noted that, as men and women were intellectually similar, women should also be granted the right to vote. She wrote, “Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.”

Wollstonecraft also noted that “liberty is the mother of virtue.” Conversely, if women were kept “by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of freedom, they must ever languish like exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws of nature.”

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was hugely successful and helped bolster Wollstonecraft’s reputation as a writer. Later in 1792, Wollstonecraft went to Paris to observe the French Revolution. She arrived just a month before King Louis XVI was guillotined. Wollstonecraft stayed in France until 1795.

After the breakdown of a romantic relationship, Wollstonecraft was left heartbroken and twice attempted suicide. When she returned to England, Wollstonecraft became actively involved in a close-knit group of radical intellectuals, which included William Godwin, Thomas Paine, William Blake and William Wordsworth.

Mary Astell is depicted on the left side of the photograph above. Mary Wollstonecraft is on the right.

In 1797, Wollstonecraft married William Godwin and gave birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – who would go on to write Frankenstein. Just 11 days after she gave birth, Wollstonecraft died of septicemia on September 10, 1797.

Astell and Wollstonecraft’s writings were unsuccessful in bringing about immediate reforms when they were published. The works of the two thinkers, however, provided the intellectual foundation for the suffragette and feminist movements, which started in the late 19th century and continue around the world to this day. Although they were considered radicals during their time, without their ideas it is unlikely that women’s rights would be as extensive today as they are. For that reason, Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft are rightfully our 46th Heroes of Progress.

Nature | Child Abuse & Bullying

Child Marriages Plunged When Girls Stayed in School in Nigeria

“An educational programme for young girls in northern Nigeria that involved local religious leaders massively reduced the number of child marriages, a study reported in Nature today has found…

In the first year of the programme, out-of-school girls were offered accelerated learning in reading, mathematics, life skills and business skills in ‘safe spaces’ dedicated to them. In the second year, the emphasis was on ensuring that the girls return to school. Parents were helped with the costs of school fees and uniforms, and girls continued to have access to tutoring and mentoring in the safe spaces, which were like after-school clubs. Those who did not return to school were offered vocational training to work in local shops.

What is new about this approach is that the researchers tested its effectiveness in a randomized control trial. The researchers enrolled 1,181 adolescent girls from 18 communities in the states of Borno, Kaduna and Kano who were both out of school and unmarried at the start of the programme. The communities were divided into nine pairs: one community of each pair participated in the programme while the other did not. The involvement of local leaders helped the programme to recruit almost all of the girls that met the inclusion criteria in each community, Abubakar says.

The trial took place between 2018 and 2020, and participants were surveyed at the beginning and at the end of the programme. By the final survey, 79% of the girls participating in the programme were still unmarried, versus about 14% in the group that did not participate. This corresponds to an 80% decrease in the likelihood of marriage during the study period, the researchers say.”

From Nature.

Blog Post | Women's Empowerment

The Glory Days of Women’s Culture in China

The decline of Chinese women’s literary culture reminds us that progress is not irreversible.

Megan Yao —

Summary: Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, women’s rights and freedom of expression in China have faced severe repression, with censorship stifling discourse on gender and punishing outspoken female writers. Periods of greater political liberty saw flourishing women’s literature that challenged traditional roles and highlighted women’s ambition. Despite the current crackdown, the resilience of female writers persists through underground literary communities.

For women’s rights activists in China, the 2020s seem to be the worst time ever. Under Xi’s presidency, censorship of public opinions has peaked, including that of writings about gender equality. Journalist Huang Xueqin, who published investigations on #MeToo cases, for example, was incarcerated for “subversion.”

Literature also has suffered a bigger setback.  Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) outlawed any negative commentary on its legitimacy, writers have had to sacrifice their artistry for safety. Those who hold on to their commitment to the arts are banished from the publication world. Yan Geling, one of the most famous Chinese female writers of the 21st century, was banned from all press for critiquing Xi’s treatment of women.

However, the environment for female writers in China has not always been oppressive. Rather, the extent of women’s cultural contributions has always been negatively correlated with the governmental control of individual liberty.

The first surge of women’s writing in modern China was during the 1920–30s, when the nation was under the governance of the Nationalist Party of China (NPC). Despite the wartime turmoil and the infamously corrupt NPC government, society at the time was highly liberal. At the turn of the century, the traditional academic community was replaced by a new generation of intellectuals, most of whom had received Western education. In 1915, these young scholars started the New Cultural Movement. The movement fought against feudalism and advocated for democracy, liberalism, individual freedom, and equality for women. By the 1920s, Chinese society had incubated a myriad of liberal writers, artists, and academics, including some of the most important female literati in modern China, such as Zhang Eileen, Ding Ling, and Xiao Hong. Be it Zhang’s Love in a Fallen City, Ding’s Diary of Miss Sophie, or Xiao’s The Field of Life and Death, their works thematized the experiences of “new women.” Though clenched between the lingering feudalist customs and the transitioning new era, they continued to pursue independence and freedom.

The liberal environment did not survive, as what followed was the establishment of Communist China and, subsequently, the 10-year Cultural Revolution—a time when the government, rather than the people, defined how an individual should think and feel.

Donned the “Stinky Ninth Class,” the literati were considered “spiritually unclean.” During the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art, Mao Zedong announced that all works of art and literature must extol the Communist regime and serve only the interests of the workers, peasants, and soldiers. Literature, once the epitome of free speech, became a vessel for CCP propaganda.

The female writers, who had thrived in early 20th-century China, were deprived of their voices. Many were tortured to death by the Red Guards; those who survived had to relocate abroad. Ding, for example, was banished to the northern deserts, and Zhang immigrated to the United States. Slogans popularized by the government such as “whatever men can do, women can do too” ostensibly supported gender equality but, in truth, constituted an attempt to masculinize women. This propaganda masked the government’s rejection of women as an independent gender that had its unique history and needs.

The turning point occurred when Deng Xiaoping took over the presidency and introduced the “Reform and Opening Up” policies in the 1980s. He reinstated a significant degree of economic and political liberty by allowing foreign investment. Meanwhile, he ended Mao’s state surveillance and class struggle propaganda and, until the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, supported free speech.

The transformed political environment revived literature. The public’s suppressed yearning to express themselves in the previous 10 years burst forth in the form of a literary mania. Writers and poets, who used to be despised by all, were idolized. Thousands of people swarmed into auditoriums to attend poetry readings, and when they ended, rushed to the stage in tears and hugged the poets; some even kneeled and kissed the poets’ shoes. As a result, the female writers were able to rebuild their community and eventually channeled the “Golden Age” of women’s writing. Poets such as Shu Ting and Zhai Yongming and writers like Wang Anyi and Zong Pu, through avant-garde writing styles, told stories of modern women’s tenacity amid the political turmoil and the trials they underwent trying to obtain equality in a new time. They presented to society an image of women being strong-willed and ambitious, overturning the traditional perception of them as weak and dependent.

Though the current illiberalism in China is restricting women’s freedom to express themselves, the resilience that persisted through a history of constant changes and frequent catastrophes has grown stronger. An “underground” literary community came into being. Women organized off-the-books writing groups, book clubs, and literature societies, where they admired women’s writings over the past century. Women’s literary culture might be declining in China, a good reminder that progress is not irreversible, but as long as the predecessor’ legacy is still cherished, it will persevere.

Reason | Science & Education

Could Elite Colleges Embrace the SAT Again?

“After a yearslong trend of elite colleges dropping standardized test requirements from their applications, the tide seems to be turning for the SAT. Long derided as unfair, unnecessary, or even sexist and racist, college entrance exams are gaining new defenders who point out that, contrary to common conception, standardized tests help—not hinder—talented yet disadvantaged students.”

From Reason.