By Rena Ryu, WWP Research Fellow

Looking back at Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694), it seems I carried the wrong impression right up until the end about her final proposal for education. Given the historical period she was writing in, I felt that she would attempt to persuade skeptical readers that women were capable of reason before proposing any sort of educational reform. So, when she opted to pace her story with much time describing specific places like the “Religious Retirement,” “Happy Retreat,” and “Amicable Society,” I was a little disgruntled. Why did Astell choose to delineate her proposal for education by spending quantities of time drawing out architecture instead of immediately outlining what women should study? As I read through her piece, however, new perspectives seemed to enter the picture. Astell already assumes from the beginning that women have the ability to possess reason. Therefore, I read Astell’s descriptions of retirement, gardens, mirrors, and society as different kinds of “spaces” where these places are not necessarily literal rooms within her proposed institution, but conceptual spaces that she believes intellectual life requires in order to prosper. Ultimately, her proposal suggests that education begins with the creation of an environment in which the mind may learn to think. 

To begin this discussion, it is necessary to define what education meant to Astell. To this author, education is the careful construction of an environment that protects attention, encourages thoughtful reflection, and allows reason/opinion to flourish. Immediately, the language Astell utilizes for her proposed institution suggests that it must mean more than a simple school. She utilizes the phrase “Religious Retirement” to evoke that there is some sort of withdrawal. Elsewhere, this space metamorphosizes into a “Happy Retreat” or an “Amicable Society.” Each phrase suggests a different element of intellectual life as pieces of symbolism. Retirement suggests distance from distraction, happiness creates the possibility of intellectual fulfillment rather than education being obligatory, and an amicable society imagines learning as a shared practice independent from gender as well as isolated pursuit. When combined, these phrases describe a brief summary of Astell’s ideal conditions in which learning should take place. 

The “Room” of Retirement

To make the breakdown of this piece clear, I decided to assign sections to investigate each of the “spaces” mentioned by Astell, starting off with the room of “Religious Retirement.” A quick note here, Astell does not necessarily present each of these concepts as a separate physical location within her proposed institution. I use “room” deliberately as I am treating them as different dimensions of the educational space she imagines. In the case of the “Religious Retirement,” I wanted to emphasize the significance of the “retirement” part, although the religious dimension of Astell’s proposal is also essential to her argument. The word suggests a deliberate withdrawal from a set of habits, societal pressures, and distractions that shape everyday life. Throughout A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Astell contrasts this imagined withdrawal with what she describes as “the noise and hurry of the world” (D8r). This language reveals her concerns with the conditions that prevent sustained thought, not simply the broader theme of women’s exclusion from education. Noise overwhelms the mind with external pressures, while rushing prevents the slow process of judgment and self-examination. By calling for the removal of women from an environment encouraging distraction, Astell imagines a space where the mind can grow to become disciplined enough to engage in serious reflection. This is why, in my opinion, she begins with a room rather than rashly assigning a curriculum. Before women may study, they must first possess the ability to remain with an idea and let it sit. Therefore, the room represents the first pillar of Astell’s ideology that thought requires an environment where it is allowed to exist. 

The Garden

The garden is an extension of Astell’s concern with environments with a little twist to it. If the room is a space designed to cultivate reason, the garden would represent a space that has already been assigned to women according to society’s expectations. Astell questions how women are “content to be in the world like Tulips in a Garden, to make a fine shew and be good for nothing” (B6r). The line may be interpreted in a way that suggests women were raised to be ornamental. However, this image becomes more complex when considered alongside the description of the room. 

 As a fellow gardener of various plants myself, I will share some of my gardening observations. Florists and gardeners plant, arrange, and cultivate tulips along with other “decorative” plants according to other people’s visions of beauty. In other words, those that plant determine the plant’s purpose before they are given the opportunity to determine it themselves. Using this metaphor, Astell attempts to shift the blame for women’s “superficiality” away from women themselves and toward the environment that has ultimately pruned them this way. 

In this way, the garden becomes yet another educational space. While the room cultivates reflection with reason, the social garden raises women to be admired. By beginning with the room, Astell is asking readers to consider what kinds of spaces produce thoughtful people as opposed to those that only produce objects of admiration. 

The Mirror

Compared to the room or the garden, the mirror is an object, not a physical location that can be entered. Yet, I still consider it a kind of space since it determines where the attention is directed. Astell writes “Your Glass will not do you half so much service as a serious reflection on your own Minds” (B4r). When examined closely, the mirror represents a familiar form of self-examination—one of external appearance. We are all familiar with it and it encourages attention toward the surface of the body. However, the room encourages the attention inward, asking the individual to examine themselves through mental traits. The difference lies ultimately, in what each space teaches the person to notice. Through this comparison, Astell claims that education begins with changing the habits of perception with the overlying goal of obtaining knowledge. The mirror becomes a symbol of misplaced attention, while reflection becomes the practice that allows reason to develop.

The Amicable Society

Up until this point in Astell’s writing, it is clear that she emphasizes the necessity of retirement and reflection. However, she discourages this intellectual growth as being completely solitary. The idea of the “Amicable Society” is that society creates the conditions for thought to be shared. The choice of the word “amicable” suggests that friendship is necessary in order for knowledge to develop and diffuse. 

The thing about the room is that Astell could have imagined women’s education through the modeling of existing universities that are centered around hierarchy and authority. The most genius part of her ideas is that she delineates education as being a community built on conversation and mutual support, “You will only quit the Chat of insignificant people, for an ingenious Conversation; the froth of flashy wit for real wisdom; idle tales for instructive discourses” (D8v). Through discourse, encouragement, and disagreement, these women would practice the very reasoning skills that society had denied them the opportunity to develop. 

The room, therefore, is not empty, but is filled with voices of women where conversation can become intellectually meaningful. 

Back to the Room

When I first read A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, my first thought was why Astell devoted so much time to describing a room before outlining the necessities of education. After a thorough analysis, I realized that the room was her argument. Every space she delineated with such detail revealed another dimension of necessary intellectual development. Together, these spaces suggest that thought does not develop independently from the environments that shape it. Astell’s ultimate proposal is that women should create a “room” where a different vision of what women (and thinkers more broadly) can become a shape they imagine themselves.

Sources:

Astell, Mary. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, 1694. Northeastern University Women Writers Project, 4 Apr. 2002. https://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/texts/astell.proposal.html.

This post is part of a series written by Rena Ryu, WWP Research Fellow. See the other two posts: “What Does it Take to Build a Space for Women’s Minds?” and “What if the Door Was Never the Point? Astell, Cavendish, and the Making of Women’s Intellectual Worlds.”

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