Women, Religion, and Enlightenment: Mary Astell's Serious Proposal to the Ladies
0
조회
0
다운로드
3
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
In the wake of Carol Pateman’s influential critique of liberal contractual theory as a pact among male subjects leading to exclusion of women from the political realm in The Sexual Contract (1988), there has been a greater impetus for feminists to conceptualize a feminism that can override the narrow bounds of liberal ideas of freedom and equality. From this re-visionary perspective, it has seemed all the more remarkable that so many female poets, playwrights, and philosophers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century were so overwhelmingly Tory. Political thought was largely based on religious and theological positions, and many women writers felt it was their duty to publish their thought based on their faith. Religious debate was not an issue of private belief, but at the very core of the public sphere discourse of politics and letters. It is in this context that we must figure the extraordinary writing of Mary Astell (1668-1731), a deeply religious, and deeply conservative English woman who was both a true royalist and a true promoter of freedom for women. This paper takes into close consideration her first published work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, to examine her stance on how an institution for female knowledge and religion can contribute to female freedom and virtue. Astell’s understanding of freedom as a Christian ideal is at once religious and political, and has influenced many subsequent feminist writers as seemingly different as Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Abstract
In the wake of Carol Pateman’s influential critique of liberal contractual theory as a pact among male subjects leading to exclusion of women from the political realm in The Sexual Contract (1988), there has been a greater impetus for feminists to conceptualize a feminism that can override the narrow bounds of liberal ideas of freedom and equality. From this re-visionary perspective, it has seemed all the more remarkable that so many female poets, playwrights, and philosophers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century were so overwhelmingly Tory. Political thought was largely based on religious and theological positions, and many women writers felt it was their duty to publish their thought based on their faith. Religious debate was not an issue of private belief, but at the very core of the public sphere discourse of politics and letters. It is in this context that we must figure the extraordinary writing of Mary Astell (1668-1731), a deeply religious, and deeply conservative English woman who was both a true royalist and a true promoter of freedom for women. This paper takes into close consideration her first published work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, to examine her stance on how an institution for female knowledge and religion can contribute to female freedom and virtue. Astell’s understanding of freedom as a Christian ideal is at once religious and political, and has influenced many subsequent feminist writers as seemingly different as Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft.
참고문헌 (25)
- Achinstein, Sharon, "Mary Astell, Religion, and Feminism: Texts in Motion in Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith" (2007), Ashgate
- Astell, Mary, "Reflections upon Marriage. Political Writings", pp.1~80 (1996), Cambridge UP
- Astell, Mary, "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies" (2002), Broadview P
- Astell, Mary, "Letters Concerning the Love of God" (2005), Ashgate
- Ballard, George, "Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain: who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the learned languages, arts and sciences. (1752)" (1985), Wayne State UP
- Bordo, Susan, "The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture" (1986), SUNYP
- Broad, Jacqueline, "Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century" (2002), Cambridge UP
- 최주리, "Born Free? Mary Astell’s Reflections upon Marriage and Defoe’s Roxana", 근대영미소설, 17(2), pp.5~32 (2010), 한국근대영미소설학회
- Goldie, Mark, "Mary Astell and John Locke", Kolbrener and Michelson, pp.65~86
- Haakonssen, Knud, "Enlightened Dissent: an introduction in Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth- Century Britain", pp.1~11 (1996), Cambridge UP
- Johnson, Samuel, "The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia" (1976), Penguin
- McDowell, Paula, "The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace 1678-1730" (1998), Oxford UP
- McKeon, Michael, "The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge" (2005), Johns Hopkins UP
- Michelson, Michal, "Our Religion and Liberties: Mary Astell’s Christian Political Polemics in Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400-1800", pp.123~136 (2007), Springer
- Pateman, Carol, "The Sexual Contract" (1988), Polity P
- Pacheco, Anita, "Introduction. Early Modern Women’s Writing" (2002), Blackwell
- Perry, Ruth, "The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist" (1986), U of Chicago P
- Perry, Ruth, "Mary Astell and the Feminist Critique of Possessive Individualism", Eighteenth-Century Studies, 23(4), pp.444~457 (1990)
- Pocock, J. G. A, "The Varieties of Whiggism from Exclusion to Reform, Virtue, Commerce, History", pp.215~310 (1985), Cambridge UP
- Smith, Hilda, "Cry up Liberty: The Political Context for Mary Astell’s Feminism", pp.193~204, Kolbrener and Michelson
- Springborg,Patricia, "Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination" (2005), Cambridge UP
- Taylor, Barbara, "Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination" (2003), Cambridge UP
- Weil, Rachel, "Political Passions: Gender, the family and political argument in England 1680-1714" (1999), Manchester UP
- Willen, Diane, "Religion and the Construction of the Feminine", pp.22~39, Early Modern Women’s Writing
- Young, B. W, "Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England:Theological Debate from Locke to Burke" (1998), Oxford UP