Jacqueline Broad

A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700

Preface Introduction 1. Christine de Pizan 2. Women of the Italian Renaissance 3. From Anne de Beaujeu to Marguerite de Navarre 4. Queen Elizabeth I of England 5. From the Reformation to Marie le Jars de Gournay 6. Women of the English Civil War era 7. Quaker women 8. The Fronde and Madeleine de Scudery 9. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle 10. Women of the Glorious Revolution 11. Women of late seventeenth-century France 12. Mary Astell Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Mary Astell on Virtuous Friendship

According to some scholars, Mary Astell’s feminist programme is severely limited by its focus on self-improvement rather than wider social change. In response, I highlight the role of ‘virtuous friendship’ in Astell’s 1694 work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. Building on classical ideals and traditional Christian principles, Astell promotes the morally transformative power of virtuous friendship among women. By examining the significance of such friendship to Astell’s feminism, we can see that she did in fact aim to bring about reformation of society and not just the individual.

Impressions in the Brain: Malebranche on Women, and Women on Malebranche

In the late seventeenth century, a number of women actively embraced the new Cartesian philosophy in their published works. Some appealed both implicitly and explicitly to Descartes’s views about the mind’s natural ability to find truth; some highlighted the soul’s essential nature as a nonbodily substance; and others wrote about the Cartesian method of overcoming the influence of the senses and the passions on the mind. At first glance, it is understandable why Descartes’s ideas were so attractive. As Mary Astell (1666–1731) remarked in 1697, ‘All have not leisure to Learn Languages and pore on Books, nor Opportunity to Converse with the Learned’. Yet with Cartesian philosophy – and other ‘new philosophies’ of the period, such as those of Locke and Hobbes – women did not require a formal institutional training; all they required was a mind and the ability to ‘use their own Faculties rightly, and consult the Master who is within them’. In theory at least, the fact of their womanhood did not exclude them from participation in philosophical discourse. Nevertheless, Descartes himself never makes the point that ‘the mind has no sex’ or that women are naturally capable of practising Cartesian method. These are conclusions that early

Mary Astell’s critique of Pierre Bayle: atheism and intellectual integrity in the Pensées (1682)

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the English philosopher Mary Astell’s marginalia in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s personal copy of the 1704 edition of Pierre Bayle’s Pensées diverses sur le comète (first published in 1682). I argue that Astell’s annotations provide good reasons for thinking that Bayle is biased towards atheism in this work. Recent scholars maintain that Bayle can be interpreted as an Academic Sceptic: as someone who honestly and impartially follows a dialectical method of argument in order to obtain the goal of intellectual integrity. In her commentary, however, Astell suggests that: (i) if Bayle were honest and impartial in his inquiries, then he would not have pretended to attack popular superstition, only to undermine generally-held religious beliefs; and (ii) if Bayle valued intellectual integrity, then his argument for a society of virtuous atheists would not have relied upon a deceptive equivocation in terms. I conclude that the rediscovery of this marginalia is valuable for enhancing our appreciation of Astell as an astute reader of one of her most enigmatic contemporaries.

Cavendish, van Helmont, and the mad raging womb

In April 1667, Mary Evelyn wrote to her son’s tutor, Ralph Bohun, describing a visit that she had paid to Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle (1623–73). Evelyn reports that Cavendish was with the physician and natural philosopher Walter Charleton (1619–1707) and that he was “complimenting her wit and learning in a high manner; which she took to be so much her due that she swore if the schools did not banish Aristotle and read Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, they did her wrong, and deserved to be utterly abolished.”1 Evelyn left the meeting declaring that “Never did I see a woman so full of herself, so amazingly vain and ambitious.”2 Enthusiastically recounting the details of her philosophy, citing “her own pieces line and page,” Cavendish paused for breath apparently only in order to greet the arrival of new admirers. While Evelyn may have had a personal grudge against Cavendish,3 her detail about “banishing Aristotle from the schools” still rings true with our present- day opinions about Cavendish’s natural philosophy.

A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700: The Fronde and Madeleine de Scudéry

During the seventeenth century in France, women began to exercise more influence in a wider range of political and literary movements than had been the case in any previous century. Arguably, they were more influential during this period than they were to be during the two following centuries. This was the period of the rise of salon culture, and an explosion in womens writing, particularly poetry, portraits, novels, and moral maxims. It also embraced the political disturbances called the ‘Fronde’, which involved a number of central female actors. Literature and politics were closely entwined, for during this period in particular women used literature ‘to assert their influence on the centurys political and social structures’. Various reasons may be proposed for womens literary and political emergence in France at this time. It may well have had something to do with their political prominence at court. During the first half of the seventeenth century, the advent of two regencies, those of Marie de Medici and Anne of Austria, demonstrates that womens prudence and capacity to rule was widely accepted, though still contested. These regencies were associated with the emergence of new forms of literature discussing the virtues of women under the rubrics honnete femme and femme forte . This literature is different from the earlier querelle des femmes in that it assumes that women are capable of virtue and outlines the character of the honourable, heroic, and strong woman.

A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700: Christine de Pizan

Christine de Pizan (1364–1430) lived in France from the reign of Charles V, through the madness of Charles VI, until the year in which the appearance of Joan of Arc secured the succession of Charles VII. Christine thus suffered the effects of the conflict between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, which had one of its murderous climaxes in the Cabochien uprising of 1413. During this period, she wrote a number of works promoting princely virtue, often intended for Louis of Guyenne, the eldest son of Charles VI, and Isabeau de Baviere, who, she hoped, might ultimately take over the government and secure the peace. She also wrote during a period that famously consolidated the authority of vernacular literature. Against the background of the dissemination of translations of classical thought to a courtly and lay audience, promoted by Charles V, Christine was able to establish herself as an authoritative female writer. In 1403, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, invited her to write a history of Charles V. In response Christine painted an idealised portrait of this king, whose prudence, justice, and capacity to maintain the peace and prosperity of France constituted for her the ideal princely government. Christine also wrote works defending women, for which she is now best known. In this chapter, we examine the way in which her meditation on the nature of good government interconnects with her defence of womens authority.

Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century by Jacqueline Broad

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Elisabeth of Bohemia 2. Margaret Cavendish 3. Anne Conway 4. Mary Astell 5. Damaris Masham 6. Catherine Trotter Cockburn Conclusion Bibliography Index.