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A Paradise Within? Mary Astell, Sarah Scott and the Limits of Utopia
Author(s) -
DEVEREAUX JOHANNA
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2008.00120.x
Subject(s) - paradise , utopia , context (archaeology) , sociology , paradise lost , epistemology , philosophy , psychoanalysis , literature , art history , psychology , art , history , theology , archaeology
Mary Astell and Sarah Scott's feminist texts A Serious Proposal and Milennium Hall , written sixty years apart from each other, both espouse theories of feminine retreat and education. However, the changing philosophical context in which these texts were written, from the 1690s Cambridge Platonists to the mid‐century theorists of sociable benevolence, makes them very different in their intellectual perspectives. The feminist possibilities identified by Astell and Scott arise from their responses to contemporary male philosophers. Their texts, far from straightforwardly utopian, identify how through the correct kind of philosophical education, women might learn to be of social and spiritual worth.