Some Reflections Upon Marriage. / With additions.

by Mary Astell

A Man therefore for his own sake, and to give Evidence that he has a Right to those Prerogatives he assumes, should treat Women with a little more Humanity and Regard than is usually paid them. Your whifling Wits may scoff at them, and what then? It matters not, for they rally every Thing though ever so sacred, and rail at the Women commonly in very good Company. Religion, its Priests, and those its most constant and regular Professors, are the usual Subjects of their manly, mannerly and surprizing Jests. Surprizing indeed! not for the Newness of the Thought, the Brightness of the Fancy, or Nobleness of Expression, but for the good Assurance with which such Thread-bare Jests are again and again repeated. But that your grave Dons, your learned Men, and, which is more, your Men of Sense, as they would be thought, should stoop so low as to make Invectives against the Women, forget themselves so much as to jest with their Slaves, who have neither Liberty, nor Ingenuity to make Reprizals; that they should waste their Time, and debase their good Sense, which fits them for the most weighty Affairs, such as are suitable to their profound Wisdom and exalted Understandings! to render those poor Wretches more ridiculous and odious who are already in their Opinion sufficiently contemptible, and find no better Exercise of their Wit and Satire, than such as are not worth their Pains, though it were possible to Reform them, this, this indeed may justly be wonder’d at!

I Know not whether or no Women are allow’d to have Souls; if they have, perhaps it is not prudent to provoke them too much, lest, silly as they are, they at last recriminate, and then what polite and well-bred Gentleman, though himself is concern’d, can forbear taking that lawful Pleasure, which all who understand Raillery must taste, when they find his Jests who insolently began to peck at his Neighbour, return’d with Interest upon his own Head? And indeed Men are too Humane, too Wise, to venture at it, did they not hope for this Effect, and expect the Pleasure of finding their Wit turn to such Account: For if it be lawful to pry into a Secret, this is, without doubt, the whole Design of those fine Discourses which have been made against the Women from our great Fore-Fathers to this present Time! Generous Man has too much Bravery, he is too Just and too Good to assault a defenceless Enemy, and if he did inveigh against the Women, it was only to do them Service! For since neither his Care of their Education, his hearty Endeavours to improve their Minds, his wholesome Precepts, nor great Example could do them good, as his last and kindest Essay, he resolv’d to try what Contempt would do, and chose rather to expose himself by a seeming Want of Justice, Equity, Ingenuity and Good-nature, than suffer Women to remain such vain and insignificant Creatures as they have hitherto been reckon’d; and truly, Women are some Degrees beneath what I have thus far thought them, if they do not make the best Use of his Kindness, improve themselves, and, like Christians, return it.

Let us see then what is their Part, what must they do to make the Matrimonial Yoke tolerable to themselves as well as pleasing to their Lords and Masters? That the World is an empty and deceitful Thing, that those Enjoyments which appear’d so desirable at a Distance, which rais’d our Hopes and Expectations to such a mighty Pitch, which we so passionately coveted, and so eagerly pursued, vanish at our first Approach, leaving nothing behind them but the Folly of Delusion, and the Pain of disappointed Hopes, is a common Outcry; and yet, as common as it is, though we complain of being deceiv’d this Instant, we do not fail of contributing to the Cheat the very next. Though in reality it is not the World that abuses us, ’tis we abuse our selves; it is not the Emptiness of That, but our own false Judgments, our unreasonable Desires and Expectations that torment us; for he who exerts his whole Strength to lift a Straw, ought not to complain of the Burden, but of his own disproportionate Endeavour which gives him the Pain he feels. The World affords us all the Pleasure a sound Judgment can expect from it, and answers all those Ends and Purposes for which it was design’d; let us expect no more than is reasonable, and then we shall not fail of our Expectations.

It is even so in the Case before us; a Woman who has been taught to think Marriage her only Preferment, the Sum-Total of her Endeavours, the Completion of all her Hopes, that which must settle and make her Happy in this World, and very few, in their Youth especially, carry a Thought steadily to a greater Distance; She who has seen a Lover dying at her Feet, and can’t therefore imagine that he who professes to receive all his Happiness from her, can have any other Design or Desire than to please her; whose Eyes have been dazled with all the Glitter and Pomp of a Wedding, and, who hears of nothing but Joy and Congratulation; who is transported with the Pleasure of being out of Pupillage, and Mistress not only of her self, but of a Family too: She who is either so simple or so vain, as to take her Lover at his Word, either as to the Praises he gave her, or the Promises he made for himself; in sum, she whose Expectation has been rais’d by Courtship, by all the fine Things that her Lover, her Governess and Domestick Flatterers say, will find a terrible Disappointment when the Hurry is over, and when she comes calmly to consider her Condition, and views it no more under a false Appearance, but as it truly is.

I Doubt in such a View it will not appear over-desirable, if she regards only the present State of Things. Hereafter may make amends for what she must be prepar’d to suffer here, then will be her Reward, this is her Time of Trial, the Season of exercising and improving her Vertues. A Woman that is not Mistress of her Passions, that cannot patiently submit, even when Reason suffers with her, who does not practise Passive Obedience to the utmost, will never be acceptable to such an absolute Sovereign as a Husband. Wisdom ought to Govern without Contradiction, but Strength however will be obeyed. There are but few of those wise Persons who can be content to be made yet wiser by Contradiction; the most will have their Will, and it is right because it is theirs. Such is the Vanity of Human Nature, that nothing pleases like an intire Subjection; what Imperfections won’t a Man over-look where this is not wanting! Though we live like Brutes, we would have Incense offer’d us, that is only due to Heaven it self, would have an absolute and blind Obedience paid us by all over whom we pretend Authority. We were not made to Idolize one another, yet the whole Strain of Courtship is little less than rank Idolatry: But does a Man intend to give, and not to receive his Share in this Religious Worship? No such matter; Pride and Vanity, and Self-love have their Designs, and if the Lover is so condescending as to set a Pattern in the Time of his Addresses, he is so just as to expect his Wife should strictly Copy after it all the rest of her Life.

But how can a Woman scruple intire Subjection, how can she forbear to admire the Worth and Excellency of the Superior Sex, if she at all considers it! Have not all the great Actions that have been perform’d in the World been done by Men? Have not they founded Empires and overturn’d them? Do not they make Laws and continually repeal and amend them? Their vast Minds lay Kingdoms waste, no Bounds or Measures can be prescrib’d to their Desires. War and Peace depend on them; they form Cabals and have the Wisdom and Courage to get over all the Rubs, the petty Restraints which Honour and Conscience may lay in the Way of their desired Grandeur. What is it they cannot do? They make Worlds and ruin them, form Systems of universal Nature, and dispute eternally about them; their Pen gives Worth to the most trifling Controversy; nor can a Fray be inconsiderable if they have drawn their Swords in’t. All that the wise Man pronounces is an Oracle, and every Word the Witty speaks, a Jest. It is a Woman’s Happiness to hear, admire and praise them, especially if a little Ill-nature keeps them at any time from bellowing due Applauses on each other! And if she aspires no further, she is thought to be in her proper Sphere of Action; she is as wise and as good as can be expected from her!

She then who Marries, ought to lay it down for an indisputable Maxim, that her Husband must govern absolutely and intirely, and that she has nothing else to do but to Please and Obey. She must not attempt to divide his Authority, or so much as dispute it; to struggle with her Yoke will only make it gall the more, but must believe him Wise and Good, and in all respects the best, at least he must be so to her. She who can’t do this is no way fit to be a Wife, she may set up for that peculiar Coronet the antient Fathers talk’d of, but is not qualified to receive that great Reward which attends the eminent Exercise of Humility and Self-denial, Patience and Resignation, the Duties that a Wife is call’d to.

But some refractory Woman perhaps will say, how can this be? Is it possible for her to believe him Wise and Good, who by a thousand Demonstrations convinces her, and all the World, of the contrary? Did the bare Name of Husband confer Sense on a Man, and the meer being in Authority infallibly qualify him for Government, much might be done. But since a wise Man and a Husband are not Terms convertible, and how loth soever one is to own it, Matter of Fact won’t allow us to deny, that the Head many times stands in need of the Inferior’s Brains to manage it, she must beg leave to be excus’d from such high Thoughts of her Sovereign, and if she submits to his Power, it is not so much Reason as Necessity that compels her.

Now of how little Force soever this Objection may be in other respects, methinks it is strong enough to prove the Necessity of a good Education, and that Men never mistake their true Interest more than when they endeavour to keep Women in Ignorance. Could they indeed deprive them of their Natural good Sense at the same Time they deny them the true Improvement of it, they might compass their End; otherwise Natural Sense unassisted may run into a false Track, and serve only to punish him justly, who would not allow it to be useful to himself or others. If Man’s Authority be justly establish’d, the more Sense a Woman has, the more Reason she will find to submit to it; if according to the Tradition of our Fathers, (who having had Possession of the Pen, thought they had also the best Right to it) Womens Understanding is but small, and Man’s Partiality adds no Weight to the Observation, ought not the more Care to be taken to improve them? How it agrees with the Justice of Men we inquire not, but certainly Heaven is abundantly more Equitable than to injoin Women the hardest Task, and give them the least Strength to perform it. And if Men, learned, wise and discreet as they are, who have, as is said, all the Advantages of Nature, and without Controversy, have, or may have, all the Assistance of Art, are so far from acquitting themselves as they ought, from living according to that Reason and excellent Understanding they so much boast of, can it be expected that a Woman who is reckon’d silly enough in her self, at least comparatively, and whom Men take care to make yet more so; can it be expected that she should constantly perform so difficult a Duty as intire Subjection, to which corrupt Nature is so averse?

If the great and wise Cato, a Man, a Man of no ordinary Firmness and Strength of Mind, a Man who was esteem’d as an Oracle, and by the Philosophers and great Men of his Nation equal’d even to the Gods themselves; If he, with all his Stoical Principles, was not able to bear the Sight of a triumphant Conqueror, (who perhaps would have insulted, and perhaps would not) but out of a Cowardly Fear of an Insult, ran to Death, to secure him from it; can it be thought that an ignorant weak Woman should have Patience to bear a continual Outrage and Insolence all the Days of her Life? Unless you will suppose her a very Ass, but then remember what the Italians say, to quote them once more, since being very Husbands they may be presum’d to have some Authority in this Case, An Ass, though slow, if provok’d, will kick.