•  
  •  
 

Keywords

Mary Astell and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, women’s intellectual inheritance, Enlightenment gender thought

Abstract

Among the more startling friendships of early 18th-century London’s literary scene is that of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mary Astell. Their commonalities—remarkable self-education, political activism, and prolific writing—are dwarfed by vast differences of class, politics, and character. Astell, a curiously conservative woman nearly twenty-three years Montagu’s senior, spent her unmarried life squarely in the middle class. Montagu, on the other hand, began her life in England’s loftiest social echelons—the daughter of a Duke, she eloped with untitled Edward only to see him become one of England’s wealthiest men. Montagu lived colorfully with “principles,” according to Lady Irwin, “as corrupt as her wit is entertaining.” Astell, a staunch High Church Anglican, “admired Lady Mary at the same time as she despaired of her salvation”; Montagu’s Christianity was more latitudinarian than her devout elder. The unflappable Astell kept her own, simple London residence for nearly all of her life, enjoining her friends, neighbors, and readers to Christian conduct and the women to “passive obedience” in their political and domestic spheres. In an age where class represented British society’s primary fault line—a gap much more pronounced for women—a friendship like theirs was rare.4 The two decades separating Astell from Montagu suggest that their relationship was shaped less by intellectual parity than by a dynamic of progenitor and inheritor—and that this dynamic, more than even their intellectual parity, sustained their mutual loyalty. The scholarly literature often acknowledges an inheritance dynamic in Astell and Montagu’s relationship, but the evidence for that inheritance deserves closer attention. The Letters sit somewhat awkwardly within the era’s broader Orientalist discourse; a careful reading draws out the Astellian inheritance that distinguishes Montagu’s contribution. Indeed, in Letters from the Levant, Montagu brought to life a new world bursting with inspiration from Astell’s early gendered thought; rendered in an exotic setting, the Letters occupy a singular place among Enlightenment-era social autocritiques.

Download

Share

COinS