The First English Feminist by Isabel Clarke

naïve in her assumptions, are incredibly aff ecting and sympathetic. At the core of it, all she wants is to be safe and with her family. The care Martin puts into characterising this young girl as she is put through increasingly traumatic events after the death of her father, including being forced by Joff rey to look at Ned’s head mounted on a spike on the walls of the Red Keep, is a powerful start, delivering a character whose nuances go underappreciated by most audience members.

In my opinion, this is only strengthened by how Sansa adapts to the newly hostile atmosphere of King’s Landing. She begins to use her ladies’ courtesies to her advantage, gaining an understanding of the double meanings and duplicity of court after the Lannisters and Baratheons she thought she could trust turned her into their hostage at the onset of the War of the Five Kings. She feigns loyalty to her captors, continuing to profess her love of Joff rey even as she begins to hate him. The best exemplifi cation of Sansa’s subtle agency in her new position of knowledge, is her saving of the knight Ser Dontos Hollard, who embarrasses himself by showing up to a tourney drunk and is nearly killed by Joff rey. It is Sansa’s clever suggestion that execution would not be as good of a punishment as being turned into Joff rey’s fool, sparing the man’s life. This is both an illustration of Sansa’s intelligence, that she’s able to play on her knowledge of Joff rey’s love of humiliating people, and her genuine kindness, making her one of the few characters to go out of her way to save people she has no benefi t in saving. Similar acts of kindness such as her singing to calm the panicked women of King’s Landing during the siege of the Battle of Blackwater highlight this trait. In this way, Sansa is thematically allied with Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth; knights who, despite their disillusionment with storybook chivalry, resolve to fulfi l the values of the noble protector even in a land as harsh as Westeros. These characters incidentally also fi nd themselves at the top of my list of favourite characters. Part of Martin’s craft is in creating a world that may seem needlessly dark but conveying an eff ective message through the characters that make the active decision to help those that cannot help themselves.

The accusation has also been levelled against Martin that Sansa remains a political pawn, simply playing into the hands of the larger fi gures like Cersei or Petyr Baelish. Certainly, in the cases of both her marriage to Tyrion Lannister and her escape from King’s Landing after Joff rey’s dramatic death at his own wedding, Sansa has little choice but to follow the direction of whoever she thinks has the best chance of getting her back to her family. But even in this limited capacity, Sansa still exercises soft power when she can. For instance, whilst in hiding at the Eyrie under the alias Alayne Stone, she makes the active decision to aid her ward and only living protector Petyr Baelish in becoming regent to the heir of the Vale, the sickly child Sweetrobin Arryn. In the books, she tells Lord Nestor Royce that the attempted rapist Marillion was the one to push her aunt Lysa to her death, and in possibly my favourite Sansa-centric scene on the show, she tells Lord Yohn Royce that Lysa committed suicide in a

fi t of self-hatred. This is a direct parallel to the fi rst instance where Sansa was asked to corroborate a story in the fi rst book – only now she is wiser, not caught in indecision but instead deciding to throw in her lot with Petyr, at the same time subtly demonstrating the power she coud hold over him. Altogether, an important refl ection on Sansa’s growth, fully aware of the political implications of her actions. This is the point at which we leave Sansa in the books, hidden in the Vale, learning more about who to trust and how to manipulate things for her own ends. As it is, I am very excited to see how Sansa’s arc is expanded on with the (hopefully) impending release of the Winds of Winter, as I hope I’ve communicated here how

well-done Sansa’s development is. Her story is one of innocence, to disenchantment, to adaptation; and it is vital to the wide variety of female characters within the series. Personally, I fi nd Sansa’s gaining of her bearings and increasing political competency whilst still being an intrinsically compassionate and idealistic person at heart especially engaging, and I do consider it a feminist narrative amongst a dearth of poorly written women in the fantasy genre.

Unfortunately, the TV series, continuing beyond the available books to adapt from, completely decimates the subtlety of the intended arc with a

senseless need to pile on more horror. Instead of remaining at the Vale, Sansa takes up the role of book-only character Jeyne Poole and is married to the abusive Ramsay Bolton, a character who exceeds Joff rey in acts of cruelty. In this nonsense twist of a consistent narrative, the lead writers display their worst and most exploitative tendencies, reaching a particularly abhorrent peak with a rape scene on the wedding night. Needless to say, I hate this choice. Not only is the scene written in a voyeuristic and disrespectful way, where the violent assault of a character aged 16 is lingered on beyond any modicum of comfort, but it is treated by the remaining portion of the show as a seminal incident in Sansa’s arc, the fi nal straw that broke the camels back and plunged a character I value so much for her kindness into cynicism. Because apparently, seeing her father beheaded, being kept as a hostage for years, being a victim of constant beatings and threats of sexual violence from Joff rey, losing her brother and her mother and to her knowledge the rest of her siblings – isn’t enough “character building” trauma for a primary female character. Any spark of personality or hope must be stamped out in this frankly childish miming at what the writing team thinks Martin’s dark themes are. Sexual violence is frequently incorporated into the books, frequently in clumsy ways, but none that have disgusted me in this way. It just goes to show how truly rudderless the series was after they exhausted all existing materials.

The later seasons of the TV show’s idea of a feminist arc is not the considered, careful plotting of Sansa’s book arc where she grows into a resourceful and resilient character, but instead an insulting phoenix rising from the fl ames, poorly developed and hollow payoff where Sansa’s pain is torturously presented for us in excruciating detail so that her eventual accession to the throne feels “earned”. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how to write a rewarding story; sexual violence is not a necessity for a female character to be compelling, or for her to reach the heights of her male peers. Furthermore, none of Sansa’s humour or heart are present in the self-satisfi ed gloom of the fi nal seasons. The dialogue continuously beats you over the head with how this new, muted, emotionally cold Sansa is “the smartest person” in the room without ever actually having her be proactive in a way that makes sense. The only attempt at this, the plot to expose and execute Petyr, is confusingly plotted, leaving Sansa’s actual agency in the sting operation in question.

Overall, the TV series’ choices with regards to Sansa are spectacularly disappointing, ruining the feminist resonance of her original story. To anybody feeling disheartened after this discussion of the heavier subjects, I am sorry, but I am very hopeful that Sansa’s arc in the books will go on to be as interesting and well written as it has been throughout the last fi ve books. To anybody whose interest has been peaked by the level of spoilers in this article, please do read A Song of Ice and Fire- I’ve barely scratched the surface of the thematic depth and breadth of worldbuilding present in these books, they really are worth the time investment! And there are many rewarding takeaways in how to write a multifaceted, nuanced young woman like Sansa. Truly a fascinating case when considering feminism in literature.

The First English Feminist

By Isabel Clarke

When it comes to Feminist writers, there will naturally be a handful of names that are more familiar than others: names such as Margaret Atwood - author of The Handmaid’s Tale - or Carol Anne Duff y – previous poet laureate and writers of anthologies such as Feminine Gospels and The Worlds Wife – are most likely to spring to mind. Names of women writing before the 20th century with a feminist agenda seem even more scarce, though one might think of the likes of Virginia Woolf, Mary Shelley, or her mother Mary Wollenscroft, regarded by some as the fi rst British Feminist.

Yet, it is Mary Astell who has earned the name The First English Feminist, having been born in 1666 in Newcastle to an upper-middle class coal merchant, 93 years before Wollenscroft. Astell received an informal education from her uncle Ralph, who was a local Cambridge curate as well as a published poet and intellectual, whereby she gained a familiarity and mastery of Christian Platonism (a 17th-century attempt by Cambridge intellectuals to reconcile Christianity with humanism and science by using Plato’s theories), thereby gaining an education beyond that of most women of her social standing.

At around 20-21 years old, Astell moved to Chelsea, London, where she spent most of her adult life. This represented a bold decision on her part, for she had no prospects of marriage and no indication that she would be able to make a living by gaining money off her writings. Yet she fortunately became acquainted with a circle of aristocratic women, such as Lady Elizabeth Hastings and Lady Catherine Jones, who were willing to support Astell, acting as patrons. Thus, with their assistance alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, whom she managed get to fi nance her early writing career after explaining how her poverty (as a result of her father’s death at 12) had forced her to pawn all of her clothes, she was able develop and publish her works.

Such includes a wide range of genres, from political through to philosophical; a number of political pamphlets were published in 1704 regarding her views on how the whig party were trying use the church in order to gain offi ce, and her various novels include her views on metaphysics as well as feminist issues. In her 1694 book A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, she presents her argument

Fronticepiece from Jacques du Bosc’s The Excellent Woman Printed for Joseph Watts (1692) Off ered by Ruth Perry as an example of how Astell might have looked. Credit: British Library

for the establishing communities of learning for women and female academies (much like our beloved Shrewsbury High). Later in Some Refl ections on Marriage, published in 1700, she showcases a radical treatise containing a critique of patriarchal marriage, and marital gender inequality. It is in this book that she warned female readers that a husband is a ‘monarch for life’ and that her perhaps most famous quote: ‘If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?’ comes from.

She was one of the fi rst English women to advocate the idea that no woman should be forced to marry against her will, maintaining that women were just as rational as men, and just as deserving of education; a proposition deemed so absurd, it wasn’t until the 20th century that people began agreeing. She argued this throughout her entire life, eventually turning her attention away from her pioneering publications to actually running a charity girls’ school in Chelsea after withdrawing from public life in 1709. Astell designed the school’s curriculum, and it is thought to have been the fi rst school in England with an all-female Board of Governors, for she was of the belief that the world was so corrupt as a result of male dominance that women should receive an education free of male infl uence in a spiritual environment away from society. Astell died later in 1731 from breast cancer.

One can already see the remarkable nature of Astell, standing up to the patriarchy (alongside a wide range of other issues) at a time when resistance against oppression from a woman seemed completely unheard of. Moreover, a recent discovery at Magdalene College, Cambridge unveiled by the college on the 8th March to mark International Women’s Day, has unearthed a group of volumes, all the property of “the fi rst English feminist”, which further proves Astell to be a female intellectual, a thinker on a wide range of topics. I was lucky enough to get to hear about this astonishing fi nd fi rst hand on the 28th April from various specialists, as well as Catherine Sutherland, deputy librarian at the Pepys Library and Old Library at the college, who talked more about Astell and the uncovering itself.

The collection comprises 47 books and pamphlets, all owned and annotated by Astell. All of the titles date from the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries and mostly correlate with Astell’s academic interests and the trajectory of her writing career. Sutherland found them during a recent provenance survey of Magdalene’s Old Library holdings, consisting of roughly 8500 books and manuscripts amassed since the founding of the college since its formation as a Benedictine hostel back in 1482. This survey is the culmination of around 5 years’ work to form an online searchable list of the library’s contents, in advance of more in depth cataloguing of books. Sutherland was able to identify those belonging to Astell by piecing together clues from bindings and citations in Astell’s published writings. Some showed more explicit signs of ownership, containing her full name and price of the book when purchased. Others contained anonymous marginalia and notes, from which Sutherland compared handwriting, remarking how identifi cation became easier over time

It seemed Astell was a copious annotator, often choosing to comprise indices for her books, for her own personal reference and make corrections to the printed text using errata slips (a slip of paper inserted into a printed book listing important mistakes in the text noticed since publication). She used pen and pencil to make additions, deletions and substitutions but also wrote more interpretive comments in the larger blank spaces. From this, one can observe her

Catherine Sutherland with the Mary Astell Collection in the Old Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge

clear in depth understanding of the various subject matter within her novels; they were found to be loosely aligned with her topics and infl uential writers, with plenty of marginalia on a variety of subject matter. Sutherland says: “Most of her books were read and thoroughly engaged with, especially those which informed her own work to a signifi cant degree.”

Amongst her selection, twenty-eight of the items are in English, eighteen in French and one in Latin. There are numerous works by French philosopher René Descartes, showing not only her high level of education - for in the early eighteenth century, only a minority of British women could read in English, let alone in French, and annotations show her translating short sections of complex topics in a foreign tongue - but also the extent of Astell’s scientifi c understanding. Astell came to Descartes via the writing of Nicolas Malebranche and the two French philosophers became the greatest infl uences on her work. Astell seems to have undertaken an intense period of study in French during her correspondence with John Norris, who recommended she read their work.

One gets the sense that Astell was an “all-rounder”, not merely focussing solely on women; most scholarly interest in Astell has centred around her philosophical thought and proto-feminism, but now we see evidence of her engaging with diff erent subject matter, creating detailed notes relating to maths and science which are particularly striking. There are even specifi c works to which Astell

refers in her notes, such as Borellus’ De vi Percussonis, et Motionibus Naturalibus a Gravitate Pendentibus (1686), alongside issues of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. Her notes in Les Principes de la Philosophie demonstrate that she already attained a high level of understanding in the sciences prior to her formal studies between 1697-1698 with the Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed.

Dame Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge, says: “Astell’s annotations demonstrate that she had read

Mary Astell’s copy of Descartes’ Les Principes de la Philosophie in the Old Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge

and thought carefully about much of what Descartes had written, giving careful explanations in English of some of his ideas. She was not frightened of disagreeing with him either, with several examples of ‘false’ being written in the marginalia regarding his analysis of the laws of motion. Astell may not have had access to Isaac Newton’sPrincipiawhich gave moreprecise and quantitative laws. Newton’s Laws have stood the test of time unlike some propounded by Descartes, including the very ones Astell annotated with ‘false’.” She also remarks how is “intriguing that she had the confidence, given her circumstances” that she was able to outwardly state her disbelief and blatantly label something as false.

Evidently, she wished for other women to posses the same knowledge and thus assurance to disparage scientific claims made by men; in the late 17th century, Astell was interested in what it meant to describe individuals as ‘equal’, drawing on certain scientific texts (including Descartes) to argue that there was no difference between the sexes. She was a staunch believer in the existence of God and Christian teachings - being described as a high Anglican Tory – so she would’ve viewed the understanding of natural sciences, such as the motion of celestial objects or the nature of light, as part of the wonders of God’s way, and therefore worthy of study for both men and women. Hence why she potentially has this variety of books related to works she never did, having been purchases after Astell’s final work in 1709. These novels are on the subject of natural history, as Astell intended to work with female friends to synthesise an accessible introduction to scientific ideas. This would be a compendium of natural philosophy, written as a quick guide to philosophical knowledge, designed to encourage other women to develop their understanding of the natural world.

Astell’s collection also demonstrated the importance of knowing one’s adversary (such as Gilbert Brunette, who famously opposed her call for a female academy, whom she owns one book by) experts have been able to see the extent to which she studied her rivals as well as those she agreed with. Thanks to Astell’s note-making, we know that she bought at least 10 of the book titles herself and that another 13 were bequests or gifts from friends, who bought her books both outside her principal interests as well as by her favourite authors.

In the zoom meeting which I attended, James Raven, Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex, spoke about how we are used to the idea that women had lower literacy and education at the time. Whilst this is true for the lower classes, literacies differed widely across the classes, with important women in the higher ranks of society being well-read individuals. In fact, there is very strong evidence of ownership and access of books to women, so long as they’re in the right level of society; the earliest ownership by a woman was in 1608, and before 1785, there have been 57 collections owned by women, according to the Book Ownership Online. Astell herself had managed to find herself in a circle of influential and literary women, who were more than willing to fund her writing career - Sutherland says: “I love the inscriptions in the books which were gifted to Astell. These helped me find out more about her circle of friends and colleagues, and build up a picture of how she exchanged ideas with both male academics and like-minded women.”

Inscription in Astell’s copy of Arthur Capel, Excellent Contemplations, Divine and Moral, reads: ‘Given to M. Astell by her Grace the Duchess Dowager of Beaufort Daughter to this incomparable Lord. Nov 21st 1712’. Image courtesy of the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College Cambridge

Raven also touched upon the nature of book-purchasing back in the period, stating how Astell would’ve most likely gone to the bookshops herself, like in the case of most, for book sellers acted as important sites to discuss and meet with like-minded individuals. London became the pivotal centre for book trading and selling, with the St Paul’s area being a particularly well-known district for such goings-on. Richard Wilkins, Astell’s publisher, introduced to her by

Archbishop Sancroft, was at the centre of the Tory literary community. He had a book shop at number 56, Church Yard, St Pauls, where there was a succession of bookshops dating right back to the 16th century. There was a great diversity of opinion and shops around the area, all associated with very diff erent political and religious positions, which is what made the area such an important place for discussion.

Book-selling was much more informal back then; in order to gain possession of certain books, one had to know individuals within the trade (the majority of book printing began to be done abroad, yet men were still needed to handle imports, like along the Thames). Instead of opening hours, people would just knock on the doors to visit shops to meet with workers and sellers. It is likely that Astell got many of her volumes from Wilkins’ shop, but potentially, also Magdalene’s Old Library – the fact that Astell’s collection does not include works by the classical authors Astell read could suggest that she had access to Magdalene’s selection, which already had plenty of copies of Homer, Thucydides and Virgil. Wilkins provides a link between Astell and Daniel Waterland, theologian and Master of the college between 1713 and 1740, Waterland being a client of Wilkins too. Perhaps this is why Magdalene holds many more books authored by Astell than any other Cambridge College.

Waterland may also provide the link between Astell and the college, explaining how the collection came to be in the Old Library. He cites Astell in his Advice to a Young Student, called her an ‘ingenious lady’, and was a fellow bibliophile, sharing similar literary interests, including Malebranche, Calamy and charity schools. “Unfortunately, there is no documentary evidence of Astell’s books arriving at Magdalene”, Sutherland explains, though she does have a convincing theory. In the 1740s, it was rumoured that Astell left an extensive library to ‘Magdalen College’ on her death and in the draft manuscript of Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain George Ballard stated that ‘She gave her library, which was a pretty large one to Magdalene College in Oxford’. Crucially, ‘in Oxford’ has been deleted, presumably because Ballard couldn’t fi nd any evidence of Astell’s books at his own college: Magdalen, Oxford.

The confusion is understandable as it was only in the nineteenth century that the fi nal ‘e’ was added to the Cambridge college to better diff erentiate between the two, and any references to Magdalen prior to this without the suffi x ‘Oxon’ or ‘Cant’ to guide the reader could refer to either college. It seems that Astell made a conscious decision

The Old Library. Courtesy of the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College Cambridge

to leave her library to Magdalene Cambridge; two books actually bear the inscription ‘The gift of Mrs Astell to Magdalene College’ but these are in the hand of someone else associated with the College. This could’ve been due to her uncle’s former studies there, or her relationship with Pepys.

So why is this discovery actually so important? Ruth Perry, Professor of Literature at MIT and biographer of Mary Astell, said: “This marvellous discovery will help scholars refi ne their ideas about this fascinating intellectual’s positions on a number of philosophical, religious and political issues.” In many ways this fi nding will change the direction of Astell studies; her notes provide the key to her writing style, what with the volume of marginalia, as well as her interrogative, yet highly ironist nature, and experts can recreate a better intellectual profi le on her.

It also demonstrates the need to break past the view of women only interested in women’s issues; Astell was a feminist critic of whig politics and keen scientist, as well as campaigner for equality between the sexes. One can also see evidence of her engaging with the thoughts and works of other female philosophers, and upon inspection of Astell’s collection, one gets a sense of women of the time in conversation with each other. There is the decentring of ideas around men, and Astell’s annotations are clear evidence of the equal (if not greater) brain capabilities of the two genders. Professor Ruth Perry remarks how “students of feminist history especially will be grateful to Catherine Sutherland and Magdalene College, for recognising this treasure and for carefully and methodically authenticating and documenting it.” As the provenance project is currently ongoing, there may even be more discoveries to come.