Named source · 1706

Some Reflections Upon Marriage Quotes by Mary Astell: Context & Meanings

1 quotation linked to Some Reflections Upon Marriage by or associated with Mary Astell, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

More by Mary Astell

Read the source

Open a public or archival text connected with these quotations

Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.

Primary / edition source · gutenberg.org ↗

Represented passages

1 quotations with source context and meaning

Source identified1

If all Men are born Free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?

Image design Midnight

Read & copy

“If all Men are born Free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?”

Mary Astell

Meaning & context

Astell turns the language of natural freedom back on a social order that treats women as naturally subordinate, exposing a contradiction between political liberty and domestic domination.

Source details

Some Reflections Upon Marriage, Appendix in the fourth-edition text represented by Project Gutenberg #61143. The edition states that the preceding edition’s extended Preface was moved to the end as an Appendix; there Astell asks, “If all Men are born Free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?” while challenging claims of natural male supremacy. It is early-modern feminist political-religious polemic, not a literal equation of every form of historical slavery.

Open a public or archival text connected with these quotations

Prominent ideas connected with the quotations represented here

1 quotations with source context and meaning

Continue through other sources by Mary Astell