[In following essay, Thickstun discusses Astell's writings on scripture and other religious matters, including her beliefs about the appropriate role for women in these areas.]

In reading contemporary criticism of seventeenth-century women writers, I have noticed that critics tend either to ignore or to misunderstand the feminist implications of women's claim to religious authority as interpreters of Scripture. It seems to me that contemporary scholarship, operating as it does in a secular culture, is not sufficiently aware of the revolutionary nature of a woman's claim to religious authority. I would like to correct this misapprehension by discussing two women writers of the late seventeenth century who attempted a feminist critique of Scripture, Margaret Fell, in Womens Speaking Justified (1667), and Mary Astell, in the preface to the third edition of Some Reflections on Marriage (1706).¹ But I would also like to distinguish between their arguments in order to identify why Astell's work, which ultimately retreats from claiming women's equality in the Spirit, figures so prominently in recent discussions of early feminism, while Fell's pamphlet defending women's religious authority receives only passing reference.

A brief survey of recent scholarship reveals the intellectual bias that blinds contemporary scholars to the importance of these writers' feminist critique of Scripture. Hilda Smith's Reason's Disciples: Seventeenth-Century English Feminists (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982) posits Enlightenment ideas as the efficient cause for a burst of feminist writing at the close of the century: “In rationalism they found the ideology that best answered their desire to assert equality and to develop a framework for questioning the status quo” (60). Ruth Perry, in an essay on Astell in Women and the Enlightenment (New York: Haworth Press, 1984) comments that “what strikes one about her life and work as a whole, what marks her as a woman of the Enlightenment, is her unqualified belief in Right Reason and the faith she reposed—both personally and ideologically—in the mind” (15). Katharine Rogers titles one chapter in her book, Feminism in Eighteenth-Century England (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), “The Liberating Effect of Rationalism.” Astell's secular arguments appeal to contemporary scholars because she values what they value, education and the exercise of reason, while both her Scriptural criticism and Fell's impassioned claims of inspiration disconcert readers trained to equate religious enthusiasm with either irrationality or fundamentalism.

In their discussions of both writers, scholars reveal their assumption that religious faith and feminist convictions are necessarily antithetical: Smith, for example, says of Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies that “the strong religious orientation of her curriculum would not, of course, allow for a genuinely liberating education” (126). Similarly, she dismisses the feminist implications of Fell's pamphlet because Fell does not raise “the issue of women's role in the household or in society in general” (95), asserting that she “asked merely that a Christian woman be allowed to practice her religion as fully and variously as a man” (96). But Margaret Fell's claiming the right to preach is in itself a defiantly and expansively feminist act that transcends any need to pursue an argument about the details of social change that must necessarily follow. Simply by undertaking the task of interpreting Scripture independently of the male clergy, these women threaten the very basis of patriarchy's social control. The continued resistance to women clergy among the more conservative religious bodies today—even though women members of those religions are college professors, corporate presidents, and congresswomen—illustrates the profound connection between religious authority and patriarchal power.

Both Fell and Astell develop hermeneutic practices that allow them to challenge received interpretation of Scripture by establishing an extra-biblical access to divine truth. Fell derives her authority as an interpreter of Scripture from her belief in God's continuing self-revelation in history, an idea that destabilizes the authority of Scriptural texts. Addressing the problem that twentieth-century feminist theologians describe as distinguishing “script from Scripture,”² Fell privileges charismatic speaking of God's word over silence: “those that speak against the Power of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord speaking in a woman, simply, by reason of her Sex, or because she is a Woman …, such speak against Christ, and his Church, and are of the Seed of the Serpent” (116). Passages that exhort silence and order, then, must be interpreted in terms of the overriding command to witness to God's love and power. In the light of this principle, Fell believes she can determine “how God himself hath manifested his Will and Mind concerning women, and unto women” (115).

Mary Astell's hermeneutic practice confronts priestly authority by privileging reason, or common sense, over erudition, “for Sense is a Portion that GOD Himself has been pleas'd to distribute to both Sexes with an Impartial Hand, but Learning is what Men have engrossed to themselves” (78). Common sense leads her to conclude that “One Text for us, is more to be regarded than many against us. Because that One being different from what Custom has establish'd, ought to be taken with Philosophical Strictness” (79). She distinguishes between passages that present divine revelation about women and passages that conform to human practice, arguing that “Scripture is not always on their side who make parade of it, and thro' their skill in Languages and the Tricks of the Schools, wrest it from its genuine sense to their own Inventions” (74). Her subsequent critique of traditional interpretations of Scriptural passages about women asserts her own ability to get at “its genuine sense.”

Both writers, then, approach Scripture through what twentieth-century feminist biblical theologians term “a hermeneutics of suspicion.” They recognize both the text itself and conventional principles of interpretation as political tools and criticize clergy who use Scriptural authority as an ideological weapon against women. Astell underscores men's power as translators and interpreters when she observes that “women, without their own Fault, are kept in Ignorance of the Original, wanting Languages and other helps to Criticise on the Sacred Text, of which they know no more than Men are pleas'd to impart in their Translations” (74). Without knowledge of the original languages, she asserts, women read not the actual Scripture, but a translation that is necessarily an interpretation of it. The concern which the clergy demonstrates in restricting who can read the original text and how the text can be interpreted “shew[s] their desire to maintain their Hypotheses, but by no means their Reverence to the Sacred Oracles” (74-75). Astell's concern that women be able to test the accuracy of the translation suggests that her religious conviction, at least as much as her reading in philosophy, informs her arguments for women's education. She remarks wryly that “when an Adversary is drove to a Nonplus and Reason declares against him, he flies to Authority, especially to Divine, which is infallible, and therefore ought not to be disputed” (74). As her subsequent Scriptural exegesis demonstrates, an educated female laity would possess the ability to dispute the interpretation of “infallible” Authority.

Fell establishes women's inspired witness as grounds for disputing priestly authority. She not only exposes the hypocrisy of priests who “take Texts, and Preach Sermons upon Womens words, and still cry out, Women must not speak, Women must be silent” (124), but calls into question the completeness of Scripture. Of Jesus's explicit self-revelation to the Woman of Samaria, she comments, “this is more than ever he said in plain words to Man or Woman (that we read of) before he suffered” (117). That parenthetical remark indicates that Fell questions the accuracy of the biblical record itself, not simply its vernacular manifestions. She contests the privileged status of Scripture because she recognizes that the received history of Jesus's ministry is not a full account of the truth, but a telling of the story that serves the political purposes of the priesthood. By claiming an authority derived from a personal experience of the Spirit, Fell is able to ground the legitimacy of her speaking and her message outside received tradition and conventional authority, while at the same time appealing to the ultimate truth it claims to contain.

Both Fell and Astell demonstrate an acute awareness of the historicity of biblical texts, particularly the Pauline epistles. They insist that the Pauline letters be read in their historical, pastoral context. In Fell's discussion of 1 Cor. 14:34—“Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak”—she argues that Paul's exhortation to silence applies to a particular episode in church history, not to the conduct of Christian women throughout all time. Applying her hermeneutic principle that speaking the Gospel takes precedence over social propriety, Fell interprets Paul's subsequent qualification, “as also saith the Law,” as further evidence that this command does not apply to women's inspired speaking: “for he speaks of women that were under the Law, and in that Transgression as Eve was” (119). These women who, Fell proposes, had not yet entered the community of grace could not participate as full speaking members in communal worship. Paul's command then does not apply to believing women “that have the Everlasting Gospel to preach, and upon whom the Promise of the Lord is fulfilled” (120). She defends this interpretation by pointing to 1 Cor. 11, which outlines proper behavior for women who are prophesying—such as covering their heads and leaving their hair braided—and Philippians 4.3, where Paul entreats Philemon “to help those Women who laboured with him in the Gospel.”

Astell also emphasizes the pastoral context of this injunction. She argues “that tho' he forbids Women to teach in the Church, … he did not found this Prohibition on any suppos'd want of Understanding in Woman, or of ability to Teach; neither does he confine them at all times to learn in silence” (77). She points to Priscilla's teaching Apollos, and to Paul's placing her name before her husband's and “giving to her as well as to him, the Noble Title of his Helper in Christ Jesus” (78), as evidence that Paul cannot mean this statement to be a universal proclamation. She suggests that he forbade women to teach in the Corinthian church “for several Prudential reasons, like those he introduces with an I give my Opinion, and now I speak not the Lord, and not because of any Law of Nature, or Positive Divine Precept” (77). Astell demonstrates through her analysis of this passage not only her sense of the epistles as historical documents, but a careful attention to the uses of language, both by Paul and by his translators, adding “that the words they are Commanded (1 Cor. 14.24.) are not in the Original, [as] appears from the Italic character” (77). Here, she suggests, ideology determines not only interpretation, but translation.

In the light of this awareness, both writers refute traditional readings of the Genesis story, as well as its manifestations in the Pauline texts on women. Fell privileges the first Creation story in Genesis 1:27—“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female he created them”—arguing that “God the Father made no such difference in the first Creation, nor never since between the Male and the Female” (116). She reads the punishment and prophecy in Genesis 3 as an allegorical discussion of the enmity between Satan and the Church, an approach which she uses to discredit sexist applications of Ephesians, chapter 5, and 1 Timothy, chapter 2. Astell also reads 1 Timothy, chapter 2, allegorically, remarking that it is “a very obscure place,” but that “if it be taken Allegorically, with respect to the Mystical Union between Christ and his Church, to which St. Paul frequently accomodates the Matrimonial Relation, the difficulties vanish” (78). She mocks arguments for the subjection of women because of the Genesis story, commenting, that “the Earthly Adam's being Form'd before Eve, seems as little to prove her Natural Subjection to him, as the Living Creatures, Fishes, Birds and Beasts being Form'd before them both, proves that Mankind must be subject to these Animals” (78).

Along with this “hermeneutics of suspicion,” both Fell and Astell deploy a “hermeneutics of remembrance,” recovering women in Scripture as positive role models for contemporary women. Fell's discussion of Hebrew women stresses their spiritual authority; she includes examples of women teaching and prophesying, followed by the positive response of authoritative figures—patriarchs, elders, and prophets—to their speech. Astell emphasizes Hebrew women's political prominence as leaders of their people. She points to examples where God revealed himself to women rather than to their husbands because of their wisdom, prudence, or superior piety. Like Fell, she emphasizes the positive response of men in authority to women, although her choice of stories singles out pious rather than prophetic women. She also hesitates to use these exceptional women to establish precedents for other women's subverting the social order, commenting of one biblical passage, “I wou'd not infer from hence that Women generally speaking, ought to govern in their Families when they have a Husband” (82).

Both Fell and Astell emphasize the superior devotion of Jesus's female followers, as well as his special attention toward them. Astell lists Mary, Martha, Elizabeth, Magdalen, the Syrophoenecian, and Anna as exemplary women; she points out that “when our Lord escap'd from the Jews, he trusted Himself in the hands of Martha and Mary” (84), rather than with his male followers. Fell identifies a pattern of special revelation to women in which Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah and in which the women disciples—the woman of Samaria, Martha, and the woman with the alabaster box of ointment—confidently declare their belief. In discussing each story, she emphasizes the intimacy of the conversation, the unusualness of Jesus's blunt speaking, and the confidence expressed in the women's response. Of Martha's ready affirmation of Jesus's divinity—“Yea Lord, I believe thou art the Christ, the Son of God” (117)—Fell comments that “here she manifested her true and saving Faith, which few at that day believed so on him.” Both women praise the women at the tomb, who were “so united and knit into him in love, that they could not depart as the men did, but sat watching, and waiting, and weeping about the Sepulchre” (Fell, 119). Both Fell and Astell identify these women's being the first to receive news of the Resurrection as a reward for their superior devotion.

But in her discussion, Fell presses women's prophetic authority more aggressively than Astell does. Astell admits that “GOD Himself who is no Respecter of Persons, with whom there is neither Bond nor Free, Male nor Female, but they are all one in Christ Jesus [Gal. 3.28], did not deny Women that Divine Gift the Spirit of Prophecy, neither under the Jewish nor the Christian Dispensation” (83). She identifies Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, and the four daughters of Philip as examples of inspired women and points to Paul's equal treatment of Priscilla as evidence that women did teach with authority. But she refrains from using these models or the events at the tomb as a means to encourage women's preaching, retreating toward more conventional definitions of female spirituality: “And if it is a greater Blessing to hear the Word of GOD and keep it, who are more considerable for their Assiduity in this than the Female Disciples of the Lord?” (83). Fell, on the other hand, exploits the revelation at the tomb to clinch her point that Christian witness requires women's active participation: as she asks triumphantly, “what had become of the Redemption of the whole Body of Man-kind, if they had not believed the Message that the Lord Jesus sent by these women [?]” (118). She argues that human redemption requires accepting the authority of women's witness.

Fell's entire discussion insists on a reevaluation of the role of Jesus's women followers as active disciples so that she can reclaim Christian discipleship and religious authority for women. In a striking anticipation of twentieth-century feminist biblical criticism, Fell asserts the prophetic claim of the woman with the alabaster box of ointment who anoints Jesus's head, declaring, “this Woman knew more of the secret Power and Wisdom of God, then his Disciples did, that were filled with indignation against her” (117). This episode has become a central symbol of feminist biblical historical reconstruction of the Christian movement, providing the title for Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her. Fiorenza explains that this woman's anointing Jesus's head not only witnesses to his kingship and messianic status but also asserts the woman's own prophetic power. In the Mark/Matthew telling that Fell quotes, the woman receives from Jesus praise and the promise of continued recognition from the Christian community, which will honor her as a superior disciple: Jesus declares that her action shall be repeated wherever the Gospel is proclaimed “for a memorial of her.” In the Lukan source, she is presented as a model of discipleship against Simon, who has not “loved much.” Fell uses both versions of the story to underscore her opposition between women's faith and that of the disciples; the disciples become a negative model for priests, who continue to judge the world in terms of the Law, who cannot see beyond physical categories.

Despite the similarities in their arguments, Fell and Astell differ about implications of their biblical criticism on present day life. While Astell claims that “the Bible is for, and not against us, and cannot without great violence done to it, be urg'd to our Prejudice” (84), she does not entirely believe herself, expressing a wish to dismiss the role of Scripture in any discussion of women's equality, to argue instead from the order of Reason: “Our Reflector is of Opinion that Disputes of this kind, extending to Human Nature in general, and not peculiar to those to whom the Word of GOD has been reveal'd, ought to be decided by natural Reason only” (74). But it turns out to be natural reason that defeats the practical application of her feminism. Astell may refute the inferiority of woman in the order of Creation, asserting that she “was made for the Service of GOD, and that this is her End. Because GOD made all things for Himself, and a Rational Mind is too noble a Being to be Made for the Sake and Service of any Creature” (72). But reason tells her that human beings do not behave like rational creatures. She concludes that social hierarchy is a necessary response to fallen human nature: “If Mankind had never sinn'd, Reason wou'd always have been obey'd, there wou'd have been no struggle for Dominion, and Brutal Power wou'd not have prevail'd. But in the laps'd State of Mankind …, the Will and Pleasure of the Governor is to be the Reason of those who will not be guided by their own, and must take place for Order's sake, altho' it should not be conformable to right Reason” (75). Believing that there can not “be any Society great or little, from Empires down to private Families, without a last Resort, to determine the Affairs of that Society by an irresistible Sentence” (75), Astell affirms the necessity of hierarchy in general and sexual hierarchy within marriage. A woman may choose not to marry, but once she enters into this social contract, she must honor her voluntarily chosen subordination.

Astell's argument suggests that, while she may believe in women's spiritual and intellectual equality before God, she does not perceive that the realm of the Spirit impinges on temporal reality; she even recommends Christianity as the insurer of domestic tranquility, for “she will freely leave him the quiet Dominion of this World, whose Thoughts and Expectations are plac'd on the next” (128). Her advice to married women offers moral, but not political support. Most tellingly, Astell refrains from claiming for women the religious authority that would validate their interpretations of the Bible. She limits her argument for women's access to Scripture to their need for personal improvement, assuring readers of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1696) that “We pretend not that Women shou'd teach in the Church, or usurp Authority where it is not allow'd them; permit us only to understand our own duty, and not be forc'd to take it upon trust from others” (154). Such a claim concedes authority to men in order to negotiate for women a space in which to pursue their intellectual and spiritual development undisturbed. But this strategy weakens the political effectiveness of Astell's feminist critique of Scripture, because it acknowledges a higher authority to which women have no access, an authority that may at any point contradict their assertions, however reasonable they may appear, and label them as sacriligeous and evil. Fell, on the other hand, uses the authority she derives from her interpretation of Scripture to challenge patriarchal control.

Fell insists on the importance of Scripture not only in defining human nature but in determining social practice. Believing that sexual equality exists both in the Spirit and in the order of Creation, she locates sexual hierarchy in human misunderstanding, misreading, and weakness, for “God the Father made no such difference in the first Creation, nor never since between the Male and the Female” (116). Fell does not recognize sexual hierarchy as a punishment for sin, but as sin itself, for men who oppose women's equal authority are trying to “limit the Power and Spirit of the Lord Jesus, whose Spirit is poured upon all flesh, both Sons and Daughters, now in his Resurrection” (121). Such men revere human custom more than they do God's will for humanity. Fell's argument identifies the suppression of women's voices as an ungodly, anti-Christian activity. Considered in its historical context, Fell's pamphlet does not ask, as Smith contends, “merely that a Christian woman be allowed to practice her religion as fully and variously as a man” (Smith, p. 96, emphasis mine); it asserts women's right to speak authoritatively even about religion. Fell can take for granted that the acceptance of this fundamental principle will lead to profound changes in the relationships between men and women in everyday life; precisely such changes did occur within the egalitarian religious community that came to be known as Quakers. Fell does not address details of social change because she does not have to.

In privileging the voice of reason over revelation, contemporary feminist scholars unjustly and, I think, unwisely dismiss Fell's contribution to the feminist critique of Scripture because they underestimate the power of religious authority not only in her day, but also in modern life. The task of recovering Scripture and Christian tradition for women's affirmation is enormously important even today in a far more secular culture than the one Fell and Astell inhabited. Traditional religion provides the myths and stories that shape the way our society imagines gender and the way we imagine ourselves; these myths and stories cannot simply be ignored as rubbish, because they remain to poison our environment until we neutralize their effectiveness. In looking at the arguments of earlier feminists, we need to determine which strategies have the most potential for effecting positive social change. Because Astell tries to avoid a confrontation between her personal convictions and the teachings of the established church in which she worships, she allows male interpretations of Scripture and of women to remain authoritative. Fell, on the other hand, confronts sexist interpretations of God's will and activity in human history directly. She is thus able to begin, at least, to wrest the interpretation of Scripture, and therefore of women, from patriarchal control.

Notes

1. Astell in The First English Feminist, ed. Bridget Hill (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986); Fell in First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578-1799 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).

2. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: The Crossroads Publishing Company, 1983), 16.