ASTELL’S METAPHOR AND THE NEO-ROMAN TRADITION

Astell’s analogy has divided scholars today because it links to the neo-Roman tradition of political thought. Most scholars agree, building on the foundational work of Philip Pettit (Reference Pettit1997) and Quentin Skinner (Reference Skinner1998), that discussions of slavery in seventeenth-century England were heavily influenced by this tradition. Writers in this tradition understood liberty as a condition of nondomination or independence from arbitrary power. It was defined against its antithesis, slavery, which consists of dependence on a master who may rule according to his own will and pleasure. Crucially for this tradition, slavery is a state of domination even if the master is benevolent. As scholars of this tradition emphasize, the benevolent master may not interfere with his subject, but it is still slavery because the subject is still dependent on the master’s goodwill (Pettit Reference Pettit1997, 31–4; Skinner Reference Skinner1998, 70). Slavery is wrong not because it involves interference or cruelty on the part of the master but because of its arbitrariness—the instability and uncertainty associated with dependence. Neo-Romanism was not a unified doctrine, and there was considerable disagreement about what institutional arrangements and social conditions were necessary to secure such independence. Yet all agreed that (at the very least) absolutism, when rulers are seen as above and unaccountable to the law, was incompatible with liberty as independence.

This view gained considerable traction in seventeenth-century England—not merely among republicans, but also reformed monarchists like the Whigs—as it allowed them to decry the absolute rights of the Stuart monarchs as a form of slavery. LockeFootnote ⁷ has been reclaimed as a key contributor to this tradition (e.g., Halldenius Reference Halldenius2003; Skinner Reference Skinner1998).Footnote ⁸ In the Two Treatises (1689), Locke defines slavery as a state in which one is “subjected to the Absolute Dominion and Arbitrary Power of their Masters” (TT, II.VII.85). To illustrate, he gives the example of a captive of war. Since the conqueror has the power to kill his captive, Locke argues that he also has the power to enslave him (TT, II.IV.24). This captivity, regardless of the conqueror’s benevolence, is slavery because the captive has no “standing rule to live by” and to which he can hold the ruler to account (TT, II.IV.22–23). Locke therefore confirms the central neo-Roman wrong of slavery. The life of this captive is “the perfect condition of slavery” (TT, II.IV.24), because he is subject to the “inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary” will of another person (TT, II.IV.22).

Jacqueline Broad (Reference Broad2014) argues that Astell adopts this neo-Roman (and specifically Lockean) view of slavery and applies it to critique the institution of marriage.Footnote ⁹ Since marriage grants husbands absolute power over their wives, women are therefore slaves. The strongest evidence for this reading comes from the preface of the third edition of Reflections:

Here, we see that Astell parrots Locke’s definition of slavery. The “condition of slavery” involves being subject to an absolute power without a “standing rule to live by.” This leads one to be dependent on the “arbitrary” will of another man. Thus, Broad concludes that Astell endorses this neo-Roman conception of slavery and leverages it to critique marriage.

While I agree that Astell is engaging with the neo-Roman, and specifically Lockean, view of slavery here, there are at least two reasons to reject Broad’s suggestion that Astell endorses this view. First, Astell’s claim that the absolute power of husbands is a form of slavery also commits her to political views which jar with her well-known partisan convictions. As a Tory, Astell supported the absolute power of the Stuart monarchy. If Astell concedes that the absolute power of husbands is a form of slavery, then the Stuart monarchs’ claims to absolute power would seem to be a form of slavery as well. Second, and perhaps more importantly, Astell is quite clear in other parts of Reflections that the power of husbands is, and should be, absolute.Footnote ¹⁰ Unlike some of her contemporaries, Astell does not advocate for divorce or other policies designed to limit the power of husbands. The woman who marries, according to Astell, takes on “a Monarch for life” and “gives him an Authority she cannot recall however he misapply it” (RM, 48). Indeed, she critiques those who would alter this power as meddling with a “Divine Institution” (RM, 36). For Astell, wives’ subjection to their husbands is a constitutive part of marriage, clearly grounded in Holy Scripture, which cannot be reformed. While Astell proposes measures to improve marital life—notably, women’s education—she is clear that the fundamental structure of marriage includes gendered hierarchies, and that this should not be changed.

In light of these reasons, some scholars argue that Astell’s analogy “must be ironic” (Springborg Reference Astell and Springborg1996, 18n).Footnote ¹¹ In these passages, Astell highlights the hypocrisy of men who protest the political slavery of monarchical absolutism yet fail to extend their complaints to marriage. On this interpretation, Astell does not endorse their principles—she does not believe that absolute power constitutes slavery—but rather highlights that even republicans cannot truly be committed to these principles. This interpretation is reinforced by the passage preceding her famous analogy:

In this passage, Astell calls out men who fail to extend their anti-absolutism principles to the family. The repeated use of the conditional “if” suggests that she does not endorse their anti-absolutism, but simply wants to show her readers the consequences of taking that principle seriously.Footnote ¹² In this case, Astell’s argument functions as a reductio ad absurdum, showing the absurd consequences that follow if we take neo-Roman complaints about slavery seriously. If absolute power in kings is a form of slavery, then so too is the power of husbands—a conclusion that most will take to be ridiculous.

While I agree that this passage is heavily ironic, it does not follow that Astell’s complaints about marital slavery are disingenuous. There are nine other passages in Reflections in which she directly calls women slaves (RM, 18–9, 28, 30, 44, 47, 57, 58, 65, 76), and many others where she implies that they are slaves by referring to their “yokes” and “chains” (e.g., RM 19, 36, 46, 59, 62, 78). Many of these instances are not disingenuous; they do not highlight the absurdity of viewing marriage as slavery but instead accompany sincere complaints about how women are treated in marriage. She criticizes, for instance, men preventing women from getting an education, “keeping them in ignorance and slavery” (RM, 28). Likewise, she criticizes husbands who treat their wives as mere servants, as if a wife “were made to be a slave to his will, with no higher end than to serve and obey him” (RM, 57). While the celebrated analogy in her preface is ironic, we perhaps misunderstand where the irony is directed. As Jennifer Pitts has shown (Reference Pitts2017), irony can be used to foster complacency, but it can also be deployed for critical reflection. As we shall see, Astell is not using irony to make individuals complacent about marriage, but rather to make her readers critically examine the conception of slavery that underpins the neo-Roman complaints.

It is now possible to clearly understand the puzzle produced by Astell’s famous analogy. She does not endorse the neo-Roman complaints about absolute power being slavery. She believes absolute power is appropriate both in the household and in the state. Nevertheless, she does criticize certain aspects of marriage, and her criticisms are couched in the language of slavery. In the remainder of this article, I will argue that we can reconcile this tension by rethinking what Astell means by slavery. For Astell, absolute power does not constitute slavery; rather, it is entirely appropriate in divinely sanctioned institutions such as marriage and the state. Instead, she proposes a distinct definition of slavery. Slavery arises when these divinely sanctioned institutions become corrupted by commercial interests. It is only when power becomes commodified, treated as something which can be bought and sold, that it becomes slavery. Thus, for Astell, marriage is genuinely a form of slavery—not because husbands have absolute power, but because that power is commodified. In the following sections, I will argue that this definition of slavery is inspired, not by the neo-Romans, but by the transatlantic slave trade. To do this, I will first turn to Astell’s historical context to show that women were aware of the transatlantic slave trade and that this paradigm of chattel slavery was used to analyze their own marriages.

RACIAL SLAVERY AND FEMINISM IN THE 1690s

Locke’s complaints about political slavery have received particular scrutiny in recent years because of his own connections to the slave trade. Despite his claims that “Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man” (TT, I.I.1), he helped draft the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas, which included the notorious article 110: “Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negros slaves.” Scholars have therefore thought it appropriate to inquire into what relationship, if any, exists between his attacks on political slavery at home and the apparent support for chattel slavery abroad (e.g., Armitage Reference Armitage2004; Brewer Reference Brewer2017; Reference Brewer2024; Smith Reference Smith2025; Uzgalis Reference Uzgalis and Zack2017).

While Astell’s slave analogy is treated as derivative of Locke, she is also seen as untouched by its colonial entanglements. In her biography of Astell, Ruth Perry suggests that Astell was simply “unaware” of chattel slavery and “did not observe that a number of her acquaintances own or traded in actual slaves to work in British plantations” (Reference Perry1986, 8). It’s certainly true that, unlike Locke, there is no evidence that Astell was personally implicated in the slave trade. But one did not have to be at the levers of power to be aware of the slave trade. By the end of the 1690s, enslaved Africans had become such prominent characters in popular literature that one theatre critic, Gerard Langbaine, complained that plays:

Far from being a subject from which women were insulated, Langbaine’s complaint suggests that public discussion was saturated with representations of Black slavery.

No work brought more attention to the slave trade than Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko: Or the Royal Slave. The novel unflinchingly depicts the cruelty of chattel slavery. The story follows the life of Oroonoko, an African prince whose beauty and virtue are so exceptional that he inspires awe in most whom he meets. At the beginning of the story, he is separated from his wife, Imoinda. He is then deceived and captured by English traders, taken to Suriname in irons, sold at auction, and placed on a plantation where, by chance, he finds himself reunited with his wife. The pair attempt to lead a slave rebellion which is ultimately unsuccessful. They agree to commit suicide, but after cutting his wife’s throat, Oroonoko becomes paralyzed with grief and his desire for revenge. He is eventually found by the slave masters. He is flogged and tortured to death. It is hard to overstate the popularity of this text. Her work gained recognition from literary giants like John Dryden,Footnote ¹⁴ and even philosophers like John Locke, whose library records include Oroonoko (Harrison and Laslett Reference Harrison and Laslett1971, 76). While theatre critics like Langbaine admired Behn’s novel, he simultaneously bemoaned its influence: Oroonoko inspired a generation of writers to become obsessed with “Black Heroes” and to “think the devil White” (Reference Langbaine1699, 179).Footnote ¹⁵

Oroonoko was particularly popular among women. This is perhaps unsurprising as Oroonoko was written by a woman and there are complex depictions of gender within the text.Footnote ¹⁶ It features a female narrator—Behn herself—and Imoinda, a Black woman of exceptional virtue. That said, the novel is not a straightforwardly feminist text. Imoinda’s virtue is decidedly different from Oroonoko’s. While Oroonoko’s virtue lies in his wisdom, bravery, and leadership, Imoinda’s virtue derives from her chastity and submission to her husband. Imoinda is never portrayed negatively—she is not stupid or an obstacle to the male protagonist—but her virtue does largely conform to patriarchal standards of the day.

Despite this ambivalent feminism, the text served as a major source of inspiration for feminist writers in the 1690s. Behn’s work influenced feminist discourse in two key ways. First, Behn herself was cited as an example of women’s intellectual capacities. Alongside the poet Katherine Phillips, Behn was presented as evidence that women are capable of learning and as a model for others to follow. Second, Behn’s descriptions of slavery were repurposed by women to describe the constraints they face in marriage.

Both of these uses of Behn appear in Judith Drake’s Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (Reference Drake1696).Footnote ¹⁷ The prefatory poem refers to Astrea and Orinda—pen names for Behn and Phillips, respectively—as the inspiration for the essay. In the body of the text, Drake urges women to follow the example of “the incomparable Mrs. Behn” (Reference Drake1696, 56). There is also evidence that Drake may have been personally acquainted with Behn. Both women moved in the same literary circle as Thomas Brown, a satirist involved in publishing both Drake’s essays and Behn’s early plays.Footnote ¹⁸ When in 1696—10 years before Astell’s famous aphorism was published—Drake claimed that “women, like our Negroes in our Western Plantations, are born slaves” (Reference Drake1696, 22), we can be fairly certain that her knowledge of chattel slavery was shaped by Oroonoko.

Drake was not the only feminist using Behn’s account of plantation slavery to analyze the condition of English women. William Walsh, in his Dialogue Concerning Women (Reference Walsh1691), draws parallels between slave suicide—frequently mentioned in Oroonoko, especially in the conclusion—and the plight of women in oppressive marriages.Footnote ¹⁹ Walsh argues that women who act rashly and harm themselves should be excused because “often People run into a greater danger to avoid a less, of which you have instances now in our own Plantations, of Slaves who hang themselves to avoid being beat” (Reference Walsh1691, 112). According to Walsh, women’s suicide does not prove that women are irrational, but is instead a common reaction to the condition of enslavement—whether it be in marriage or plantations.

The intersection of Oroonoko and feminist thought is perhaps most clearly on display in The Challenge sent by a young lady to Sir Thomas &c., or, The Female War (1697). This text—which, to my knowledge, has not been the subject of any contemporary scholarship—is a collection of nearly 600 essays on questions related to women, from whether women should wear breeches to whether women can learn Latin.Footnote ²⁰ Each question is debated through two opposing essays—one written by a man and one by a woman. One question asks whether “a black-a-moor woman is the greatest beauty?” (1697, 101). The male contributor, pseudonymously named Mr. Bexford, argues that Black women would make better wives than white women, as they are beautiful and virtuous. The essay ends by entreating all English women to emulate Black women so that they “may all come to be Imoinda’s [sic], in everything but her end” (1697, 105). The female contributor, under the pseudonym Sapho, offers what is both a feminist criticism and a deeply racist tirade. The female author argues that Imoinda’s chastity and submission to Oroonoko are not true virtues, but merely slavishness. Criticizing her male interlocutor, she claims that Englishmen desire Imoinda only because they want wives “in the basest degree of Subjection and Servitude, and drily persuade us that there’s a wonderful Virtue in planting Tobacco, and having our Throats cut” (1697, 110). Thus, this author both appropriates the descriptions of racial slavery to describe the expectations placed on women in patriarchal marriages while simultaneously using the depiction of Imoinda to distance Englishwomen from essentially slavish Black women.

This summary does not do full justice to the complexity with which these texts use Oroonoko to analyze patriarchal marriages. All this is merely to say that Oroonoko was an influential work, and it was particularly taken up in feminist circles. Appreciating this context highlights two common misconceptions in the secondary literature on Astell and slavery. First, this literature tends to assume that Astell’s marriage-slavery analogy is unusual in her context.Footnote ²¹ Far from being a trailblazer, Astell’s analogy was a trope in the feminist literature of the 1690s. Second, they assume that Astell is not aware of chattel slavery. Yet, chattel slavery was clearly the paradigm to which Astell’s contemporaries were referring when they made their own marriage-slave analogies. Given this background, I think it is appropriate to investigate how chattel slavery—and particularly Behn’s depiction of it—influenced Astell’s understanding of slavery. In the next section, I will turn to Behn and argue that she offers a definition of slavery which departs from the neo-Roman model. This distinction is crucial to Astell’s own use of the term slavery.

Before proceeding with my argument, it is worth considering a potential objection. I have been trying to establish that there are good historical reasons to believe that Astell was aware of the slave trade, particularly through the work of Behn. Yet one might object to this connection by pointing out that Astell never makes any obvious allusions to Oroonoko. Indeed, when Astell offers models for female writers, she cites only Katherine Phillips, making no reference to Behn. I do not think, however, this omission should be taken as a sign of Astell’s ignorance. In the years following Behn’s death in 1689, her life became subject to intense and salacious public speculation. Her collected works were published with a (largely falsified) memoir that repeated accusations that Behn was romantically involved with Black men (Anon 1698, 3). Her work, too, was regarded as licentious, with Alexander Pope ridiculing her plays, saying: “The stage how loosely does Astrea tread, Who fairly puts all characters to bed!” (Pope Reference Pope1737, 290–1). It is perhaps, then, no surprise that the devout Astell would distance herself from the scandalous Behn. When Astell severs the common comparison of Behn and Phillips, citing only the latter as a model for female writers, this is not out of ignorance. It is a rather more conspicuous effort to distance herself from a figure gaining notoriety, even while taking key theoretical insights from Behn’s work.Footnote ²²

TWO CONCEPTS OF SLAVERY: ARBITRARY AND SALEABLE POWER IN OROONOKO

The key theoretical insight that Oroonoko provides Astell is a distinction between the neo-Roman understanding of slavery and the actual experience of chattel slavery. Behn’s work offers an alternative definition of slavery than “absolute rule.” Behn’s biography provides context for her interest in this distinction. Like Astell, she had a reputation as a Tory hack. She served as a spy for Charles II in Holland during the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 1660s.Footnote ²³ When she returned to London, England was in the midst of a constitutional crisis—the “Exclusion Crisis” in which Whigs sought to exclude the presumptive Stuart heir from the throne. Many of her writings were influenced by this crisis, and she frequently used her pen to defend the absolute and sacred rights of the Stuart dynasty. One way of reading Oroonoko, then, is not only as an abolitionist text, but also as a royalist one.Footnote ²⁴ The novel aims to criticize Whigs by showing the differences between actual slavery and the absolute power of kings, which they deem slavery. For Behn, it is not domination (that is, the dependence on arbitrary power), but commodification (the buying and selling of power) that defines slavery.

The clearest articulation of this distinction comes near the end of the novel, during the slave rebellion. While rallying the other slaves to take up arms, Oroonoko distinguishes between the neo-Roman view of slavery and the kind of slavery Africans are experiencing:

Here, Oroonoko alludes to the neo-Roman understanding of slavery, which, as discussed above, considers the absolute power won by a conqueror in war to be a clear example of slavery. Behn, through her mouthpiece Oroonoko, suggests that this form of slavery is unobjectionable, and that it should “not anger a noble heart.”

Indeed, Oroonoko himself practices this neo-Roman kind of slavery. At the outset of the novel, Oroonoko is in battle and captures a man named Jamoan. Just as Locke claimed that the power to enslave derives from the power to kill, Oroonoko, “having wounded Jamoan almost to death,” is able to take him as a slave (O, 29). Jamoan is ruled with respect by Oroonoko. Recognizing that Jamoan is a “gallant” man of “excellent parts,” Oroonoko befriends him and allows him to be at his side in court (O, 29). According to the neo-Roman perspective, this relationship between Oroonoko and Jamoan qualifies as a form of slavery. Oroonoko is benevolent, but still has absolute power over his subject. Yet Behn denies that this is truly a form of slavery. Of the relationship, she suggests that Jamoan is a slave in name only (O, 29). Behn presents this neo-Roman slavery as unobjectionable, and not really slavery at all. Rather, it is presented as a legitimate form of rule, one that stands in stark contrast to the slavery experienced by Africans at the hands of English traders.

In his rallying speech to the other slaves, Oroonoko suggests that the transatlantic slave trade is different because it allows for subjects to be bought and sold. This commercial aspect of slavery is central to Behn’s rhetoric, as she repeatedly emphasizes that slavery involves merchants, markets, trade, and traffic, not merely absolute rule.Footnote ²⁵ For Behn, the moral objections to slavery have more to do with commerce than with arbitrary power. That is, slavery occurs, not when one person has absolute, arbitrary authority over another, but when authority is treated as something that can be indiscriminately bought and sold.

Although Behn does not fully spell out this distinction, the passage points to a way of conceptualizing slavery that is not reducible to the neo-Roman account. On the one hand, domination—absolute, arbitrary authority—is traditionally non-commodified: a king may exercise complete power over his subjects, but he cannot sell or transfer that authority indiscriminately. On the other hand, commodification—that is, treating power as saleable—can be non-arbitrary. Someone’s authority may be entirely rule-bound and predicable, while also being treated as something that can be bought, sold, or exchanged. Saleable authority, in other words, does not necessarily involve arbitrariness at all—in principle, it can be structured through regulated, predictable contracts. Behn’s distinction therefore offers a very different characterization of slavery to the neo-Roman account. Slavery fundamentally involves the transformation of relations of dependence into alienable and replaceable assets.

Of course, it might not be immediately clear why commodifying authority is more troubling for Behn than absolute authority. There are perhaps several ways to articulate this wrong, but Behn’s answer is a decidedly Tory one. The commodification of power inverts the natural order, leading to inferiors ruling over their superiors. Behn, after all, is not an egalitarian. She believes that some people are naturally superior to others—in terms of their character and virtue—and that those superiors should rule over others. Oroonoko is an example of one such natural superior. Because of his virtue, he strikes “awe and reverence” into all whom he meets, and is a natural leader (O, 12). Behn even seems to suggest that military success is a proxy for this natural superiority, as it demonstrates virtues like courage and divine favor. When power is not won, but sold indiscriminately, Behn suggests that natural superiors become subject to their inferiors. Oroonoko becomes the subject of “women and fools” as well as “rogues and runagates” (O, 52). If authority is treated as something that can be bought and sold, it threatens to upend the natural order and prevent those who deserve power from holding it.

This inversion of natural hierarchies threatens, for Behn, the very purposes of political authority—namely, improvement of the subjects and societal stability. Much of the text of Oroonoko is devoted to showing how the system of chattel slavery, with its inversion of natural hierarchies, undermines both of these purposes. With respect to improvement, Behn’s text shows that those subject to commodified power will be unlikely to benefit. This point can be understood in two ways. For one, Behn believes inferiors will simply not be good rulers—they cannot be expected to lead and guide individuals who are better than they are. More fundamentally, the ability to buy power produces adverse incentives. If one is willing to buy power, then they clearly view it as an investment—something from which they can profit. Thus, even if one does have capacities to rule, the fact that they are buying power suggests that they do not want to govern, but to profit. Hence, Oroonoko complains that Africans are not being ruled—they are not being governed for their own benefit—but are simply being used as “Christian tools” (O, 56).

Behn also suggests that commodifying power is inherently unstable, as it requires deception to establish and maintain. Since this form of slavery inverts the natural order, slave masters cannot command the same reverence that natural rulers like Oroonoko elicit from their subjects. Consequently, obedience is tenuous, and Behn’s characters frequently allude to the possibility of a slave rebellion. As the narrator, Behn tells the readers that slave rebellions are “very fatal in these colonies so abound with slaves” and that the governor frequently “feared a mutiny” (O, 41). To establish and maintain this form of power, Behn suggests that excessive deception is required. Oroonoko’s story is one of repeated deceptions, flattery, and tricks, designed to keep him enslaved. He is deceived by a slave trader who invites him on his boat for a dinner, only to lock him in irons. When he sails across the Atlantic, the slave trader tells them they will be freed to prevent Oroonoko and his comrades from starving themselves to death. When he is sold at auction, his new owner continually promises to return him to Africa to prevent Oroonoko from rebelling or committing suicide. The novel culminates with the repeated deceptions ultimately failing, leading to Oroonoko’s rebellion.

In sum, Behn’s work points to a new way of conceptualizing slavery, and why it is wrong. Rather than define slavery as domination or dependence on arbitrary power, she instead focuses on commodification, or the selling of authority. Treating relations of authority as fungible—something that can be indiscriminately transferred—threatens to invert the natural hierarchies on which legitimate authority, which both improves subjects and stabilizes the commonwealth, depends. Indeed, this reading perhaps also clarifies Behn’s critique of Whigs, and how Oroonoko serves as an allegory for the Exclusion Crisis. By ousting the rightful ruler, James II, during the Exclusion Crisis and establishing a contractual basis for monarchy—effectively selling authority to William and Mary of Orange—Behn suggests that while this may prevent rulers from wielding arbitrary authority, it has also introduced the commercial forces that underpin true slavery.

ASTELL AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF MARRIAGE

It is unsurprising that this distinction—one that exculpates dependence on arbitrary power—would resonate with Astell. For Astell, dependence is an ineliminable and necessary part of human social relations; we do not, she reminds her readers, “spring up like so many mushrooms … without father, mother or any sort of dependency!” (MTS, xxxv). Arbitrary power likewise has its place. The “hereditary and Lawful Prince” is never “Arbitrary thro’ his own thirst for power” (MTS, xxxvii). Absolute power is the “burden” of a legitimate Prince. He does not act against Parliament or law for his own benefit, as these actions come with a “heavy account for the next world” (MTS, xxxvii). Nonetheless, this discretionary power is needed to ensure stability. If a Stuart monarch exercises power more arbitrarily, Astell places most of the blame on the “Petulancy and Unquietness of his subjects,” which compels him to act against Parliament and settled laws. Thus, for Astell, dependence on arbitrary power is not slavery but a feature of a “well-regulated Monarchy” (MTS, xxxvii).

This point becomes even clearer when we turn to Astell’s writings on marriage. Here, she adopts Behn’s understanding of slavery—not as arbitrary, but as saleable power—to characterize her contemporaries’ marriage practices. She again rejects the idea that arbitrary power is itself slavery; instead, she characterizes marital slavery as arising from the commodification of the marital institution.

As discussed in the previous section, Astell believes that the power of husbands is constitutive of marriage. She reminds her readers that a wife must completely submit to her husband as “She has made him her Head, and he thinks himself as well qualified as the Best to act accordingly” (RM, 53). While the text does diagnose some of the problems found in marriages, Astell insists that she is not trying to change the institution itself: “It is an institution of Heaven, the only honorable way of continuing mankind, and far be it from us to think there could have been a better way than infinite Wisdom has found out for us” (RM, 36).Footnote ²⁶ Marriage is a divinely sanctioned institution, one that involves submission of wives to their husbands, and Astell does not propose to change this basic arrangement: marriage in itself is not the problem.

The problem, for Astell, is not conjugal power itself, but that this power has become commercialized. At the outset of the essay, Astell asks why, if marriage is a sacred institution, does it produce so much unhappiness. Her answer is unambiguous—money.

Astell also discusses the problems associated with marrying for beauty or wit, but the overwhelming preoccupation of the text is the corrupting consequences of commerce. In this period, England is becoming an increasingly commercial society—a fact of which Astell is a prescient observer (see Hartmann Reference Hartmann1998; Kolbrener Reference Kolbrener2004)—and she believes that this has fundamentally changed how men approach marriage, claiming that for every man who does not marry for money, “a thousand do” (RM, 41). The bulk of the text is dedicated to explaining how this accounts for the unhappiness and injustice of marriage: “if at the best her lot is hard, what can she expect who is sold, or any otherwise betrayed, into mercenary hands” (RM, 50). Thus, when Astell claims that marriage is a kind of slavery, she is not complaining about the absolute power of husbands. Rather, she is diagnosing the problems associated with the commodification of marriage. Marriage becomes a form of slavery when conjugal power is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold.

This anti-commerce rhetoric that accompanies Astell’s claims about slavery—the repeated complaints that women are sold to merchants—brings her much closer to Behn than to the neo-Roman view of slavery. Yet it is important to highlight that there is an important difference between Behn’s description of chattel slavery and Astell’s description of marriage. Namely, women are not literally bought and sold. Men marry for money—a fact the dowryless, and downwardly mobile Astell surely knew—but that is not equivalent to being purchased. But what is important for my purposes is that Astell obscures this difference, constantly suggesting that men being motivated by financial concerns is equivalent to buying a wife. Perhaps Astell felt justified in equating them—the purchase of a wife and marriage for money—since both exemplify the central wrong of slavery, as Behn saw it: the inversion of natural hierarchies. In both cases, commercial interests, rather than natural authority, dictate who holds authority.

Astell’s concern about the inversion of natural hierarchy is made clear through her preoccupation with “unequal matches” (RM, 67)—that is, marriages in which a woman becomes subject to a man who is her inferior.Footnote ²⁷ Like Behn, Astell is not a believer in natural equality: “God has placed different ranks in the world, put some in a higher and some in a lower station, for order and beauty’s sake” (RM, 52). She also admits that dominion does not always reflect one’s worth; sometimes, individuals of bad character end up in power, which does not necessarily undermine their authority. Still, she insists that to whatever extent possible we must “not degrade ourselves” by subjecting ourselves to those who are our inferiors (RM, 52). The problem with the commodification of marriage is that it is increasingly likely that women will become subject to their inferiors. When marriage becomes entangled with commercial concerns, as a way for men to “encrease their fortune” (RM, 39), then we consequently have inappropriate matches where a superior woman, who has more virtue and character, becomes subject to an inferior man.

This inversion of the natural hierarchy, in turn, undermines the purpose of rule or dominion. Like Behn, Astell points to two purposes of rule. First, the improvement of the subjects. Astell criticizes those who suppose that having power means one can use their subject as a tool: “When we suppose a thing to be made purely for our sakes, because they have Dominion over it, we draw a false conclusion” (RM, 57). Rather, subjects are rational and have their own ends, and so the rule of the husband is “to instruct and improve those under his government” (RM, 75). Yet, Astell argues that this purpose of rule is undermined when one treats marriage as a commodity. Astell argues that the “mercenary” man who marries for money cannot be a good ruler. Since “he who makes Money his Idol… gives no such Evidence, either of Wisdom or Goodness, that a Woman of any tolerable Sense shou’d care to venture her self to his Conduct” (RM, 49). By marrying such a man, the woman “makes a fool her head,” and “a vicious man is her guide and Pattern” (RM, 49). Here again, Astell’s language of “guide” and “pattern” remind us that she finds little comfort in conjugal authority being predictable. Astell points out that when a man marries for profit, he will predictably fail to rule the wife in her own interests. Rather, he treats her as a tool and “ruines her to serve his own ends” (RM, 52). This, she argues, thrusts women into a life of “mean drudgery,” making her nothing more than a “humble servant” (RM, 53).

Astell also claims that commodified power will produce instability. Here, she again follows Behn’s argument closely, claiming that this kind of authority can only be established and maintained through deception. The idea that women are deceived by men, and tricked into marriages by men who want their money, is a theme that runs throughout Astell’s feminist writings (including the Serious Proposal, as well as her Reflections Upon Marriage). Astell painstakingly shows that men use deceptive tricks, particularly flattery, to “become masters of her estate” (RM, 43). While women should be treated “civilly,” Astell argues that men flatter women in the process of courtship to get them in their power: “He may call himself her Slave a few Days, but it is only in order to make her his all the rest of his Life” (RM, 44). For this reason, Astell says that “it is the hardest thing in the world for a woman to know that a man is not mercenary” (RM, 51). Because men are deceptive, Astell notes that it is most important for women to learn to discern who is genuine and who is only seeking her fortune.

Indeed, there is an undercurrent throughout Reflections that suggests that a rule established by deception will be inherently unstable, or of “an uncertain tenure” (77). For Astell, when a woman finds that she has been deceived by a mercenary into marriage, it is unlikely to be a stable arrangement. “Can it be thought,” Astell asks her reader, “that [this] woman shou’d have patience to bear a continual Outrage and Insolence all the days of her life? Unless you will suppose her to be a very ass, but then remember what the Italians say… an ass tho’ slow if provk’d will kick” (RM, 77).

In her penultimate paragraph, addressed to men, she reminds men of the danger in which they find themselves from deceiving women: “I don’t say that Tyranny ought, but we find it in fact, that it provokes the oppressed to throw off a yoke that sits too heavy” (RM, 78). Astell does not condone resistance or rebellion—after all, the negative consequences of disobedience in marriage are largely borne by women, who face repercussions from either their husband or broader society. But Astell does warn that men’s own domestic tranquility might be threatened if they deceive women into marriage for commercial gain.

Attention to Aphra Behn’s influence, then, helps clarify a longstanding interpretive puzzle in Astell, while shedding light on the broader phenomena of Tory feminism. Astell’s interpreters have long been impressed by her feminist arguments. Her Cartesian metaphysics and epistemology offer a powerful critique of male superiority and patriarchal prejudices (e.g., Perry Reference Perry1985; Shapiro Reference Shapiro2016; Sowaal Reference Sowaal, Sowaal and Wiess2016). Her debt to Cambridge School Platonists furnishes her with an account of love and female friendship that helps women develop their capacities for reason and virtue (e.g., Forbes Reference Forbes2020; Kendrick Reference Kendrick2018). Her critique of Locke has been celebrated by Pateman as the first feminist critique of social contract theory (Reference Pateman1988, 94). But Pateman passes over Astell’s positive political program. Her belief in natural hierarchies, and the necessity of dependence on absolute power, have struck many as an inconsistent stain on an otherwise fascinating feminist.

Yet Astell’s Toryism was at the forefront of her political agenda. It should be understood not as an inconsistency or limit, but as the foundation for her feminist program.Footnote ²⁸ High Church Tories like Astell emerged as a response to the growing latitudinarian culture which, according to J. G. A. Pocock, they characterized as driven by commercial interests (Pocock Reference Pocock1986, 234). Astell sought to show that this culture was pernicious because it undermined a natural hierarchy, hierarchies designed by God to ensure both social stability and individual moral and intellectual improvement. We see this particularly in her view of marriage. Previous commentators have rightly noted that Astell is preoccupied with how marriage undermines women’s opportunities for moral and intellectual development. But it is not marriage hierarchies per se, but rather the commercial incentives corrupting marital relations that are to blame for this circumstance. Her critique of contract theory is not Pateman’s. She is not primarily concerned with how contract masks inequalities, but rather how it inverts natural hierarchies so necessary for human flourishing.

RACE AND THE LEGACY OF ASTELL’S FEMINISM

If Astell’s account of slavery as commodified authority is fully compatible with hierarchy, then we must next ask what she makes of the slave trade in Black Africans. Is she, like Behn, sympathetic to enslaved Africans, or does she, like Sapho, deploy the slave metaphor to reinforce a sharp distinction between English wives and Black slaves?

It is difficult to discern Astell’s views on the slave trade because she is largely silent on the practice. Yet she is not completely mute. In The Christian Religion, Astell offers a curious thought experiment in which she imagines herself born “an African” (CR, 75). This exercise serves to defend the Church of England by showing that a new convert—guided solely by reason and Scripture—would choose Anglicanism over other Christian denominations. “Supposing then that I had been an African, and converted,” she asks her readers, which form of Christianity would she have adopted? (CR, 75). Imagining a journey through Europe—Rome, Amsterdam, and London—she concludes that an “honest African” would find the “doctrine of the establish’d national Church” most agreeable to Scripture and reason (CR, 77). Astell’s willingness to imagine herself African, then, seems very different from Sapho’s disgust at being compared to Black women. There is, perhaps, an acknowledgment of the spiritual equality of all people, regardless of race.

This passage, however, is not definitive. If we consider the views of Astell’s female friends—Lady Catherine Jones and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu—then the evidence seems to point in the other direction. Jones was, at least for some time, Astell’s closest friend and neighbor in Chelsea (Hill Reference Hill1986, 8–10). In a letter to John Norris, Astell reluctantly agreed that he may publish their correspondence, but on the condition that the Letters be dedicated to her friend Catherine Jones (LG, 66–7). The woman Astell “loves with the greatest tenderness” for her “unfeigned goodness… early piety and eminent virtue” (LG, 66) was likely implicated in the colonial trade. One extant portrait of Jones depicts her flanked by her sister on her right hand, and a Black African child crouching at her knee (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The Lady Frances and the Lady Catharine Jones Daughters to the Right Honble Richard Earle of Ranelagh

Note: Print created by John Smith (1691), after portrait by William Wissing and Jan van der Vaart.

In these seventeenth-century portraits, Black children appeared as fashionable accessories, symbolizing the subject’s wealth, status, and connection to the colonial slave trade. While Astell worried that the buying and selling of power would unsettle natural hierarchies in England, she perhaps could tolerate this practice in the colonies if it bolstered aristocratic hierarchies at home.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 20 years Astell’s junior, prepared her Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) at Astell’s request.Footnote ²⁹ The letters, which recount Montagu’s travels through Europe, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire from 1716 to 1718, feature shockingly racist claims. Upon encountering “mulattoes,” Montagu complains that they are “the most frightful creatures that can appear in a human figure” (Montagu Reference Montagu, Heffernan and O’Quinn2013, 191). She criticizes the women in particular for being adorned with tattoos which are “a considerable addition to their natural deformity” (Montagu Reference Montagu, Heffernan and O’Quinn2013, 191). Astell wrote the preface to these letters in 1724, lavishly praising Montagu’s “sublime genius” in offering an “accurate account of the customs and manners of several nations” (Montagu Reference Montagu, Heffernan and O’Quinn2013, 222).

Interestingly, however, in one letter Montagu explains that she cannot purchase a slave in the Mediterranean for her correspondent. Montagu notes that the practice of slavery in Turkey and the Mediterranean is “very different from our common notions in England” (Montagu Reference Montagu, Heffernan and O’Quinn2013, 148). She particularly points out that slaves in these cultures are not bought and sold: they are “educated with great care” from their youth, and their “patrons never sell them” (Montagu Reference Montagu, Heffernan and O’Quinn2013, 148; my emphasis). Rather than “expose them to markets,” Montagu explains that slave owners “either present them to a friend, or give them their freedom” if they no longer have use for the slave (Montagu Reference Montagu, Heffernan and O’Quinn2013, 148). At several points in The Turkish Embassy, Montagu exculpates the Turkish practice of slavery by pointing to the distinction between the practice of slavery in England and Turkey, claiming that the latter “is in my opinion, no worse than servitude all over the world” (Montagu Reference Montagu, Heffernan and O’Quinn2013, 169). Turkish slaves are more akin to “ordinary servants” than to what the English would call slaves (Montagu Reference Montagu, Heffernan and O’Quinn2013, 169). Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters contain disturbing racism, especially toward Black Africans. Yet, in exonerating the Turkish practice of slavery, she offers an implicit critique of the transatlantic slave trade.Footnote ³⁰ For Montagu, the Turkish practice of slavery is less objectionable, and far less cruel, because it does not treat people as things to be bought and sold.

We cannot know Astell’s views on the transatlantic slave trade definitively. If she shares the views of her friends, then she is likely a racist, with unarticulated beliefs in the natural inferiority of Black Africans to white Europeans. Nor would it be surprising if her belief in natural hierarchies extended to racial hierarchies. Yet even Montagu, who made these racist beliefs explicit, nonetheless recognized that the transatlantic slave trade is an institution without precedent in other times or places. It is a distinctly modern institution, made possible by an increasingly commercial society.

It is this observation of the distinctive wrongs of commodified authority—popularized by Aphra Behn and applied to marriage by Mary Astell—that reverberates with later generations of feminist writers. Tory feminists following Astell, such as Eliza Haywood and Delarivière Manley, continued to use gender as a lens to critique Whig politics and commercial society. Haywood’s plays—Mercenary Lover (Reference Haywood1726) and Wife to be Lett (Reference Haywood1724)—resonate so strongly with Astell’s themes that they might have been penned by Astell herself. In them, Haywood imagines a dystopian—and often comedically absurd—world in which marital authority is treated as something that can be exchanged, bequeathed, and even rented. The wrong is clear: the problem is not the divinely sanctioned, arbitrary authority of a husband but treating women as objects to be bought and sold. Astell might not be England’s “First” feminist, but she certainly is an influential one. Her work marks a turning point in the history of feminist thought—a moment that owes much to the proto-abolitionism of Oroonoko.

This distinctive tradition of feminist thought has been obscured by the preoccupation among historians and theorists with the neo-Roman understandings of liberty and slavery. The dominance of this model has reduced the marriage-slavery analogy to an offshoot of republicanism. Feminism, along with abolitionism, is seen as a parallel application of the ideal of nondomination, extending neo-Romanism into the domestic sphere. Yet this article has suggested a more complicated history, in which the wrongs of chattel slavery were seen as distinct from the wrongs of arbitrary power. This insight was appropriated by feminists, even those who were ambivalent about the slave trade itself.

Attention to this alternative tradition is important because it alerts us to new ways of conceptualizing unfreedom. Neo-Roman republicanism is not only a dominant lens for historical interpretation but has become a powerful way of diagnosing oppression today. This model of slavery as dependence on arbitrary power has become a tool to critique non-democratic governments, gender inequality, and workplace management. Yet some feminist and disability scholars have expressed skepticism about this ideal. Dependence, they note, is an ineliminable—and not necessarily undesirable—aspect of human life (e.g., Kittay Reference Kittay1999; Tronto Reference Tronto2013). Care work, they argue, involves dependence and discretion, which is not only consistent with freedom, but may also serve as a model to rethink political relations more generally. While modern readers are rightly skeptical about Astell’s belief in natural hierarchy, her concern about commodification of dependents is still a salient one. She alerts us that there is something wrong with treating care work—and perhaps work more generally—as a kind of relationship that can simply be bought, sold, or treated as replaceable.

This historical feminist moment, therefore, deserves further attention. It illuminate a complicated historical relationship between chattel slavery and feminism, whereby the latter appropriates insights about the distinctive wrong of being sold. In doing so, these feminists offer a way of thinking about slavery and unfreedom that go beyond the neo-Roman tradition, providing contemporary theorists a lens for understanding forms of oppression that are otherwise invisible.