Free (nook/Kindle/DRM-free) Some Reflections Upon Marriage [17th C Feminism w/Notes]

[ATDrake]

Some Reflections Upon Marriage by 17th century author Mary Astell (Wikipedia) is her proto-feminist tract on Exactly What It Says In The Title, now available in an annotated e-book edition with an introduction by emeritus professor John A. Dussinger, free courtesy of the University of Illinois Press as the 1st in their Women in Print e-book series covering influential historical female authors.

Currently free @ B&N (also UK), Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK), and directly from the university' dedicated webpage for the project (DRM-free ePub/Mobi/PDF of both this version available worldwide, as well as online reading/PDF download of a facsimile of the original tract & some sort of video; requires javascript to be active in your browser).

Description
Published anonymously in 1700, this tract by Mary Astell (1668-1731) laments the inequities of the institution of marriage and reasons against it with both traditional and innovative arguments.

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

For many parts of the world such a bold protest resonates as tellingly today as it did three hundred years ago in England when Mary Astell (1666-1731) confronted the appalling moral and legal subordination of women, rich and poor alike, who entered into matrimony with the cards stacked heavily in the husband's favor. It is Astell's unstinting recognition of the arbitrary restraints imposed on women and her vigorous writing on their behalf that make her one of the earliest English feminists in history.

Although prominent in her lifetime as the author of a number of treatises on women's education as well as on theological, philosophical, and political subjects, Astell was nearly forgotten by the nineteenth century. However, since the appearance of Bridget Hill's comprehensive study of Astell (1956) and Ruth Perry's definitive biography (1986), various scholars have helped restore this original thinker and polemicist to her proper intellectual, religious, political, and social contexts.