Quote by Mary Astell: “How can she reasonably love a Man who is always using his Power against her?”

This question highlights the fundamental incompatibility between genuine affection and oppressive power dynamics within a relationship. Astell suggests that love cannot flourish when one partner consistently asserts dominance or acts against the other's well-being, pointing to the inherent injustice in such arrangements.

Astell critiqued the power imbalance within marriage during a time when women had few legal rights, highlighting the inherent injustice in such relationships.

English philosopher and proto-feminist writer who argued for women's education and rational equality nearly a century before Wollstonecraft. Her 1694 work A Serious Proposal to the Ladies advocated for women's colleges and challenged the assumption that women were intellectually inferior.