SOURCE: Sharrock, Catherine. “De-ciphering women and de-scribing authority: The writings of Mary Astell.” In Women, Writing, History, 1640-1740, edited by Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman, pp. 109-24, 218-21. London: B. T. Batsford, Ltd., 1993.

In the following essay, which was first published in 1992, Sharrock examines issues of ideology, authorship, and class in Astell's writing.

Mary Astell perceived the women of her society to be mere ‘Cyphers in the World’ but she was not prepared to acquiesce with this definition of them.¹ Her texts embark upon the de-ciphering of the social codes that authorize the marginalization of the female subject. This de-ciphering moves towards a revision of the ‘cyphered’ female identity, by disrupting the patriarchal discourse through which it is articulated. As the language that defines a woman's containment is destabilized, the female is less bound by masculine author-ity (the interplay between textual and socio-political constructions) and is potentially subject...