ABSTRACT
Comparing Aphra Behn (1640?–89) and Mary Astell (1666-1731) may seem like an
odd enterprise.1 The genres that these two women practiced and the manner in which
they led their lives were indeed disparate. Behn drank life deeply. She partook in
and celebrated worldly living, including rakish men and cross-dressing women. She
wrote about youth, beauty, and sexual adventure. Astell lived a far more reclusive,
woman-centered existence. She placed the highest value not in seeking “only the
wisdom of this World,” but in striving toward the perfection of the next.2 Behn used
her pen to entertain and earn herself a living, mastering numerous literary styles
along the way. Astell sought to enlighten and persuade through her pamphlets on
education, religion, and marriage, and to pulverize the political opposition through
her virulent polemics.
