ABSTRACT

Mary Astell's reflections on love and friendship in her letters to John Norris may have been, at least in their early reception, most generally noted for their theological sublimity. For both Astell and Norris, the cure elaborated in the Letters for the 'slow pulse of the heart' is to re-invigorate philosophy through love of the divine. In Letters, Astell associates the desire for the creature and created world with the degraded realm of fancy and imagination, and the love of God with rationality and philosophical rigor. In Letters, desire had been associated with the 'Prejudices of Sense' and in A Serious Proposal with a specifically masculine imagination. In Astell's argument of the Letters, the 'disorder' instigated by desire is overcome through the redemptive powers of divine love. Astell's philosophical love, emerging through the martyrdom of friendship provides a salvific alternative to the endless strife and disorder imposed by Hobbesian desire.