Marriage Quote by Mary Astell

Astell’s question lands like a trap: it pretends to solicit an answer while quietly indicting the entire arrangement of marriage in her era. The “How can” isn’t curiosity; it’s a courtroom move. If a husband holds women in contempt, she suggests, then “respect” inside marriage is structurally impossible, not a matter of individual virtue. The line forces a scandalous reversal for the early 18th century: the problem isn’t the allegedly irrational wife, but the husband’s prior ideology - his belief that “her Sex” is inferior - which poisons the relationship before it begins.

The subtext is sharper than the surface politeness. Astell puts “Man” and “Wife” in a hierarchy of roles that society takes for granted, then punctures it with a moral demand: respect. Not love, not obedience, not harmony - respect, the one currency patriarchy can’t easily counterfeit. By yoking “Wife” to “her Sex,” she widens the frame from domestic squabble to systemic prejudice. The husband isn’t just failing one woman; he’s practicing a general contempt and calling it order.

Context matters: Astell writes in a world where women’s education, property rights, and legal personhood are curtailed, and marriage is often an economic necessity. The quote reads as an early feminist stress test of “companionate” marriage: if women are trained to be lesser and men are taught to believe it, the rhetoric of mutuality is a joke. Her genius is making that joke audible without laughing - the question does the sneering for her.