Philosopher
Margaret Fell
1614–1702
Also known as Margaret Askew, Margaret Fell Fox
Quaker writer hailed as a feminist pioneer for Womens Speaking Justified, which argued from Scripture and the inner light that women may preach.
Margaret Askew was born at Marsh Grange in Lancashire in 1614, and at seventeen married the barrister Thomas Fell, with whom she had nine children. In 1652 she heard George Fox, the early Quaker leader, preach in her local church and was converted on the spot; her husband, despite his doubts, supported her.
Her long life spanned the Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution, and she died in 1702. Some scholars doubt that she was a feminist in any full sense, since Quakers allowed women to speak only as vessels for Christ, and only in worship; but her defence of women’s preaching was influential, and her writings on Judaism may have reached Spinoza.
Key ideas
- Women may preach
- Womens Speaking Justified argues that women are spiritually equal to men, points to women who speak in the Bible, and reinterprets the passages that seem to require women’s silence and subordination.
- The inner light
- The light of Christ is planted in every person’s conscience, not as a natural power like reason but as something divine. Through it people learn God’s will and the moral law, and since it is in everyone, it grounds equal spiritual authority.
- Against clerical authority
- Fell drew on Quaker principles that reject the authority of clergy and defend liberty of conscience, which strengthened her case that the spirit, not office or sex, authorises speech.
- Tradition
- Western
- Region
- Lancashire, England
- Period
- Early modern
- Themes
- Women and gender
Key works
- Womens Speaking Justified, 1666
Sources
- Jacqueline Broad, Margaret Fell, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy