Letters Concerning the Love of God by Mary Astell and John Norris (review)

323 rie Leprince de Beaumont and Sophie von La Roche. Ms. Johns convincingly demonstrates this transcription of ideas from one generation of utopists to the next and beyond the British Isles. Women’s Utopias does many things well, showing, for example, how Astell influenced eighteenth-century female novelists. The female utopists’partial visions , however, are less than satisfying; they advance paradoxes of empowerment through self-denial. If female utopia must be Christian, and in eighteenthcentury England it must, one longs for the feisty echoes of Katherine Chidley and Margaret Fell. Laura Runge University of South Florida MARY ASTELL and JOHN NORRIS. Letters Concerning the Love of God, ed. E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New. Burlington , VT: Ashgate, 2005. Pp. vii ⫹ 263. $99.95. Part of the Contemporary Editions of the Early Modern Englishwoman Series, this long overdue republication of the theological correspondence between Astell and Norris of Bemerton owes more to Astell’s reputation as a ‘‘protofeminist ’’writer than to her lesser known theological work. The series’ goal is to ‘‘make more readily available texts that the feminist re-reading of the period has now brought to light,’’yet Messrs. Taylor and New aspire to more than gleaning every ostensibly feminist phrase and allusion. Maintaining that their readers cannot completely appreciate Astell without first becoming acquainted with her philosophical and theological views, they include with this critical edition of the letters, originally published in 1695, Norris’s Cursory Reflections Upon a Book Call’d ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ (1690), as well as the appendix to Astell’s later The Christian Religion, As Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England (1717). Putting Astell’s more popular persona aside and resurrecting Norris’s, the editors place these texts within the rich intellectual framework that shaped the ideas of both authors. Detailing both correspondents’ lives and works before, during, and after their communication, the Introduction artfully depicts how Cartesian dualism, the Cambridge Platonists and Malebranche’s theory of ‘‘occasionalism’’ variously influence and inform the correspondents’ notion of the love of God. Astell’s and Norris’s ongoing intellectual engagement with Locke both within and outside of their correspondence is particularly lucid and compelling. Messrs. Taylor and New maintain that, though not meant as a direct attack against Locke’s empiricist theories about cognition, Letters contains moments of friction with Locke’s ideas that are crucial to understanding Norris’s and Astell’s intellectual position. These threads of conflict are traced back to Norris’s earlier refutation of Locke’s ideas in his Cursory Reflections and forward to Astell’s condemnation of the thinker in such later works as her Christian Religion. Messrs. New and Taylor also subtly and adroitly present the relationship among the three as anything but simply antithetical. Astell ’s fleeting moments of agreement with Lockean ideas in the correspondence are highlighted, as well as Norris’s initial praise for the quality of Locke’s work. Copiously annotated, with a lengthy list of emendations, these three texts offer a valuable guide to religious theories that have faded from contemporary 324 prominence. In their zeal to establish the framework around Letters, especially Astell’s and Norris’s relationship with Locke, Messrs. Taylor and New perhaps inadvertently come very close to overshadowing the text itself with that same context. Readers come away with a thorough understanding of the interaction of these three thinkers, but may forget the particulars of the Astell and Norris correspondence . While useful, Cursory Reflections and Christian Religion lack the Letters’ distinct character. Untainted by impending opposition, Letters displays a sheer exuberance, complete with passionate exclamations, such as Astell’s, ‘‘And at last pure and defecate, with a Kiss of thy Beloved, breath out thy self into his sacred Bosom!’’ that is absent in the other included works. The additional texts threaten to remove focus from where it belongs. This edition of Letters is insightful and valuable. In these editors’ able hands, neither Letters nor its authors is allowed to remain static or isolated. Messrs. Taylor and New never allow their readers to forget that although Astell ’s and Norris’s ideology ultimately loses out to Locke’s, the theological and philosophical ideas that they portrayed so...