of speech and resolving the debate in favour of educating women. The Essay was dedicated to "her Highness the Lady Mary, Eldest Daughter to his Royal Highness the Duke of York". In part three of the Essay, the history of women's education is briefly outlined, and women who have achieved excellence are named, including Aspasia, Arete and Margaret Cavendish. Makin acknowledges that women have little financial or political power, thus she argues they need to derive power from persuasion. If women were the head of a household, as was frequent during the English Civil War, women needed to "understand, read, write, and speak their Mother Tongue". As such Makin adopted the views expressed by Ban Zhao long before her. Makin argues that because women don't usually speak in public they needed to be taught a rhetoric that would assist them in conversation with their husbands and in carrying out their domestic duties. Legacy Makin has been described as a proto-feminist. However, like Christine de Pizan before her, Makin came from an intellectual family and advocated in favour of women's intellectual equality, not women's political equality. In An Essay Makin writes, "Let not your Ladiships be offended that I do not (as some have wittily done) plead for Female Preeminence. To ask too much is the way to be denied all". Arguments in favour of educating women have, however, legitimised the first feminists. Works An online version of Bathsua Makin's An Essay To Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues, With An Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education is available at A Celebration of Women Writers. References English feminists English feminist writers 17th-century English women writers 17th-century English writers British women essayists 1600s births 1670s deaths 17th-century English educators 17th-century Latin-language writers New Latin-language poets