Mary Astell is not known for her knitting. If she is remembered at all, it is for being England’s first feminist. In 1694, she published A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, a treatise arguing for women’s education. Yet here she is with knitting needles and a handsome strip of pink wool. She is as surprised as anyone.
In Shelagh Stephenson’s spiky comedy, that only makes her more anxious. She is in some kind of afterlife: it cannot be purgatory because that would be too Catholic for this high Anglican, but it does not seem like heaven either. Rather, it appears to be a repository for women on the verge of being forgotten. The panelled walls of Amy Watts’s set taper ominously into oblivion. What difference whether she could knit or not if she is to be written out of history anyway?
