It's unclear if Captain Wentworth honestly thinks women require more care and better accommodations or whether he is avoiding women in general because of Anne. This line of Mrs Croft's is beautiful. There is a modern web series adaptation called Rational Creatures. I think this is an echo of Mary Wollstonecraft, Austen uses the term again when Elizabeth Bennet is rejecting Mr Collins proposal (P&P chapter 19)

The famous opening of Northanger Abbey describes Catherine Morland “as plain as any.” Yet from the list of qualities and habits that set her against narrative expectations—the Gothic and the sentimental—and social expectations—femininity and propriety—Catherine’s character ultimately emerges as unconventional, too. In seemingly trivial and funny details, such as her preference for cricket over “feeding a canary-bird,” the narrator intimates her inconformity with dominant beliefs about the nature of women. The canary alludes to existing associations between birds and women that underscored women’s lack of rationality and their supposed vulnerability.

In many portraits of the period, young girls were eroticized through their connection to birds, particularly when portrayed weeping for a dead pet bird, a sign of their loss of sexual innocence. Canaries, a favorite songbird in the late eighteenth-century household, were associated with young girls through their delicate size, beautiful and soft feathers, and prized songs [1]. At the same time, women’s musical abilities, as exemplified in Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1815), were a sure-fire sign of their marriageability: good singers made good wives [2]. Maturity didn’t save women from disparaging associations with birds. Spinsters were oftentimes portrayed surrounded by parrots and bird cages, the equivalent of crazy cat ladies [3]. By creating a heroine who is more likely to be found outdoors exercising than feeding a small, delicate bird, Austen disassociates Catherine from these sexist beliefs. Not all associations to birds were troubling, though. Songbirds figured in stories for young children to instill kindness toward other animals, as in Sarah Trimmer’s Fabulous Histories (1786). Austen’s contemporaries shared a strong belief that educating children to treat animals with kindness was the foundation for instilling sympathy toward other humans [4]. Yet, as Mary Wollstonecraft argued in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a rational woman knew that compassion “for the bird starved in a snare” came second (or third) to compassion for her fellow humans.

This annotation draws on research developed for a forthcoming essay which will appear in Science and Storytelling, edited by Dave Alff and Danielle Spratt.

The famous opening of Northanger Abbey describes Catherine Morland “as plain as any.” Yet from the list of qualities and habits that set her against narrative expectations—the Gothic and the sentimental—and social expectations—femininity and propriety—Catherine’s character ultimately emerges as unconventional, too. In seemingly trivial and funny details, such as her preference for cricket over “feeding a canary-bird,” the narrator intimates her inconformity with dominant beliefs about the nature of women. The canary alludes to existing associations between birds and women that underscored women’s lack of rationality and their supposed vulnerability.

In many portraits of the period, young girls were eroticized through their connection to birds, particularly when portrayed weeping for a dead pet bird, a sign of their loss of sexual innocence. Canaries, a favorite songbird in the late eighteenth-century household, were associated with young girls through their delicate size, beautiful and soft feathers, and prized songs [1]. Women’s musical abilities, as exemplified in Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1815), were a sure-fire sign of their marriageability: good singers made good wives [2]. Maturity didn’t save women from disparaging associations with birds. Spinsters were oftentimes portrayed surrounded by parrots and bird cages, the equivalent of crazy cat ladies. By creating a heroine who is more likely to be found outdoors exercising than feeding a small, delicate bird, Austen disassociates Catherine from these sexist beliefs.

Not all associations to birds were troubling, though. Songbirds figured in stories for young children to instill kindness toward other animals, as in Sarah Trimmer’s Fabulous Histories (1786). Austen’s contemporaries shared a strong belief that educating children to treat animals with kindness was the foundation for instilling sympathy toward other humans [3]. Yet, as Mary Wollstonecraft argued in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a rational woman knew that compassion “for the bird starved in a snare” came second (or third) to compassion for her fellow humans.

Women were not allowed to address the court or testify in criminal cases unless there were special circumstances, including in the United States. The legal silencing of women in law courts was discussed in Mary Wollstonecraft's The Wrongs of Woman (published posthumously by William Godwin in 1798).

Okay, this is is more specific, similar to Wollstonecraft, as curlyQ pointed out.

What's interesting here is Astell's saying that she isn't "exceptional"--by that she seems to mean that she is no different or more outstanding than other women, that she doesn't have some special ability or nature (just the same natural inclinations as others).

This resonates with Wollstonecraft's Rights in her insistence that women are not by nature the 'inferior' sex but are instead bred that way due to poor education. By distancing herself from the term "exceptional", Astell seems to be doing something similar, pointing not to any particularly special nature or natural ability but instead a sound education.

This call for women's education (and not just in manners and fine arts) is largely ignored for some time, despite its repetition. In the Rhetorical Tradition reading from last week, they mentioned Archbishop Fénelon published a call for women's education in 1687; here Astell says something similar (1694); others are mentioned below; Wollstonecraft is still calling for it in 1792 (100 years later).

Fénelon's call was for basic reading and writing; Wollstonecraft's was for equality in education with boys (much like Astell's education was). The nature of Astell's school is discussed here, but what was her vision of the curriculum (the "serious secular education")?

Cf. Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written about 100 years later, making a similar argument. Specifically, Wollstonecraft argues that women are not naturally inferior or frivolous but have been bred that way through poor education. Taken in comparison to the Enlightenment's exploration of human nature and with a lack of significant progress between 1687 and 1792 (outside of literacy, noted below), it seems clear that "human nature" really means "man's nature."

[Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

But, alas! husbands, as well as their helpmates, are often only overgrown children; nay, thanks to early debauchery, scarcely men in their outward form—and if the blind lead the blind, one need not come from heaven to tell us the consequence.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUrhOmH5-18)

From Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication:

"Consequently, the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain certain habits of virtue as will render it independent. In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of reason."