Ban Zhao
In part three of the "Essay" the history of women's education is briefly outlines, 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 are the head of a household, as they were frequently 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.