Educational and economic opportunities for women were limited in seventeenth-century Great Britain. In a groundbreaking work published in 1697, the feminist author Mary Astell pointed out that most women simply became wives and mothers. Their principal goal was to learn to dress well and conduct themselves properly in public. Because the male-dominated society limited the opportunities for women, it inhibited their spiritual and intellectual potential. It also reinforced the false impression that women were frivolous and shallow. Astell strongly disagreed with this conventional view of gender and asserted that females were as smart, rational, and capable as their male counterparts.