  Margaret Fell is not an advocate of an egalitarian concept of reason or a supporter of equal educational opportunities for women. Her arguments in favour of female preaching rest on a principle of spiritual equality, or the idea that both men and women have the supernatural light of Christ within them. But for Fell, the ability to hearken to that light implicitly requires that women possess a natural capacity to discern the truth for themselves, to exercise strength of will, and to exhibit moral virtue or excellence of character. In these respects, Fell’s arguments for female preaching contain an implicit feminist challenge to negative perceptions about women’s moral and intellectual abilities in her time. On these grounds, we might conclude that her writings constitute something of a bridge between the querelle des femmes of the late-medieval period and the later feminist arguments of figures such as Astell and Masham.