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Critical Reception
While Sarah Scott is now regarded as a notable figure in the realms of feminism and queer theory, she “received only limited critical attention during her lifetime”, possibly because all of her work was published anonymously. Despite publishing only one notably famous novel in her lifetime, A Description of Millenium Hall and the Country Adjacent (1762), her work in translation and political writing earned her a sparse but sufficient profit off of which to live.

Scott was consistently perceived as inferior to her sister, Elizabeth Montagu, and was alienated by most of her family for the majority of her life. Montagu and Scott were very close, but from a young age “much was made of Elizabeth’s brilliance but little of Sarah’s”, despite little to no evidence indicating Montagu having any intellectual superiority over her sister. In fact, Montagu endlessly praised Scott’s intellect and abilities, but Scott remained impoverished and in her sister's shadow nonetheless.

With the feminist literary recovery in the late twentieth century, Sarah Scott’s work was revisited by scholars and gained much more recognition than it had during the era of publication. Modern critics have noted that Millenium Hall was originally published under the pseudonym “a Gentleman on his Travels” to appeal to the male sex despite its consistent exclusion of men and their power. This suggests that “Millenium Hall really aims to educate men,” and directly addresses the source of societal patriarchy to call for change and female empowerment. Another common point explored by modern feminists and literary scholars argues that the “hermitic life” of the female characters in Millenium Hall “reflects their desire for…free and rational discourse” and does not indicate “feminine humility” or meekness.

In addition to Scott’s influence on feminist philosophy, she has also been impactful in the study of queer theory. While we do not have concrete evidence of any sexual aspect in Scott and Lady Bab’s relationship, modern scholars have analyzed the letters between Scott and her sister to “reveal that Scott’s family regarded Scott and Lady Barbara as a couple” and treated them accordingly. Her work also explored how successfully women could coexist in a harmonious utopian society in which they shared property and finances without any need or desire for male interference. While this obviously broke the norm of the 18th century domestic sphere, modern literary critic George E. Haggerty also argues that the chemistry between the main characters in Millenium Hall “hints at the incipient sexuality of the female bond”, which was very radical considering that queer theory was essentially nonexistent.

There was an even more prominent theme than sexuality and feminism in Sarah Scott’s work: disabilities. In addition to its large role in Scott’s personal life and Millenium Hall, disability is also the major theme in her earlier, less well-known novel Agreeable Ugliness. In Scott’s personal life she almost exclusively employed the intellectually and physically disabled, and this practice carried over into her writing. She continuously communicates through narration and plot that the disabled are extremely capable individuals, and she advocates for their “free and rational discourse” as she did for women. Her compassion for the disabled is largely attributed to her affliction with smallpox as a young adult, which left her with physical disfigurement, and her role as a caretaker for both her mother and Lady Bab.