John Stuart Mill's the Subjection of Women: His Contemporary and Modern Critics [Hardcover]

John Stuart Mill (Author), Lesley A. Jacobs (Editor), Richard Vandewetering (Editor)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 436 pages
• Publisher: Caravan Books (April 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882060937
• ISBN-13: 978-0882060934
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,068,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mill telling it like it is, December 12, 2007

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Michael A Neulander "Political Philosophy" (VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: John Stuart Mill's the Subjection of Women: His Contemporary and Modern Critics (Hardcover)

I read this book for a graduate Mill seminar in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, feminism and history.

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term.

In The Subjection of Women Mill first and foremost advocated the need for all humans to improve their characters. He was a firm believer, that all people regardless of their race or sex, had the capacity to learn and improve their characters. In light of this belief, Mill sets the tone for his argument in his opening paragraph of his essay wherein he wrote that the legal means by which the female sex was subordinated to the male sex hindered the character development of all members of society. He was the first male in Britain to champion the cause of women to the extent that he did, and he suffered plenty of criticism and insults for doing so. He was also the first Member of Parliament to introduce a bill in the Commons to enfranchise women. He worked tirelessly throughout his life supporting women's rights with both his pen and his purse.
I find that his essay really turned a spotlight on the many horrors that women endured throughout the history of mankind at the hands of their brutish husbands. No other person's writings illuminated the deprivations that women had endured the way Mill's essay did. No doubt, Victorian sensibilities were shocked when he wrote about the brutality that many women in marriage suffered at the whim of their tyrannical husbands--rape and beatings were at the top of his list.
One of the ideas that Mill gave his fervent support to, and that I greatly admire him for, is the concept that freedom of choice for people is a crucial ingredient in character formation and in improving society and civilization for everyone. This belief led him to argue that marriage as it existed in his time was nothing better than legal and state sponsored slavery. Women had few options in life. If they were married to a tyrant who beat them it was almost impossible to obtain a divorce. Divorce was rare in his day and actually had to be approved by an act of parliament. In addition, if a wife did obtain a divorce, not only would she most likely lose custody of her children, she would also be denied any visitation privileges as well. Mill correctly complained that outside of the home women were left with few options in life. Professional education and career paths were closed to them. Men were fearful of the competition in the workplace women would present if they were allowed employment in professions or trade guilds. Therefore, when it came to workplace opportunities, society left women with few options-- prostitution, or menial domestic work. Thus, Mill saw that the lesser of all evils that women could choose was marriage. Their life in the home was reduced to serving as scullery maids and raising children. Thus, he wrote women treated this way were turned into shrews, which not only made their lives miserable, but also the lives of those around them. For all these reasons Mill believed that the institution of marriage was an impediment; not just to women, but to the progress of civilization as well. Considering that marriage laws had the force of several millennia of religious and societal mores behind it, one can certainly understand why his description of its depravity on humankind won him few friends in "polite" Victorian society.
During his time, a married woman's property automatically devolved to her husband, and Mill correctly saw this as one more inequity against women placed on them by society. Therefore, when he married Harriett Taylor in 1851, a financially secure widow, he remained true to his convictions and wrote a formal renunciation to all of her property in protest against the current law. In addition, while a Member of Parliament he cosponsored the Married Women's Property bill in 1868 to try to change the law. Finally, he sternly rebuked this abomination in his essay by rightly concluding that marriage left the vast majority of women in the unenviable position of "the personal body-servant of a despot" (CW XXI: 285).