The Enfranchisement of Women
(1851)
Harriet Taylor Mill
[This essay originally
appeared in the Westminster Review (1851) and, after its republication
in Mill's Dissertations and Discussions (which is probably the
explanation of its sometimes being misattributed to Mill), it was republished
in pamphlet form in 1868 under her name. In 1859 Mill prefaced his reprinting
of the essay with these comments (CW, XXI, 393-4): "All the more recent of
these papers2 were joint productions of myself and of one whose loss, even in a
merely intellectual point of view, can never be repaired or alleviated. But the
following Essay is hers in a peculiar sense, my share in it being little more
than that of an editor and amanuensis. Its authorship having been known at the
time, and publicly attributed to her, it is proper to state, that she never
regarded it as a complete discussion of the subject which it treats of-and
highly as I estimate it, I would rather it remained unacknowledged, than that
it should be read with the idea that even the faintest image can be found in it
of a mind and heart which in their union of the rarest, and what are deemed the
most conflicting excellences, were unparalleled in any human being that I have
known or read of. While she was the light, life, and grace of every society in
which she took part, the foundation of her character was a deep seriousness,
resulting from the combination of the strongest and most sensitive feelings
with the highest principles. All that excites admiration when found separately
in others, seemed brought together in her: a conscience at once healthy and
tender; a generosity, bounded only by a sense of justice which often forgot its
own claims, but never those of others; a heart so large and loving, that
whoever was capable of making the smallest return of sympathy always received
tenfold; and in the intellectual department, a vigour and truth of imagination,
a delicacy of perception, an accuracy and nicety of observation only equalled
by her profundity of speculative thought, and by a practical judgment and
discernment next to infallible. So elevated was the general level of her
faculties, that the highest poetry, philosophy, oratory, or art, seemed trivial
by the side of her, and equal only to expressing some small part of her mind.
And there is no one of those modes of manifestation in which she could not
easily have taken the highest rank, had not her inclination led her for the
most part to content herself with being the inspirer, prompter, and unavowed
coadjutor of others.
The present paper was
written to promote a cause which she had deeply at heart, and though appealing
only to the severest reason, was meant for the general reader. The question, in
her opinion, was in a stage in which no treatment but the most calmly argumentative
could be useful, while many of the strongest arguments were necessarily
omitted, as being unsuited for popular effect. Had she lived to write out all
her thoughts on this great question, she would have produced something as far
transcending in profundity the present Essay, as, had she not placed a rigid
restraint on her feelings, she would have excelled it in fervid eloquence. Yet
nothing which even she could have written on any single subject, would have
given an adequate idea of the depth and compass of her mind. As during life she
continually detected, before any one else had seemed to perceive them, those
changes of times and circumstances which ten or twelve years later became
subjects of general remark, so I venture to prophecy that if mankind continue
to improve, their spiritual history for ages to come will be the progressive
working out of her thoughts, and realization of her conceptions."]
MOST OF OUR READERS will
probably learn from these pages for the first time, that there has arisen in the
United States, and in the most civilized and enlightened portion of them, an
organised agitation on a new question—new, not to thinkers, nor to any one by
whom the principles of free and popular government are felt as well as
acknowledged, but new, and even unheard of, as a subject for public meetings
and practical political action. This question is, the enfranchisement of women;
their admission, in law and in fact, to equality in all rights, political,
civil, and social, with the male citizens of the community.
It will add to the surprise
with which many will receive this intelligence, that the agitation which has
commenced is not a pleading by male writers and orators for women, those who
are professedly to be benefitted remaining either indifferent or ostensibly
hostile: it is a political movement, practical in its objects, carried on in a
form which denotes an intention to persevere. And it is a movement not merely
for women, but by them. Its first public manifestation appears to have been a
Convention of Women, held in the State of Ohio, in the spring of 1850. Of this meeting
we have seen no report. On the 23rd and 24th of October last, a succession of
public meetings was held at Worcester in Massachusetts, under the name of a
"Women's Rights Convention", of which the president was a woman,3 and
nearly all the chief speakers women; numerously reinforced, however, by men,
among whom were some of the most distinguished leaders in the kindred cause of
Negro emancipation. A general and four special committees were nominated, for
the purpose of carrying on the undertaking until the next annual meeting.
According to the report in
the New York Tribune,
above a thousand persons were present throughout, and "if a larger place
could have been had, many thousands more would have attended." The place
was described as "crowded from the beginning with attentive and interested
listeners."4 In regard to the quality of the speaking, the proceedings
bear an advantageous comparison with those of any popular movement with which
we are acquainted, either in this country or in America. Very rarely in the oratory
of public meetings is the part of verbiage and declamation so small, that of
calm good sense and reason so considerable. The result of the Convention was in
every respect encouraging to those by whom it was summoned: and it is probably
destined to inaugurate one of the most important of the movements towards
political and social reform, which are the best characteristic of the present
age.
That the promoters of this
new agitation take their stand on principles, and do not fear to declare these
in their widest extent, without time-serving or compromise, will be seen from
the resolutions adopted by the Convention, part of which we transcribe:
Resolved - That every human being,
of full age, and resident for a proper length of time on the soil of the
nation, who is required to obey the law, is entitled to a voice in its
enactment; that every such person, whose property or labour is taxed for the
support of the government, is entitled to a direct share in such government;
therefore,
Resolved - That women are entitled
to the right of suffrage, and to be considered eligible to office, ... and that
every party which claims to represent the humanity, the civilization, and the
progress of the age, is bound to inscribe on its banners, equality before the
law, without distinction of sex or colour.
Resolved - That civil and political
rights acknowledge no sex, and therefore the word "male" should be
struck from every State Constitution.5
Resolved – That, since the prospect
of honourable and useful employment in after life is the best stimulus to the
use of educational advantages, and since the best education is that we give
ourselves, in the struggles, employments, and disciplines of life; therefore it
is impossible that women should make full use of the instruction already
accorded to them, or that their career should do justice to their faculties,
until the avenues to the various civil and professional employments are thrown
open to them.
Resolved – That every effort to
educate women, without according to them their rights, and arousing their
conscience by the weight of their responsibilities, is futile, and a waste of
labour.
Resolved - That the laws of
property, as affecting married persons, demand a thorough revisal, so that all
rights be equal between them; that the wife have during life, an equal control
over the property gained by their mutual toil and sacrifices, and be heir to
her husband precisely to that extent that he is heir to her, and entitled at
her death to dispose by will of the same share of the joint property as he is.6
The following is a brief
summary of the principal demands:
1. Education in
primary and high schools, universities, medical, legal, and theological institutions.
2. Partnership in
the labours and gains, risks and remunerations, of productive industry.
3. A coequal share
in the formation and administration of laws – municipal, state, and national –
through legislative assemblies, courts and executive offices.7
It would be difficult to
put so much true, just, and reasonable meaning into style so little calculated
to recommend it as that of some of the resolutions. But whatever the objection
may be made to some of the expressions, none, in our opinion, can be made to
the demands themselves. As a question of justice, the case seems to us too
clear for dispute. As one of expediency, the more thoroughly it is examined the
stronger it will appear.
That women have as good a
claim as men have, in point of personal right, to the suffrage, or to a place
in the jury-box, it would be difficult for anyone to deny. It cannot certainly
be denied by the United States of America, as a people or as a community. Their
democratic institutions rest avowedly on the inherent right of everyone to a
voice in the government. Their Declaration of Independence, framed by the men
who are still their great constitutional authorities—that document which has
been from the first, and is now, the acknowledged basis of their polity,
commences with this express statement:
We
hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed.8
We do not imagine that any
American democrat will evade the force of these expressions by the dishonest or
ignorant subterfuge, that "men" in this memorable document, does not
stand for human beings, but for one sex only; that "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness are "inalienable rights" of only one moiety of
the human species; and that "the governed," whose consent is affirmed
to be the only source of just power, are meant for that half of mankind only,
who, in relation to the other, have hitherto assumed the character of governors.
The contradiction between principle and practice cannot be explained away. A
like dereliction of the fundamental maxims of their political creed has been
committed by the Americans in the flagrant instance of the Negroes; of this
they are learning to recognise the turpitude. After a struggle which, by many
of its incidents, deserves the name of heroic, the abolitionists are now so
strong in numbers and in influence that they hold the balance of parties in the
United States. It was fitting that the men whose names will remain associated
with the extirpation, from the democratic soil of America, of the aristocracy of
colour, should be among the originators, for America and for the rest of the
world, of the first collective protest against the aristocracy of sex; a
distinction as accidental as that of colour, and fully as irrelevant to all
Questions of government.
Not only to the democracy
of America, the claim of women to civil and political equality makes an
irresistible appeal, but also to those radicals and chartists9 in the British
islands, and democrats on the Continent, who claim what is called universal
suffrage as an inherent right, unjustly and oppressively withheld from them.
For with what truth or rationality could the suffrage be termed universal,
while half the human species remain excluded from it? To declare that a voice
in the government is the right of all, and demand it only for a part—the part,
namely, to which the claimant himself belongs—is to renounce even the
appearance of principle. The chartist who denies the suffrage to women, is a
chartist only because he is not a lord; he is one of those levellers who would
level only down to themselves.
Even those who do not look
upon a voice in the government as a matter of personal right, nor profess
principles which require that it should be extended to all, have usually
traditional maxims of political justice with which it is impossible to
reconcile the exclusion of all women from the common rights of citizenship. It
is an axiom of English freedom that taxation and representation should be
co-extensive. Even under the laws which give the wife's property to the
husband, there are many unmarried women who pay taxes. It is one of the
fundamental doctrines of the British constitution, that all persons should be
tried by their peers: yet women, whenever tried, are tried by male judges and a
male jury. To foreigners the law accords the privilege of claiming that half
the jury should be composed of themselves; not so to women. Apart from maxims
of detail, which represent local and national rather than universal ideas; it
is an acknowledged dictate of justice to make no degrading distinctions without
necessity. In all things the presumption ought to be on the side of equality. A
reason must be given why anything should be permitted to one person and
interdicted to another. But when that which is interdicted includes nearly
everything which those to whom it is permitted most prize, and to be deprived
of which they feel to be most insulting; when not only political liberty but
personal freedom of action is the prerogative of a caste; when even in the
exercise of industry, almost all employments which task the higher faculties in
an important field, which lead to distinction, riches, or even pecuniary
independence, are fenced round as the exclusive domain of the predominant
section, scarcely any doors being left open to the dependent class, except such
as all who can enter elsewhere disdainfully pass by; the miserable expediencies
which are advanced as excuses for so grossly partial a dispensation, would not
be sufficient, even if they were real, to render it other than a flagrant
injustice. While, far from being expedient, we are firmly convinced that the
division of mankind into two castes, one born to rule over the other, is in
this case, as in all cases, an unqualified mischief; a source of perversion and
demoralization, both to the favoured class and to those at whose expense they
are favoured; producing none of the good which it is the custom to ascribe to
it, and forming a bar, almost insuperable while it lasts, to any really vital
improvement, either in the character or in the social condition of the human
race.
These propositions it is
now our purpose to maintain. But before entering on them, we would endeavour to
dispel the preliminary objections which, in the minds of persons to whom the
subject is new, are apt to prevent a real and conscientious examination of it.
The chief of these obstacles is that most formidable one, custom. Women never
have had equal rights with men. The claim in their behalf, of the common rights
of mankind, is looked upon as barred by universal practice. This strongest of
prejudices, the prejudice against what is new and unknown, has, indeed, in an
age of changes like the present, lost much of its force; if it had not, there
would be little hope of prevailing against it. Over three-fourths of the
habitable world, even at this day, the answer, "it has always been
so," closes all discussion. But it is the boast of modern Europeans, and
of their American kindred, that they know and do many things which their
forefathers neither knew nor did; and it is perhaps the most unquestionable
point of superiority in the present above former ages, that habit is not now
the tyrant it formerly was over opinions and modes of action, and that the
worship of custom is a declining idolatry. An uncustomary thought, on a subject
which touches the greater interests of life, still startles when first
presented; but if it can be kept before the mind until the impression of
strangeness wears off, it obtains a hearing, and as rational a consideration as
the intellect of the hearer is accustomed to bestow on any other subject.
In the present case, the
prejudice of custom is doubtless on the unjust side. Great thinkers, indeed, at
different times, from Plato to Condorcet,10 besides some of the most eminent
names of the present age, have made emphatic protests in favour of the equality
of women. And there have been voluntary societies, religious or secular, of
which the Society of Friends is the most known, by whom that principle was
recognized. But there has been no political community or nation in which, by
law, and usage, women have not been in a state of political and civil
inferiority. In the ancient world the same fact was alleged in favour of the
mitigated form of slavery, serfdom, all through the middle ages. It was urged
against freedom of industry, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press; none
of these liberties were thought compatible with a well-ordered state, until
they had proved their possibility by actually existing as facts. That an
institution or a practice is customary is no presumption of its goodness, when
any other sufficient cause can be assigned for its existence. There is no
difficulty in understanding why the subjection of women has been a custom. No
other explanation is needed than physical force.
That those who were
physically weaker should have been made legally inferior is quite conformable
to the mode in which the world has been governed. Until very lately, the rule
of physical strength was the general law of human affairs. Throughout history, the
nations, races, classes, which found themselves the strongest, either in
muscles, in riches, or in military discipline, have conquered and held in
subjection the rest. If, even in the most improved nations, the law of the
sword is at last discountenanced as unworthy, it is only since the calumniated
eighteenth century. Wars of conquest have only ceased since democratic
revolutions began. The world is very young, and has but just begun to cast off
injustice. It is only now getting rid of Negro slavery. It is only now getting
rid of monarchical despotism. It is only now getting rid of hereditary feudal
nobility. It is only now getting rid of disabilities on the ground of religion.
It is only beginning to treat any men as citizens, except the rich and a favoured
portion of the middle class. Can we wonder that it has not yet done as much for
women? As society was constituted until the last few generations, inequality
was its very basis; association grounded on equal rights scarcely existed; to
be equals was to be enemies; two persons could hardly co-operate in anything,
or meet in any amicable relation, without the law's appointing that one of them
should be the superior of the other. Mankind have outgrown this state, and all
things now tend to substitute, as the general principal of human relations, a
just equality, instead of the domination of the strongest. But of all
relations, that between men and women being the nearest and most intimate, and
connected with the greatest number of strong emotions, was sure to be the last
to throw off the old rule and receive the new: for in proportion to the
strength of a feeling, is the tenacity with which it clings to the forms and
circumstances with which it has even accidentally become associated.
When a prejudice, which has
any hold on the feelings, finds itself reduced to the unpleasant necessity of
assigning reasons, it thinks it has done enough when it has re-asserted the
very point in dispute, in phrases which appeal to the pre-existing feeling.
Thus, many persons think they have sufficiently justified the restrictions on
women's field of action, when they have said that the pursuits from which women
are excluded are unfeminine, and that the proper sphere of women is not
politics or publicity, but private and domestic life.
We deny the right of any
portion of the species to decide for another portion, or any individual for
another individual, what is and what is not their "proper sphere."
The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they
are able to attain to. What this is, cannot be ascertained, without complete
liberty of choice. The speakers at the Convention in America have therefore
done wisely and right, in refusing to entertain the question of the peculiar
aptitudes either of women or of men, or the limits within which this or that
occupation may be supposed to be more adapted to the one or to the other. They
justly maintain, that these questions can only be satisfactorily answered by
perfect freedom. Let every occupation be open to all, without favour or
discouragement to any, and employments will fall into the hands of those men or
women who are found by experience to be most capable of worthily exercising
them. There need be no fear that women will take out of the hands of men any occupation
which men perform better than they. Each individual will prove his or her
capacities, in the only way in which capacities can be proved— by trial; and
the world will have the benefit of the best faculties of all its inhabitants.
But to interfere beforehand by an arbitrary limit, and declare that whatever be
the genius, talent, energy, or force of mind of an individual of a certain sex
or class, those faculties shall not be exerted, or shall be exerted only in
some few of the many modes in which others are permitted to use theirs, is not
only an injustice to the individual, and a detriment to society, which loses
what it can ill spare, but is also the most effectual mode of providing that,
in the sex or class so fettered, the qualities which are not permitted to be
exercised shall not exist.
We shall follow the very
proper example of the Convention, in not entering into the question of the
alleged differences in physical or mental qualities between the sexes; not
because we have nothing to say, but because we have too much; to discuss this
one point tolerably would need all the space we have to bestow on the entire
subject.11 But if those who assert that the "proper sphere" for women
is the domestic, mean by this that they have not shown themselves qualified for
any other, the assertion evinces great ignorance of life and of history. Women
have shown fitness for the highest social functions, exactly in proportion as
they have been admitted to them. By a curious anomaly, though ineligible to
even the lowest offices of state, they are in some countries admitted to the
highest of all, the regal; and if there is any one function for which they have
shown a decided vocation, it is that of reigning. Not to go back to ancient
history, we look in vain for abler or firmer rulers than Elizabeth; than
Isabella of Castile; than Maria Teresa; than Catherine of Russia; than Blanche,
mother of Louis IX of France; than Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henri Quatre.12
There are few kings on record who contended with more difficult circumstances,
or overcame them more triumphantly, than these. Even in semi-barbarous Asia,
princesses who have never been seen by men, other than those of their own
family, or ever spoken with them unless from behind a curtain, have as regents,
during the minority of their sons, exhibited many of the most brilliant
examples of just and vigorous administration. In the middle ages, when the
distance between the upper and lower ranks was greater than even between women
and men, and the women of the privileged class, however subject to tyranny from
the men of the same class, were at a less distance below them than any one else
was, and often in their absence represented them in their functions and
authority-numbers of heroic chatelaines like Jeanne de Montfort, or the great
Countess of Derby13 as late even as the time of Charles I14 distinguished
themselves not only by their political but their military capacity. In the
centuries immediately before and after the Reformation, ladies of royal houses,
as diplomatists, as governors of provinces, or as the confidential advisers of
kings, equalled the first statesmen of their time: and the treaty of Cambray,
which gave peace to Europe, was negotiated in conferences where no other person
was present, by the aunt of the Emperor Charles V, and the mother of Francis
I.15
Concerning the fitness,
then, of women for politics, there can be no question: but the dispute is more
likely to turn upon the fitness of politics for women. When the reasons alleged
for excluding women from active life in all its higher departments, are
stripped of their garb of declamatory phrases, and reduced to the simple
expression of a meaning, they seem to be mainly three: the incompatibility of
active life with maternity, and with the cares of a household; secondly, its
alleged hardening effect on the character; and thirdly, the inexpediency of
making an addition to the already excessive pressure of competition in every
kind of professional or lucrative employment.
The first, the maternity
argument, is usually laid most stress upon: although (it needs hardly be said)
this reason, if it be one, can apply only to mothers. It is neither necessary
nor just to make imperative on women that they shall be either mothers or
nothing; or that if they have been mothers once, they shall be nothing else
during he whole remainder of their lives. Neither women nor men need any law to
exclude them from an occupation, if they have undertaken another which is
incompatible with it. No one proposes to exclude the male sex from Parliament
because a man may be a soldier or sailor in active service, or a merchant whose
business requires all his time and energies. Nine-tenths of the occupations of
men exclude them de facto from Public life, as effectually as if they were excluded
by law; but that is no reason for making laws to exclude even the nine-tenths,
much less the remaining tenth. The reason of the case is the same for women as
for men. There is no need to make provision by law that a woman shall not carry
on the active details of a household, or of the education of children, and at
the same time practise a profession or be elected to Parliament. Where
incompatibility is real, it will take care of itself- but there is gross
injustice in making the incompatibility a pretence for the exclusion of those
in whose case it does not exist. And these, if they were free to choose, would
be a very large proportion. The maternity argument deserts its supporters in
the case of single women, a large and increasing class of the population; a
fact which it is irrelevant to remark by tending to diminish the excessive
competition of numbers, is calculated to assist greatly the prosperity of all
There is no inherent reason or necessity that all women should voluntarily
choose to devote their lives to one animal function and its consequences.
Numbers of women are wives and mothers only because there is no other career
open to them, no other occupation for their feelings or their activities. Every
improvement in their education, and enlargement of the faculties – everything
which renders them more qualified for any mode of life, increases the number of
those to whom it is an injury and an oppression to be denied the choice. To say
that women must be excluded from active life because of maternity disqualifies
them for it, it in fact to say, that every other career should be forbidden
them in order that maternity may be their only resource.
But secondly, it is urged,
that to give the same freedom of occupation to women as to men, would be an injurious
addition to the crowd of competitors, by whom the avenues to almost all kinds
of employment are choked up, and its remuneration depressed. This argument, it
is to be observed, does not reach the political question. It gives no excuse
for withholding from women the rights of citizenship. The suffrage, the
jury-box, admission to the legislature and to office, it does not touch. It
bears only on the industrial branch of the subject. Allowing it, then, in an
economical point of view, its full force; assuming that to lay open to women
the employments now monopolized by men, would tend, like the breaking down of
other monopolies, to lower the rate of remuneration in those employments; let
us consider what is the amount of this evil consequence, and what the
compensation for it. The worst ever asserted, much worse than is at all likely
to be realized, is that if women competed with men, a man and a woman could not
together earn more than is now earned by the man alone. Let us make this
supposition, the most unfavourable possible: the joint income of the two would
be the same as before, while the woman would be raised from the position of a
servant to that of a partner. Even if every woman, as matters now stand, had a
claim on some man for support, how infinitely preferable is it that part of the
income should be of the woman's earning, even if the aggregate sum were but
little increased by it, rather than that she should be compelled to stand aside
in order that men may be the sole earners, and the sole dispensers of what is
earned. Even under the present laws respecting the property of women,16 a woman
who contributes materially to the support of the family, cannot be treated in
the same contemptuously tyrannical manner as one who, however she may toil as a
domestic drudge, is a dependent on the man for subsistence. As for the
depression of wages by increase of competition, remedies will be found for it
in time. Palliatives might be applied immediately; for instance a more rigid
exclusion of children from industrial employment, during the years in which
they ought to be working only to strengthen their bodies and minds for after
life. Children are necessarily dependent, and under the power of others; and
their labour, being not for themselves but for the gain of their parents, is a
proper subject for legislative regulation. With respect to the future, we
neither believe that improvident multiplication, and the consequent excessive
difficulty of gaining a subsistence, will always continue, nor that the
division of mankind into capitalists and hired labourers, and the regulation of
the reward of labourers mainly by demand and supply, will be for ever, or even
much longer, the rule of the world. But so long as competition is the general
law of human life, it is tyranny to shut out one half of the competitors. All
who have attained the age of self-government, have an equal claim to be
permitted to sell whatever kind of useful labour they are capable of, for the
price which it will bring.
The third objection to the
admission of women to political or professional life, its alleged hardening
tendency, belongs to an age now past, and is scarcely to be comprehended by
people of the Present time There are still, however, persons who say that the
world and its avocations render men selfish and unfeeling; that the struggles,
rivalries and collisions of business and of politics make them harsh and
unamiable; that if half the species must unavoidably be given up to these
things, it is the more necessary that the other half should be kept free from
them; that to preserve women from the bad influences of the world, is the only
chance of preventing men from being wholly given up to them.
There would have been
plausibility in this argument when the world was still in the age of violence,
when life was full of physical conflict, and every man had to redress his
injuries or those of others, by the sword or by the strength of his arm. Women,
like priests, by being exempted from such responsibilities, and from some part
of the accompanying dangers, may have been enabled to exercise a beneficial
influence. But in the present condition of human life, we do not know where
those hardening influences are to be found, to which men are subject and from
which women are at present exempt. Individuals now-a-days are seldom called
upon to fight hand to hand, even with peaceful weapons; personal enmities and
rivalries count for little in worldly transactions; the general pressure of
circumstances, not the adverse will of individuals, is the obstacle men now
have to make head against. That pressure, when excessive, breaks the spirit,
and cramps and sours the feelings, but not less of women than of men, since
they suffer certainly not less from its evils. There are still quarrels and
dislikes, but the sources of them are changed. The feudal chief once found his
bitterest enemy in his powerful neighbour, the minister or courtier in his
rival for place: but opposition of interest in active life, as a cause of
personal animosity, is out of date; the enmities of the present day arise not
from great things but small, from what people say of one another, more than
from what they do; and if there are hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness,17
they are to be found among women fully as much as among men. In the present
state of civilization, the notion of guarding women from the hardening
influences of the world, could only be realized by secluding them from society
altogether. The common duties of common life, as at present constituted, are
incompatible with any other softness in women than weakness. Surely weak minds
in weak bodies must ere long cease to be even supposed to be either attractive
or amiable.
But, in truth, none of
these arguments and considerations touch the foundations of the subject. The
real question is, whether it is right and expedient that one-half of the human
race should pass through life in a state of forced subordination to the other
half. If the best state of human society is that of being divided into two
parts, one consisting of persons with a will and a substantive existence, the
other of humble companions to these persons, attached, each of them to one, for
the purpose of bringing up his children, and making his home pleasant to him;
if this is the place assigned to women, it is but kindness to educate them for
this; to make them believe that the greatest good fortune which can befall
them, is to be chosen by some man for this purpose; and that every other career
which the world deems happy or honourable, is closed to them by the law, not of
social institutions, but of nature and destiny.
When, however, we ask why
the existence of one-half the species should be merely ancillary to that of the
other—why each woman should be a mere appendage to a man, allowed to have no
interests of her own, that there may be nothing to compete in her mind with his
interests and his pleasure; the only reason which can be given is, that men
like it. It is agreeable to them that men should live for their own sake, women
for the sake of men: and the qualities and conduct in subjects which are
agreeable to rulers, they succeed for a long time in making the subjects
themselves consider as their appropriate virtues.
Helvetius has met with much
obloquy for asserting, that persons usually mean by virtues the qualities which
are useful or convenient to themselves.18 How truly this is said of mankind in
general, and how wonderfully the ideas of virtue set afloat by the powerful,
are caught and imbibed by those under their dominion, is exemplified by the
manner in which the world were once persuaded that the supreme virtue of
subjects was loyalty to kings, and are still persuaded that the paramount
virtue of womanhood is loyalty to men. Under a nominal recognition of a moral
code common to both, in practice self-will, and self-assertion form the type of
what are designated as manly virtues, while abnegation of self, patience,
resignation, and submission to power, unless when resistance is commanded by
other interests than their own, have been stamped by general consent as pre-eminently
the duties and graces required of women. The meaning being merely, that power
makes itself the centre of moral obligation, and that a man likes to have his
own will, but does not like that his domestic companion should have a will
different from his.
We are far from pretending
that in modern and civilized times, no reciprocity of obligation is
acknowledged on the part of the stronger. Such an assertion would be very wide
of the truth. But even this reciprocity, which has disarmed tyranny, at least
in the higher and middle classes, of its most revolting features, yet when
combined with the original evil of the dependent condition of women, has
introduced in its turn serious evils.
In the beginning, and among
tribes which are still in a primitive condition, women were and are the slaves
of men for the purposes of toil. All the hard bodily labour devolves on them.
The Australian savage is idle, while women painfully dig up the roots on which
he lives. An American Indian, when he has killed a deer, leaves it, and sends a
woman to carry it home. In a state somewhat more advanced, as in Asia, women
were and are the slaves of men for the purposes of sensuality. In Europe there
early succeeded a third and milder dominion, secured not by blows, nor by locks
and bars, but by sedulous inculcation on the mind; feelings also of kindness,
and ideas of duty, such as a superior owes to inferiors under his protection,
became more and more involved in the relation. But it did not for many ages
become a relation of companionship, even between unequals; the lives of the two
persons were apart. The wife was part of the furniture of home, of the
resting-place to which the man returned from business or pleasure. His
occupations were, as they still are, among men; his pleasures and excitements
also were, for the most part, among men— among his equals. He was a patriarch
and a despot within four walls, and irresponsible power had its effect, greater
or less according to his disposition, in rendering him domineering, exacting, self-worshipping,
when not capriciously or brutally tyrannical. But if the moral part of his
nature suffered, it was not necessarily so, in the same degree, with the
intellectual or the active portion. He might have as much vigour of mind and
energy of character as his nature enabled him, and as the circumstances of his
times allowed. He might write the Paradise Lost, or win the battle of
Marengo.19 This was the condition of the Greeks and Romans, and of the moderns
until a recent date. Their relations with their domestic subordinates occupied
a mere corner, though a cherished one, of their lives. Their education as men,
the formation of their character and faculties, depended mainly on a different
class of influences.
It is otherwise now. The
progress of improvement has imposed on all possessors of power, and of domestic
power among the rest, an increased and increasing sense of correlative
obligation. No man now thinks that his wife has no claim upon his actions but
such as he may accord to her. All men of any conscience believe that their duty
to their wives is one of the most binding of their obligations. Nor is it
supposed to consist solely in protection, which, in the present state of
civilization, women have almost ceased to need: it involves care for their
happiness and consideration of their wishes, with a not unfrequent sacrifice of
their own to them. The power of husbands has reached the stage which the power
of kings had arrived at, when opinion did not yet question the rightfulness of
arbitrary power, but in theory, and to a certain extent in practice, condemned
the selfish use of it. This improvement in the moral sentiments of mankind, and
increased sense of the consideration due by every man to those who have no one
but himself to look to, has tended to make home more and more the centre of
interest, and domestic circumstances and society a larger and larger part of
life, and of its pursuits and pleasures. The tendency has been strengthened by
the changes of tastes and manners which have so remarkably distinguished the
last two or three generations. In days not far distant, men found their
excitement and filled up their time in violent bodily exercises, noisy
merriment, and intemperance. They have now, in all but the very poorest
classes, lost their inclination for these things, and for the coarser pleasures
generally; they have now scarcely any tastes but those which they have in
common with women, and, for the first time in the world, men and women are
really companions. A most beneficial change, if the companionship were between
equals; but being between unequals, it produces, what good observers have
noticed, though without perceiving its cause, a progressive deterioration among
men in what had hitherto been considered the masculine excellences. Those who
are so careful that women should not become men, do not see that men are
becoming, what they have decided that women should be—are falling into the
feebleness which they have so long cultivated in their companions. Those who
are associated in their lives, tend to become assimilated in character. In the
present closeness of association between the sexes, men cannot retain manliness
unless women acquire it.
There is hardly any
situation more unfavourable to the maintenance of elevation of character or
force of intellect, than to live in the society, and seek by preference the
sympathy, of inferiors in mental endowments. Why is it that we constantly see
in life so much of intellectual and moral promise followed by such inadequate
performance, but because the aspirant has compared himself only with those
below himself, and has not sought improvement or stimulus from measuring
himself with his equals or superiors. In the present state of social life, this
is becoming the general condition of men. They care less and less for any
sympathies, and are less and less under any personal influences, but those of
the domestic roof. Not to be misunderstood, it is necessary that we should
distinctly disclaim the belief, that women are even now inferior in intellect to
men. There are women who are the equals in intellect of any men who ever lived:
and comparing ordinary women with ordinary men, the varied though petty details
which compose the occupation of most women, call forth probably as much of
mental ability, as the uniform of the pursuits which are the habitual
occupation of a large majority of men. It is from nothing in the faculties
themselves, but from the petty subjects and interests on which they are
exercised, that the companionship of women, such as their present circumstances
make them, so often exercises a dissolvent influence on high faculties and
aspirations in men,. If one of the two has no knowledge and no care about the
great ideas and purposes which dignify life, or about any of its practical
concerns save personal interests and personal vanities, her conscious, and
still more her unconscious influence, will, except in rare cases, reduce to a
secondary place in his mind, if not entirely extinguish, those interests which
she cannot or does not share.
One argument here brings us
into collision with what may be termed the moderate reformers of the education
of women; a sort of persons who cross the path of improvement on all great
questions; those who would maintain the old bad principles, mitigating their
consequences. These say, that women should be, not slaves, nor servants, but
companions; and educated for that office: (they do not say that men should be
educated to be the companions of women). But since uncultivated women are not
suitable companions for cultivated men, and a man who feels interest in things
above and beyond the family circle wishes that his companion should sympathize
with him in that interest; they therefore say, let women improve their
understanding and taste, acquire general knowledge, cultivate poetry, art, even
coquet with science, and some stretch their liberality so far as to say, inform
themselves on politics; not as pursuits, but sufficiently to feel an interest
in the subjects, and to be capable of holding a conversation on them with the
husband, or at least of understanding and imbibing his wisdom. Very agreeable
to him, no doubt, but unfortunately the reverse of improving. It is from having
intellectual communion only with those to whom they can lay down the law, that
so few men continue to advance in wisdom beyond the first stages. The most
eminent men cease to improve, if they associate only with disciples. When they
have overtopped those who immediately surround them, if they wish for further
growth, they must seek for others of their own stature to consort with. The
mental companionship which is improving, is communion between active minds, not
mere contact between an active mind and a passive. This inestimable advantage
is even now enjoyed, when a strong-minded man and a strong-minded woman are, by
a rare chance, united: and would be had far oftener, if education took the same
pains to form strong-minded women which it takes to prevent them from being
formed. The modern, and what are regarded as the improved and enlightened modes
of education of women, abjure, as far as words go, an education of mere show,
and profess to aim at solid instruction, but mean by that expression,
superficial information on solid subjects. Except accomplishments, which are
now generally regarded as to be taught well if taught at all, nothing is taught
to women thoroughly. Small portions only of what it is attempted to teach
thoroughly to boys, are the whole of what it is intended or desired to teach to
women. What makes intelligent beings is the power of thought: the stimuli which
call forth that power are the interest and dignity of thought itself, and a
field for its practical application. Both motives are cut off from those who
are told from infancy that thought, and all its greater applications, are other
people's business, while theirs is to make themselves agreeable to other
people. High mental powers in women will be but an exceptional accident, until
every career is open to them, and until they, as well as men, are educated for
themselves and for the world—not one sex for the other.
In what we have said on the
effect of the inferior position of women, combined with the present
constitution of married life, we have thus far had in view only the most
favourable cases, those in which there is some real approach to that union and
blending of characters and of lives, which the theory of the relation
contemplates as its ideal standard. But if we look to the great majority of
cases, the effect of women's legal inferiority on the character both of women
and of men must be painted in far darker colours. We do not speak here of the
grosser brutalities, nor of the man's power to seize on the woman's earnings,
or compel her to live with him against her will. We do not address ourselves to
any one who requires to have it proved that these things should be remedied. We
suppose average cases, in which there is neither complete union nor complete
disunion of feelings and of character; and we affirm that in such cases the
influence of the dependence on the woman's side, is demoralizing to the
character of both.
The common opinion is, that
whatever may be the case with the intellectual, the moral influence of women
over men is almost always salutary. It is, we are often told, the great
counteractive of selfishness. However the case may be as to personal influence,
the influence of the position tends eminently to promote selfishness. The most
insignificant of men, the man who can obtain influence or consideration nowhere
else, finds one place where he is chief and head. There is one person, often
greatly his superior in understanding, who is obliged to consult him, and whom
he is not obliged to consult. He is judge, magistrate, ruler, over their joint
concerns; arbiter of all differences between them.
The justice or conscience
to which her appeal must be made is his justice and conscience: it is his to
hold the balance and adjust the scales between his own claims or wishes and
those of another. His is now the only tribunal, in civilized life, in which the
same person is judge and party. A generous mind, in such a situation, makes the
balance incline against its own side, and gives the other not less, but more,
than a fair equality; and thus the weaker side may be enabled to turn the very
fact of dependence into an instrument of power and in default of justice, take
an ungenerous advantage of generosity- rendering the unjust power, to those who
make an unselfish use of it a torment and a burthen. But how is it when average
men are invested with this power, without reciprocity and without
responsibility? Give such a man the idea that he is first in law and in
opinion—that to will is his part, and hers to submit; it is absurd to suppose
that this idea merely glides over his mind, without sinking into it, or having
any effect on his feelings and practice. The propensity to make himself the
first object of consideration, and others at most the second, is not so rare as
to be wanting where everything seems purposely arranged for permitting its
indulgence. If there is any self-will in the man, he becomes either the
conscious or unconscious despot of his household. The wife, indeed, often
succeeds in gaining her objects, but it is by some of the many various forms of
indirectness and management.
Thus the position is
corrupting equally to both; in the one it produces the vices of power, in the
other those of artifice. Women, in their present physical and moral state,
having stronger impulses, would naturally be franker and more direct than men;
yet all the old saws and traditions represent them as artful and dissembling.
Why? Because their only way to their objects is by indirect paths. In all
countries where women have strong wishes and active minds, this consequence is
inevitable: and if it is less conspicuous in England than in some other places,
it is because Englishwomen, saving occasional exceptions, have ceased to have
either strong wishes or active minds.
We are not now speaking of
cases in which there is anything deserving the name of strong affection on both
sides. That, where it exists, is too powerful a principle not to modify greatly
the bad influences of the situation; it seldom, however, destroys them
entirely. Much oftener the bad influences are too strong for the affection, and
destroy it. The highest order of durable and happy attachments would be a
hundred times more frequent than they are, if the affection which the two sexes
sought from one another were that genuine friendship, which only exists between
equals in privileges as in faculties. But with regard to what is commonly
called affection in married life—the habitual and almost mechanical feeling of
kindliness, and pleasure in each other's society, which generally grows up
between persons who constantly live together, unless there is actual
dislike—there is nothing in this to contradict or qualify the mischievous
influence of the unequal relation. Such feelings often exist between a sultan
and his favourites, between a master and his servants; they are merely examples
of the pliability of human nature, which accommodates itself in some degree
even to the worst circumstances, and the commonest natures always the most
easily.
With respect to the
influence personally exercised by women over men, it, no doubt, renders them
less harsh and brutal; in ruder times, it was often the only softening
influence to which they were accessible. But the assertion, that the wife's
influence renders the man less selfish, contains, as things now are, fully as
much error as truth. Selfishness towards the wife herself, and towards those in
whom she is interested, the children, though favoured by their dependence, the
wife's influence, no doubt, tends to counteract. But the general effect on him
of her character, so long as her interests are concentrated in the family,
tends but to substitute for individual selfishness a family selfishness,
wearing an amiable guise, and putting on the mask of duty. How rarely is the
wife's influence on the side of public virtue: how rarely does it do otherwise
than discourage any effort of principle by which the private interests or
worldly vanities of the family can be expected to suffer. Public spirit, sense
of duty towards the public good, is of all virtues, as women are now educated
and situated, the most rarely to be found among them; they have seldom even,
what in men is often a partial substitute for public spirit, a sense of
personal honour connected with any public duty. Many a man, whom no money or
personal flattery would have bought, has bartered his political opinions
against a title or invitations for his wife; and a still greater number are
made mere hunters after the puerile vanities of society, because their wives
value them. As for opinions; in Catholic countries, the wife's influence is
another name for that of the priest: he gives her, in the hopes and emotions
connected with a future life, a consolation for the sufferings and
disappointments which are her ordinary lot in this. Elsewhere, her weight is
thrown into the scale either of the most common-place, or of the most outwardly
prosperous opinions: either those by which censure will be escaped, or by which
worldly advancement is likeliest to be procured. In England, the wife's
influence is usually on the illiberal and anti-popular side: this is generally
the gaining side for personal interest and vanity; and what to her is the
democracy or liberalism in which she has no part – which leaves her the Pariah
it found her? The man himself, when he marries, usually declines into
Conservatism; begins to sympathize with the holders of power, more by which
vanity or ambition are promoted, except those vulgarer attainments by which
vanity or ambition are promoted, there is generally an end to it in a man who
marries a woman mentally his inferior; unless, indeed, he is unhappy in
marriage, or becomes indifferent. From a man of twenty-five or thirty, after he
is married, an experienced observer seldom expects any further progress in mind
or feelings. It is rare that the progress already made is maintained. Any spark
of the mens divinsor20- which might otherwise have spread and become a
flame, seldom survives for any length of time unextinguished. For a mind which
learns to be satisfied with what it already is-which does not incessantly look
forward to a degree of improvement not yet reached-becomes relaxed,
self-indulgent, and loses the spring and the tension which maintain it even at
the point already attained. And there is no fact in human nature to which
experience bears more invariable testimony than to this-that all social or
sympathetic influences which do not raise up, pull down; if they do not tend to
stimulate and exalt the mind, they tend to vulgarize it.
For the interest,
therefore, not only of women but of men, and of human improvement in the widest
sense, the emancipation of women, which the modern world often boasts of having
effected, and for which credit is sometimes given to civilization, and
sometimes to Christianity, cannot stop where it is. If it were either necessary
or just that one portion of mankind should remain mentally and spiritually only
half developed, the development of the other portion ought to have been made,
as far as possible, independent of their influence. Instead of this, they have
become the most intimate, and it may now be said, the only intimate associates
of those to whom yet they are sedulously kept inferior; and have been raised
just high enough to drag the others down to themselves.
We have left behind a host
of vulgar objections, either as not worthy of an answer, or as answered by the
general course of our remarks. A few words, however, must be said on one plea,
which in England is made much use of for giving an unselfish air to the
up-holding of selfish privileges, and which, with unobserving, unreflecting
people, passes for much more than it is worth. Women, it is said, do not
desire—do not seek, what is called their emancipation. On the contrary, they
generally disown such claims when made in their behalf, and fall with
acharnement21 upon any one of themselves who identifies herself with their
common cause.
Supposing the fact to be
true in the fullest extent ever asserted, if it proves that European women
ought to remain as they are, it proves exactly the same with respect to Asiatic
women; for they too, instead of murmuring at their seclusion, and at the restraint
imposed upon them, pride themselves on it, and are astonished at the effrontery
of women who receive visits from male acquaintances, and are seen in the
streets unveiled. Habits of submission make men as well as women
servile-minded. The vast population of Asia do not desire or value, probably
would not accept, political liberty, nor the savages of the forest,
civilization; which does not prove that either of those things is undesirable
for them, or that they will not, at some future time, enjoy it. Custom hardens
human beings to any kind of degradation, by deadening the part of their nature
which would resist it. And the case of women is, in this respect, even a
peculiar one, for no other inferior caste that we have heard of, have been
taught to regard their degradation as their honour. The argument, however,
implies a secret consciousness that the alleged preference of women for their
dependent state is merely apparent, and arises from their being allowed no
choice; for if the preference be natural, there can be no necessity for
enforcing it by law. To make laws compelling people to follow their
inclination, has not hitherto been thought necessary by any legislator.
The plea that women do not
desire any change, is the same that has been urged, times out of mind, against
the proposal of abolishing any social evil—"there is no complaint;"
which is generally not true, and when true, only so because there is not that
hope of success, without which complaint seldom makes itself audible to
unwilling ears. How does the objector know that women do not desire equality
and freedom? He never knew a woman who did not, or would not, desire it for
herself individually. It would be very simple to suppose, that if they do
desire it they will say so. Their position is like that of the tenants or
labourers who vote against their own political interests to please their
landlords or employers; with the unique addition, that submission is inculcated
on them from childhood, as the peculiar attraction and grace of their character.
They are taught to think, that to repel actively even an admitted injustice
done to themselves, is somewhat unfeminine, and had better be left to some male
friend or protector. To be accused of rebelling against anything which admits
of being called an ordinance of society, they are taught to regard as an
imputation of a serious offence, to say the least, against the proprieties of
their sex. It requires unusual moral courage as well as disinterestedness in a
woman, to express opinions favourable to women's enfranchisement, until, at
least, there is some prospect of obtaining it. The comfort of her individual
life, and her social consideration, usually depend on the goodwill of those who
hold the undue power; and to possessors of power any complaint, however bitter,
of the misuse of it, is a less flagrant act of insubordination than to protest
against the power itself. The professions of women in this matter remind us of
the state offenders of old, who, on the point of execution, used to protest
their love and devotion to the sovereign by whose unjust mandate they suffered.
Griselda herself might be matched from the speeches put by Shakespeare into the
mouths of male victims of kingly caprice and tyranny: the Duke of Buckingham,
for example, in Henry the Eighth, and even Wolsey.22 The literary class of
women, especially in England, are ostentatious in disclaiming the desire for
equality or citizenship, and proclaiming their complete satisfaction with the
place which society assigns to them; exercising in this, as in many other
respects, a most noxious influence over the feelings and opinions of men, who
unsuspectingly accept the servilities of toadyism as concessions to the force
of truth, not considering that it is the personal interest of these women to
profess whatever opinions they expect will be agreeable to men. It is not among
men of talent, sprung from the people, and patronized and flattered by the
aristocracy, that we look for the leaders of a democratic movement. Successful
literary women are just as unlikely to prefer the cause of women to their own
social consideration. They depend on men's opinion for their literary as well
as for their feminine successes; and such is their bad opinion of men, that
they believe there is not more than one in ten thousand who does not dislike
and fear strength, sincerity, or high spirit in a woman. They are therefore
anxious to earn pardon and toleration for whatever of these qualities their
writings may exhibit on other subjects, by a studied display of submission on this:
that they may give no occasion for vulgar men to say (what nothing will prevent
vulgar men from saying), that learning makes women unfeminine, and that
literary ladies are likely to be bad wives.
But enough of this;
especially as the fact which affords the occasion for this notice, makes it
impossible any longer to assert the universal acquiescence of women (saving
individual exceptions) in their dependent condition. In the United States at
least, there are women, seemingly numerous, and now organised for action on the
public mind, who demand equality in the fullest acceptation of the word, and
demand it by a straightforward appeal to men's sense of justice, not plead for
it with a timid deprecation of their displeasure.
Like other popular
movements, however, this may be seriously retarded by the blunders of its
adherents. Tried by the ordinary standard of public meetings, the speeches at
the Convention are remarkable for the preponderance of the rational over the
declamatory element; but there are some exceptions; and things to which it is
impossible to attach any rational meaning, have found their way into the
resolutions. Thus, the resolution which sets forth the claims made in behalf of
women, after claiming equality in education, in industrial pursuits, and in
political rights, enumerates as a fourth head of demand something under the
name of "social and spiritual union," and "a medium of
expressing the highest moral and spiritual views of justice,"23 with other
similar verbiage, serving only to mar the simplicity and rationality of the
other demands: resembling those who would weakly attempt to combine nominal
equality between men and women, with enforced distinctions in their privileges
and functions. What is wanted for women is equal rights, equal admission to all
social privileges; not a position apart, a sort of sentimental priesthood. To
this, the only just and rational principle, both the resolutions and the
speeches for the most part, adhere. They contain so little which is akin to the
nonsensical paragraph in question, that we suspect it not to be the work of the
same hands as most of the other resolutions. The strength of the cause lies in
the support of those who are influenced by reason and principle; and to attempt
to recommend it by sentimentalities, absurd in reason, and inconsistent with
the principle on which the movement is founded, is to place a good cause on a
level with a bad one.
There are indications that
the example of America will be followed on this side of the Atlantic; and the
first step has been taken in that part of England where every serious movement
in the direction of political progress has its commencement – the manufacturing
districts of the North. On the 13th of February 1851, a petition of women,
agreed to by a public meeting at Sheffield, and claiming the elective
franchise, was presented to the House of Lords by the Earl of Carlisle.24
1 Essays on Equality,
Law and Education, CW, XXI, 394 – 415
2 That is, those in the two
volumes of Dissertations and Discussions published in 1859.
3 Paulina Kellogg Wright
Davis (1813-1876), editor and suffragist, who was active also in the
anti-slavery campaigns.
4 Jacob Gilbert Forman,
"Women's Rights Convention at Worcester, Mass." New York Daily
Tribune, 26 Oct. 1850.
5 Ibid., 25 Oct. 1850.
6 Ibid., 26 Oct. 1850.
7 Ibid.
8 A Declaration by the
Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled
(Philadelphia 1776).
9 A movement of
working-class radicals in the 1830s and 1840s whose name derived from their
having drawn up a "People's Charter" with six demands including
manhood suffrage, payment of members of parliament, and the secret ballot.
10 Plato, Republic,
trans. Paul Shorey, 2 vols. (London 1946), vol. I, pp. 444-52
(Book V); and Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, Esquisse
d'un tableau historique des progres de I'esprit humain (Paris 1795), p.
367.
11 An excellent passage on
this part of the subject, from one of Sydney Smith's contributions to the Edinburgh
Review, we will not refrain from quoting: "A great deal has been said
of the original difference of capacity between men and women, as if women were
more quick and men more judicious—as if women were more remarkable for delicacy
of association, and men for stronger powers of attention. All this, we confess,
appears to us very fanciful. That there is a difference in the understandings
of the men and the women we every day meet with, everybody, we suppose, must
perceive; but there is none surely which may not be accounted for by the
difference of circumstances in which they have been placed, without referring
to any conjectural difference of original conformation of mind. As long as boys
and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both
precisely alike. If you catch up one-half of these creatures, and train them to
a particular set of actions and opinions, and the other half to a perfectly
opposite set, of course their understandings will differ, as one or the other
sort of occupations has called this or that talent into action. There is surely
no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning, in order to
explain so very simple a phenomenon." (Sydney Smith's Works, vol.
I, p. 200.) [HTM's note.] The quotation (which Mill had used earlier; see the
Introduction, pp. xix-xx above) is from "Female Education" (1810),
taken from the 2nd ed., 1840, of his Works.
12 Elizabeth I of England
(1533-1603), Isabella I of Castile and Spain (1451-1504), Maria Theresa of
Austria (1717-80), Catherine II ('The Great") of Russia (1729-1796),
Blanche of Castile (1188-1252), and Jeanne of France and Navarre (1273-1305).
13 Jeanne, Comtesse de
Montfort (14th century; dates uncertain), and Charlotte de la Tremoille
Stanley, Countess of Derby (1599-1664).
14 Of England (1600-1649)
15 Margaret of Austria
(1480-l530) and Louise of Savoy (1476-153.), respectively.
16 The truly horrible
effects of the present state of the law among the lowest of the working
population, is exhibited in those cases of hideous maltreatment of their wives
by working men, with which every newspaper, every police report, teems.
Wretches unfit to have the smallest authority over any living thing, have a
helpless woman for their household slave. These excesses could not exist, if
women both earned, and had the right to possess, a part of the income of the
family. [HTM's note.]
17 The Litany in the Book
of Common Prayer of the Church of England includes the supplication, "From
all blindness of heart; from pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred,
and malice, and from all uncharitableness. Good Lord, deliver us."
18 See, e.g., Claude Adrien
Helvetius, De I'esprit (Paris 1758), pp. 53-5.
19 As did John Milton and
Napoleon I.
20 A "soul
divine" (Horace, Satires, I, iv, 43-4).
21 Relentless fury.
22 Griselda, whose loyal
patience became proverbial, is the heroine of Story 10, Day 10, in Giovanni
Boccaccio, Decameron (1353); for the speeches, see William Shakespeare,
Henry the Eighth, Act II, Scene i, lines 55-78 and 100-36 (Buckingham), and Act
III, Scene ii, lines 407-21 and 428-57 (Wolsey).
23 Forman, "Women's
Rights Convention," 26 Oct. 1850.
24 "A Petition of the
Female Inhabitants of the Borough of Sheffield in the County of York, in Public
Meeting Assembled, Praying Their Lordships to Take into Their Serious
Consideration the Propriety of Enacting an Electoral Law which Will Include
Adult Females within Its Provisions" (13 February 1851), Journals of
the House of Lords, 1851, LXXXIII, 23
Taken from Ann P. Robson
and John M. Robson, Sexual Equality: Writings by John Stuart Mill, Harriet
Taylor Mill, and Helen Taylor [Toronto:
University or Toronto,
1994] pp. 178-203
