The Subjection of Women
Mill’s argument that “the legal subordination of one sex to the other” is “wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement”, and ought to give way to perfect equality. He traces the subjection of women to the law of force kept alive by custom, examines the legal slavery of the married woman, contends that nothing can be known of women’s “nature” while it is so artificially formed, claims for women every occupation and the suffrage, and counts the gain to justice, to society’s stock of talent and to marriage itself.
- Edition
- First edition (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869). Project Gutenberg #27083, transcribed from a scan of the 1869 edition, collated word by word with three archive.org scans of the 1869 edition and corrected to its text, including its spelling, accents and Greek; the 1870 third edition consulted at doubtful readings. Chapter titles are editorial: Mill numbers the chapters only. Mill’s Autobiography acknowledges the contributions of Harriet Taylor Mill and Helen Taylor.
- Source
- Project Gutenberg
Start reading 4 h 38 min audiobook
Quiz
Test your reading. The short quiz draws 10 questions at random from 30; score 80% for a silver medal. The full quiz asks all 30; a perfect score earns gold.
Contents
- I Custom, Force and the Burden of Proof 1 h 18 min 37
Mill states his thesis: the legal subordination of women is wrong and should give way to perfect equality. He argues that the burden of proof lies with its defenders, and that its universality proves nothing, since it began in physical force and survived because every man shares in it and women are trained to desire their subjection. Modern society lets birth decide nothing else, so the exclusion of women stands as an isolated relic. Nobody can know women's “nature”, which is “an eminently artificial thing”; free competition, not law, should decide what women can do. Men's fear, he suggests, is that free women would refuse marriage as it now is.
- II The Law of Marriage 56 min 27
Mill describes the law of marriage: the wife's property, earnings and children belong to her husband, she cannot refuse him sexually, and only a costly separation frees her. She is in law a bond-servant, worse placed than many slaves. Good husbands do not justify powers given to every man, including the brutal. Marriage needs no ruler any more than a business partnership; the family under present law is a school of despotism, and only equality can make it a school of justice. He answers the argument from St Paul, asks that wives keep their own property, and accepts a voluntary division of labour in which most wives keep house.
- III Women’s Capacities and Occupations 1 h 21 min 38
Mill turns from marriage to women’s exclusion from occupations and public life. The suffrage, he says, is a matter of self-protection independent of any question of capacity. On capacity he argues from what women have actually done, above all as queens and regents. He describes their present mental traits as practical, intuitive and quick, but treats them as effects of training. He disputes the brain-size argument and explains the absence of women of first-rank genius by recent entry, lack of education and leisure, amateurism and the denial of ambition. He ends by noting that apparent consent is no proof of justice.
- IV What Would Be Gained 1 h 3 min 26
Mill asks what society would gain from women’s freedom. First, justice in the family, now a school of male arrogance. Second, a doubling of the talent available to society. Third, a better influence of women on opinion, now narrowed into private interest, mistaken charity and social conformity. Fourth, marriage as a friendship between equals instead of an unequal union that makes ambitious husbands stagnate. Above all, he names the happiness of women themselves. Freedom is the first want of human nature, and those denied liberty seek power. The book ends on the waste of lives shut out of worthy occupation.