The Subjection of Women
Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill Notes
Chapter 1: The Question Can Be Raised
Background: Mill's close friendship with Harriet Taylor, whom he later married.
Main Proposition: The legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong and should be replaced by perfect equality.
Difficulty: Overcoming deeply rooted feelings, which are strengthened by arguments against them.
Burden of Proof: Those who defend the current system of male dominance are on the affirmative side and must provide evidence to support their position.
Presumption: There should be a presumption in favor of freedom and impartiality, but this is not applied to the debate on women's subjection.
Instinct vs. Reason: The 19th century tends to attribute infallibility to instinct over reason, which is a form of idolatry.
Custom and Feeling: Established custom and general feelings should only be considered conclusive if they owe their existence and power to the better parts of human nature.
Origin of Subjection: The subjection of women arose from the physical strength of men and the value of women to them, not from deliberation or social ideas.
Legal Rights: Laws and political systems initially recognized existing power relations, turning physical facts into legal rights.
Evolution of Slavery: Male slavery was abolished in Christian Europe, and female slavery evolved into a milder form of dependence, but the subjection of women still carries the taint of its brutal origins.
Law of the Strongest: The idea that inequality between men and women has no other source than the law of the strongest sounds strange because modern civilization has supposedly abandoned this principle.
Vitality of Institutions: Institutions that place right on the side of might are intensely clung to, and even the good sentiments of those in power become identified with retaining it.
Modern Changes: People have lost practical sense of humanity's primitive condition where the law of superior strength was the rule of life.
Ancient Republics: They provided the first examples of human relations governed by something other than force, leading to the regeneration of human nature.
Christianity's Role: The Church tried to enforce moral obligations towards slaves but had little success for over a thousand years.
Slavery and Monarchy: Even within recent memory, Englishmen could legally hold human beings in bondage, while absolute monarchy persists despite its inherent humiliation for most.
The subjection of women is gratifying to half the human race and provides power over those nearest to the empowerer.
Natural Argument: The claim that male governance is natural is challenged, as other dominations (e.g., slavery, absolute monarchy) also appeared natural to those in power.
'Unnatural': It generally means 'uncustomary,' and the subjection of women is a universal custom, making any deviation seem unnatural.
Complaints: Many women do not accept male dominance, protesting their social condition through writings and petitions.
Political Law: Those subjected to long-standing power never begin by complaining of the power itself, only of its oppressive use.
Affection: Men desire not only obedience from women but also their sentiments, leading to the enslavement of women's minds through education.
Polar Star: The objective of being attractive to men has become the polar star of feminine education and character formation.
Course of History: History and progressive human society create a strong presumption against inequality of rights, as modern society moves towards freedom and individual choice.
Old Theory vs. Modern Conviction: The old theory was that as little as possible should be left to the choice of the individual. The modern conviction is that things that directly involve a person’s interests never go right except when they are left to his own discretion.
‘Nature’ of Women: What is called ‘the nature of women’ is artificial, resulting from forced repression and unnatural stimulation.
Obstacles to Progress: Mankind's inattention to the influences that form human character is a significant obstacle to progress.
Natural Differences: In the present state of society, we can't accurately know the natural differences between the sexes due to the lack of analytic study of the influence of circumstances on character.
Stupidity: It is much the same all the world over. A stupid person’s notions and feelings will be simply the ones that are prevalent in the social circles he or she moves in.
Equal Intimates: To know each other thoroughly, people need to be not only intimates but equals.
Ignorance: One of the great causes of ignorance is believing that one knows a lot.
Contrary to Nature: One thing we can be certain of, if something is contrary to women’s nature you won’t get them to do it by giving their nature free play!
Compulsion: The general opinion of men is supposed to be that a woman’s natural vocation is that of a wife and mother.
Equal Conditions: The outcome that men are afraid of with women isn’t women being unwilling to marry, but women insisting that marriage be on equal conditions.
Chapter 2: The Laws Governing Marriage
Marriage: It should be the destination society has planned so women can like it enough to have have no regret if they are denied another path.
Bond Servant: The wife is the actual bond servant of her husband, legally subordinate to him as slaves are to their masters.
No Will: In this regard the wife is worst off than a slave. The maxim whatever is hers is his, but the parallel inference is never drawn that whatever is his is hers.
Joint Interest: With respect to the children in whom she and her master have a joint interest. They are by law his children.
Servitude: The only lightening of the burden allowed to those in servitude comes from allowing a free choice of servitude.
Laws Carried Out: The laws of most countries are far worse than the people who carry them out.
Affection Justification: Attachments that ·sometimes· exist between wives and their husbands? These have also existed ·sometimes· in domestic slavery.
Laws Not for Best: Laws and institutions should be adapted not to good men, but to bad. Marriage is not an institution designed for a select few. It applies to all types of men.
Violent Husband: The vilest malefactor has tied to him some wretched woman against whom he can commit any atrocity except killing her—and with a little care he can do even that without much danger of the legal penalty.
Husband Selfishness: This instrument of self-protection—which may be called the power of the scold - has a fatal defect: it is most effective against the least tyrannical superiors and in favour of the least deserving dependents.
Mitigating Causes:
Husband's affection for his wife.
Common interests regarding children.
Wife's importance to husband's daily comforts.
Influence naturally acquired over those personally near.
Need for Decisions: A family must someone the be ultimate ruler must make executive decisions. The commonest kind of voluntary association other than marriage is partnership in business, and no need has been found for a law dictating that in every partnership one partner shall have entire control over the concern and the others will have to obey his orders.
The Division: It can’t and shouldn’t be pre-established by the law, because it must depend on individual capacities and suitabilities.
Fairness: Husband’s willingness to be reasonable, and to make fair concessions to their partners without being forced to. But wives are not. If wives are allowed any rights of their own, they won’t acknowledge rights for anyone else, and they’ll never give way on anything unless they are compelled by the man’s mere authority to give way on everything.
Moral Cultivation: One way to make the marriage relationship even-handedly fair and conducive to the happiness of both spouses is the equality of married persons before the law.
Society Between Equals: The only school of genuine moral sentiment is society between equals.
Ancient Ethics: These morality focused on the obligation to submit to power. the morality of submission, and the morality of chivalry and generosity.
Christianity: Theory (if only partially in practice) that declares the claims of the human being as such to outrank the claims of sex, class, or social position. The barrier of equality was raised again by the northern conquests and still persists.
Justice: We are now entering into an order of things in which justice will again be the primary virtue, based as before on association of equals but now also on association of sympathy ·here = ‘fellow feeling’.
Property Rights: Whatever is the wife’s if she were not married should be under her exclusive control during marriage, and similarly for the husband. Some people are shocked by the idea of a wife and a husband having separate interests in money matters; this is inconsistent with the ideal of fusion.
In the USA Constitution: a provision that guarantees women equality of rights in this respect.
Financial Division of Labor: The common arrangement in which •the man earns the income and •the wife superintends the domestic expenditure seems to me in general the most suitable division of labour between them.
Chapter 3: Occupations for Women Outside Marriage
Monopoly: I don’t expect to have much trouble convincing you about the other aspect of the just equality of women, namely their admissibility to all the functions and occupations that have until now been the monopoly of the stronger sex
Interests of Men: To maintain their subordination in domestic life.
Superior Mental Capacity: no-one back then really believed in that, because in those times the struggles of public life sometimes provided a real test of personal abilities, a test in which women sometimes took part.
Test of Functions: That would equal to be a less competent woman to average man
Achievements: Woman have shown the ability for everything that all men can do, and have done it all successfully
Vote: I mean the vote, both parliamentary and municipal
Right to Share: Utterly distinct from right to compete
Elections: Most of women are unlike to differ in election
History proves: women’s abilities in government come through the opportunities they have been given vs the work they are trained on for their husband.
Capacities for Women adequate in every place when they tried.
Intuitive Perception: Correct insight into the present fact. Nothing to do with general principals
Empirical Data: Experience of having with each other, and not by a law.
Mobility changes temperament: Strong feeling has to be trained.
Size of Brain: By no measn established that woman