The Subjection of Women
€0,00
Published in 1869, The Subjection of Women is John Stuart Mill’s forceful argument against the legal, social and domestic inequalities that governed relations between men and women in Victorian Britain. Challenging the assumption that women’s subordinate position reflected their natural capacities, Mill argues that these supposed differences cannot be properly understood while women are denied education, independence and freedom of choice. He calls instead for equality before the law and the removal of barriers to women’s participation in public and professional life, extending the liberal principles of liberty and individual development to a society that had largely withheld them from women.
Written in the tradition of Enlightenment liberalism and closely connected to the reforming ideas Mill developed with Harriet Taylor Mill, the essay became an important text in the history of feminist thought. Its arguments about marriage, power, opportunity and the influence of custom remain striking, even as modern readers may question aspects of its assumptions and historical perspective. Both a philosophical treatise and an intervention in contemporary political debate, it stands as a landmark in the long struggle for women’s emancipation.
From the book
Many a man thinks he perfectly understands women, because he has had amatory relations with several, perhaps with many of them.
— John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women
On The Subjection of Women
His language is so precise and his logic so penetrating that it brooks no opposition.
— Elizabeth Day, The Guardian