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Mill
1869
The Victorian era's most rigorous case against the legal subordination of women.
The Subjection of Women
John Stuart Mill · 1869
Mill's 1869 essay argues, premise by premise, that women's subordinate legal and social position rests on custom enforced from infancy, not on any settled truth about their nature — a case he credited jointly to his late wife Harriet Taylor Mill. It remains the clearest surviving statement of the liberal argument that unequal treatment must be justified by reason, not by an appeal to how things have always been.
4 chapters · 43,963 words · ~3.3 hr read
Contents
The Argument
Mill's four-chapter case, in order: the principle stated, marriage law examined, women's exclusion from public life, and what emancipation would gain everyone.