The Subjection of Women

Glossary

B

Bondage: Mill's word for the historical condition of women found universally 'in a state of bondage to some man' from the earliest societies onward, parallel to slavery and serfdom. He argues that marriage, as legally constituted in his own time, is 'the only actual bondage known to our law' — the last legally sanctioned form of a relation abolished everywhere else.; Related: The Law of Force, The Marriage Contract

C

Chivalry as Argument: Mill's rebuttal to the claim that elaborate courtesy toward women — 'the morality of chivalry and generosity' — proves they are already respected and protected. He argues chivalry is a code for the strong to display generosity toward the weak, not a substitute for justice, and that 'the time is now come for the morality of justice' to replace it.; Related: The Argument Stated
Competition as the Fair Test: Mill's proposed alternative to the blanket legal exclusion of women from professions and offices: let ability be tested by open competition rather than presumed in advance by sex. He argues this is the only principle consistent with liberal justice — if women genuinely lack capacity for a given role, competition will reveal it without the law needing to assume it beforehand.; Related: Women in Public Life
Coverture: The English common-law doctrine, described though not named outright in Mill's text, under which a married woman's separate legal identity was absorbed into her husband's — she could not independently own property, sue, or keep her own earnings. Mill's account of the wife as her husband's 'actual bond-servant,' legally obligated to lifelong obedience, is a direct description of coverture in practice.; Related: The Marriage Contract, Bondage
Custom vs. Nature: Mill's core methodological point: that people mistake whatever social arrangement they grew up inside for the natural, inevitable order of things, when it is really just deeply entrenched custom. He argues the subjection of women survives on exactly this confusion — everyone finds it 'natural' only because it is universal and old, not because any argument actually supports it.; Related: The Argument Stated, The Law of Force

D

Divorce: A subject Mill deliberately sets aside as outside the essay's scope even as he discusses the abuses of the existing marriage law — he notes that where nothing but 'servitude' is legally available to a wife, free choice about ending the marriage takes on a different moral weight than it does in an equal partnership. He raises it mainly to distinguish it from the narrower question of what legal protections an abused wife should have.; Related: The Marriage Contract
Doubling Society's Usable Talent: One strand of Mill's utilitarian argument in the final chapter: that excluding half the human race from developing and using its abilities wastes, on a societal scale, roughly half of humanity's potential intellectual and productive capacity. He frames emancipation not as a favor to women but as a practical gain for society as a whole.; Related: The Utilitarian Case for Emancipation

F

Feudal Subjection: Mill's historical parallel between the subjection of women and the feudal subordination of serfs to nobles — both once seemed as self-evidently natural to those who benefited from them as slavery did to slaveholders. He uses the comparison to argue that the mere fact a hierarchy feels 'natural' to those inside it is exactly what history should teach us to distrust.; Related: Custom vs. Nature, Bondage

G

Guardianship of Children: Mill's point that under the law of his time, a mother had no automatic legal guardianship of her own children even after her husband's death, unless his will specifically granted it — he could otherwise separate her from them entirely while he lived. He cites this as one of the starkest concrete inequalities produced by the general legal subordination of wives.; Related: The Wife's Legal Existence

M

Marriage as Moral Education: The positive vision Mill offers in his final chapter for what marriage between equals could be: not a relation of command and obedience but a partnership where two developed, independent people educate each other morally and intellectually across a lifetime. He contrasts this sharply with marriage as currently constituted, which he says teaches only the habits appropriate to a relation of unequal power.; Related: The Utilitarian Case for Emancipation, The Moral Education of Mankind

P

Parliamentary Petitions: The organized campaign, already underway as Mill wrote, in which thousands of women 'headed by the most eminent women known to the public' petitioned Parliament for admission to the parliamentary suffrage. Mill cites this contemporary activism directly in his opening chapter as evidence the demand for equality was a live, organized political movement rather than merely his own private opinion.; Related: Suffrage

S

Suffrage: The parliamentary and municipal vote, which Mill treats in his third chapter as a distinct question from women's capacity for other public roles — the right to help choose representatives rather than to hold office directly. He notes that petitions for women's admission to the suffrage, backed by eminent women, were already before Parliament as he wrote.; Related: Women in Public Life
Sultan-like Superiority: Mill's image for the psychological effect of male privilege on an ordinary husband and son: a felt sense of sublime superiority over the women in his life, granted automatically by law and custom rather than earned through character. He argues this feeling 'pervert[s] the whole manner of existence' of the man who holds it, not just of the woman subject to it.; Related: Unearned Distinctions

T

The Abolition of Slavery Parallel: Mill's repeated comparison between the subjection of women and chattel slavery, including his reminder that Englishmen could still legally 'hold human beings in bondage as saleable property' within living memory of his readers. He uses the recency of slavery's abolition to argue that a practice's long history and apparent naturalness are no defense against the charge of injustice.; Related: Bondage, Feudal Subjection
The Argument Stated: Mill's opening claim, laid out in Chapter 1: that the legal subordination of women to men is wrong in itself and is now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement, and that it should be replaced by perfect equality. He states from the outset that the burden of proof lies with defenders of the existing system, not with those who challenge it.; Related: Custom vs. Nature, The Law of Force
The Domestic Tax on Time: Mill's term for the unpaid, unacknowledged burden of household and family management that falls on women and functions as a hidden deduction from any time or energy they might otherwise spend on public or professional life. He raises it in Chapter 3 to counter the argument that women's absence from public achievement reflects a lack of capacity rather than a lack of opportunity.; Related: Women in Public Life
The Harem Comparison: Mill's analogy between European wives and the women of an Oriental harem, both of whom, he notes pointedly, often report themselves content and even find European freedoms strange or immodest. He uses the comparison to argue that a subject class's professed satisfaction with its condition proves nothing, since people are shaped to accept whatever position they are raised into.; Related: Custom vs. Nature
The Law of Force: Mill's term for raw physical power as the original basis of social relations — the same power dynamic he says produced slavery, feudal subjection, and absolute monarchy, and that produced the subjection of women in the first place. He traces how societies eventually renounced the law of force everywhere except in the household, where it still operates behind a screen of law and sentiment.; Related: Custom vs. Nature, Bondage
The Marriage Contract: The legal agreement Mill examines in his second chapter, which he argues is not a contract between equals at all: on marrying, a woman's legal existence and property merged into her husband's, her earnings became his, and she vowed lifelong obedience enforceable by law. He states her position under English common law was in some respects 'worse than that of slaves' under Roman law, who could at least hold limited personal property.; Related: Bondage, Coverture
The Moral Education of Mankind: Mill's claim that genuine moral sentiment can only be taught by a 'school of... society between equals,' and that historically this education has instead 'emanated chiefly from the law of force' and been shaped to fit relationships of domination. Marriage between unequals, he argues in Chapter 2, therefore actively works against, rather than for, the moral development of both partners.; Related: The Marriage Contract, The Law of Force
The Queen Elizabeth Precedent: Mill's go-to historical proof, in Chapter 3, that women can excel at the very public roles the law assumed them incapable of: he lists Queen Elizabeth I, the biblical judge Deborah, and Joan of Arc as women who unquestionably governed and led. He argues the law's continued exclusion of women from politics and public office cannot be squared with this plain historical record.; Related: Women in Public Life, Competition as the Fair Test
The Servitude of Wives: Mill's summary description of the ordinary wife's position: a 'bond-servant' bound by a vow of lifelong obedience taken 'at the altar' and enforced by law throughout her life, regardless of how the marriage actually functions day to day. He uses the phrase to insist that even affectionate, comfortable marriages rest on a legal foundation of servitude that the law would never tolerate in any other relationship between adults.; Related: Bondage, Coverture
The Utilitarian Case for Emancipation: Mill's closing argument, developed in Chapter 4: that emancipating women would roughly double the pool of developed talent available to society, make marriage a genuine school of moral equality rather than habituated command, and remove the corrupting effect that unearned authority over another person has on men and boys who wield it.; Related: Women in Public Life, Unearned Distinctions
The Wife's Legal Existence: Mill's description of how a married woman's independent standing before the law effectively disappears — her property becomes her husband's 'the instant it becomes hers, even if by inheritance,' and she cannot act, sue, or contract as a legal person separate from him. This absorption of her legal personality into her husband's is the concrete mechanism underlying the book's broader claim about women's bondage.; Related: Coverture, The Marriage Contract

U

Unearned Distinctions: Mill's account of how growing up with privileges one did not earn — as every man does, relative to women, from birth — breeds a 'sultan-like sense of superiority' that corrupts character regardless of a man's individual merit. He argues this self-worship of the male is one of the least examined but most corrosive effects of the whole system of female subjection.; Related: The Utilitarian Case for Emancipation, Sultan-like Superiority

W

Women in Public Life: The subject of Mill's third chapter: the case for opening professions, occupations, and public office to women on the same terms as men, tested by competition rather than blanket exclusion. He argues that history already supplies proof women can rule and govern — citing Elizabeth I, Deborah, and Joan of Arc as examples the law's own logic cannot explain away.; Related: Suffrage, The Utilitarian Case for Emancipation