The Subjection Of Women
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Mill, John Stuart
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 260637
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Wiretap Electronic Text Archive
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: women.jsm
subject: women
subject: power
subject: life
subject: case
subject: woman
subject: introduction
subject: copyrighted
subject: public
subject: domain
subject: mill
subject: john
subject: stuart
subject: subjection
subject: western
subject: philosophy
type: text
local mirror: mill-subjection-217.txt
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sort title: Subjection Of Women, The
full text: THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN by JOHN STUART MILL. Original source: info.umd.edu /info/ReadingRoom/Miscellaneous/SubjectionofWomen Digitized August 1993 by: Paula Gaber <gaber@inform.umd.edu> Based on the Everyman's Library edition, originally published in 1929, reprinted 1992. (Only the introduction is copyrighted.) ISBN 0 460 87173 0 [Fixed several typos, WT, 9/1/93] Originally published 1869, this text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN BY JOHN STUART MILL CHAPTER I The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress reflection and the experience of life. That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes--the legal subordination of one sex to the other--is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other. The very words necessary to express the task I have undertaken, show how arduous it is. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the difficulty of the case must lie in the insufficiency or obscurity of the grounds of reason on which my convictions. The difficulty is that which exists in all cases in which there is a mass of feeling to be contended against. So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments d…