 Chapter 4 Part 1 of the Subjection of Women There remains a question, not of less importance than those already discussed, and which will be asked the most importantly by the opponents whose conviction is somewhat shaken on the main point. What good are we to expect from the changes proposed in our customs and institutions? Would mankind be at all better off if women were free? If not, why disturb their brains in attempt to make social revolution in the name of an abstract right? It is hardly to be expected that this question will be asked in respect to the change proposed in the condition of women in marriage. The sufferings, immoralities, evils of all sorts produced in innumerable cases by the subjection of individual women to individual men are far too terrible to be overlooked. Unthinking or uncanded persons, counting those cases alone which are extreme or which attain publicity may say that the evils are exceptional, but no one can be blind to their existence nor in many cases to their intensity. And it is perfectly obvious that the abuse of the power cannot be much checked while the power remains. It is a power given or offered not to good men or to decently respectable men, but to all men, the most brutal and the most criminal. There is no check but that of opinion, and such men are in general within the reach of no opinion but that of men like themselves. If such men do not brutally tyrannize over the one human being whom the law compels to bear everything from them, society must have already reached a paradisical state. There could be no need any longer of laws to curb men's vicious propensities. Astraea must not only have returned to earth, but the heart of the worst men must have become her temple. The law of servitude in marriage is a monstrous contradiction to all the principles of the modern world, and all the experience through which those principles have been slowly and painfully worked out. It is the sole case now that negro slavery has been abolished, in which a human being in the plentitude of every faculty is delivered up to the tender mercies of another human being in the hope foresooth that this other will use the power solely for the good of the person subjected to it. Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remains no legal slaves except the mistress of every house. It is not therefore, on this part of the subject, that the question is likely to be asked, qui bono. We may be told that the evil would outweigh the good, but the reality of the good admits no dispute. In regard, however, to the larger question, the removal of women's disabilities, their recognition as the equals of men in all that belongs to citizenship, the opening to them of all honorable employments, and of the training and education which qualifies for those employments, there are many persons for whom it is not enough that the inequality has no just or legitimate defense. They require to be told what the express advantage would be obtained by abolishing it. To which let me first answer, the advantage of having the most universal and pervading of all human relations regulated by justice instead of injustice, the vast amount of this gain to human nature, it is hardly possible, by any explanation or illustration, to place in a stronger light than it is placed by the bare statement to anyone who attaches a moral meaning to words. All the selfish propensities, the self-worship, the unjust self-preference, which exist among mankind, have their source and root in and derive their principal nourishment from the present construction of the relation between men and women. Like what it is to a boy to grow up to manhood in the belief that without any merit or any exertion of his own, though he may be the most frivolous and empty or the most ignorant and stolid of men, by the mere fact of being born a male he is by right the superior of all in every one of an entire half of the human race, including probably some whose real superiority to himself he has a daily or hourly occasion to feel. But even if, in his whole conduct, he habitually follows a woman's guidance, still, if he is a fool, she thinks that, of course, she is not, and cannot be, equal in ability and judgment to himself. And if he is not a fool, he does worse, he sees that she is superior to him and believes that, notwithstanding her superiority, he is entitled to command and she is bound to obey. What must be the effect of his character on this lesson? And men of the cultured classes are often not aware how deeply it sinks into the immense majority of male minds. Four. Among right-feeling and well-bred people, the inequality is kept as much as possible out of sight. Of all out of sight of the children. As much obedience is required from boys to their mother as to their father, they are not permitted to dominere over their sisters, nor are they accustomed to see these postponed to them. But the contrary, the compensations of the chivalrous feeling being made prominent, while the servitude which requires them is kept in the background. Well-brought-up youths in the higher classes, thus, often escape the bad influences of the situation in their early years, and only experience them when, arrive it at manhood, they fall under the dominion of facts as they really exist. Such people are little aware, when a boy is differently brought up, how early the notion of his inherent superiority to a girl arises in his mind. How it grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength. How it is inoculated by one school boy upon another. How early the youth thinks himself superior to his mother, owing her perhaps forbearance, but no real respect. And how sublime and sultan-like a sense of superiority he feels above all over the woman whom he honors by admitting her to the partner of his life. Is it imagined that all this does not pervert the whole manner of existence of the man, both as an individual and as a social being? It is an exact parallel to the feeling of a hereditary king that he is excellent above all others by being born a king or a noble by being born a noble. The relation between husband and wife is very like that between lord and vassal, except that his wife is held to more unlimited obedience than the vassal was. However, the vassals character may have been affected, for better or worse, by his subordination. Who can help seeing that the lords was affected greatly for the worse, whether he was led to believe that his vassals were really superior to himself, or to feel that he was placed in common in command over people as good as himself for no merits or labours of his own, but merely for having, as Figaro says, taken the trouble to be born. The self-worship of the monarch, or of the feudal superior, is matched by the self-worship of the male. Human beings do not grow up from childhood in the possession of unearned distinctions without plumbing themselves upon them. Those whom privileges not acquired by their merit, and which they feel to be disproportioned to it, inspire with additional humility, are always the few, and the best few, the rest, are only inspired with pride and the worst sort of pride, that which values itself upon accidental advantages, not of its own achieving. Above all, when the feeling of being raised above the whole of another sex is combined with the personal authority over one individual among them, the situation, if a school of conscientious and affectionate forbearance for those whose strongest points of character are conscience and affection, is to men of another quality or regularly constituted academy or gymnasium for training them in arrogance and overbearingness, which vices, if curbed by the certainty of resistance in their intercourse with other men, their equals, break out towards all who are in position to be obliged to tolerate them, and often to revenge themselves upon the unfortunate wife for the involuntary restraint which they are obliged to submit to elsewhere. The example afforded in the education given to the sentiments by laying the foundation of domestic existence upon the relation contradictory to the first principles of social justice must, from the very nature of man, have a perverting influence of such magnitude that it is hardly possible, with our present experience, to raise our imaginations to the conception of so great a change for the better as would be made by its removal, all that education and civilization are doing to efface the influences on character of the law of force, and replace them by those of justice, remains merely on the surface as long as the citadel of the enemy is not attacked, the principle of the modern movement in morals and politics is that conduct and conduct alone entitles to respect, that not what men are but what they do constitutes their claim to difference, that above all merit and not birth is the only rightful claim to power and authority, if no authority not in its nature temporary, were allowed to one human being over another, society would not be employed in building up propincities with one hand which has to curb with the other. The child would really, from the first time in man's existence on earth, be trained in the way he should go, and when he was old there would be a chance that he would not depart from it, but so long as the right of strong to power over weak rules in the very heart of society, the attempt to make equal right of the weak, the principle of its outward actions will always be an uphill struggle for the law of justice, which is also that of Christianity will never get possession of men's in most sentiments. They will be working against it, even when bending to it. The second benefit to be expected from giving to women the free use of their faculties by leaving them the free choice of their employments and opening them to the same field of occupation, the same prizes and encouragements as to other human beings, would be that of doubling the mass of mental faculties available for the higher service of humanity, where there is now one person qualified to benefit mankind and promote the general improvement as a public teacher or an administrator of some branch of public or social affairs, there would then be a chance of two. Mental superiority of any kind is at present everywhere so much below the demand. There is such a deficiency of persons competent to do excellently anything which it requires any considerable amount of ability to do that the loss to the world by refusing to make use of one half of the whole quantity of talent it possesses is extremely serious. It is true that this amount of mental power is not totally lost. Much of it is employed and would in any case be employed in domestic management and in the few other occupations open to women and from the remainder indirect benefit is in many individual cases obtained through the personal influence of individual women over individual men but these benefits are partial their range is extremely circumscribed and if they must be admitted on the one hand as a deduction from the amount of fresh social power that would be acquired by giving freedom to one half of the whole sum of human intellect there must be added on the other the benefit of the stimulus that would be given to the intellect of men by the competition or to use a more true expression by the necessity that would be imposed on them of deserving precedency before they could expect to obtain it. This great accession to the intellectual power of the species and to the amount of intellect available for the good management of its affairs would be obtained partly through the better and more complete intellectual education of women which would then improve paripassu with that of men women in general would be brought up equally capable of understanding business public affairs and the high matters of speculation with men in the same class of society and the select few of the one as well as the other sex who were qualified not only to comprehend what is done or thought by others but to think or do something considerable themselves would meet with the same faculties for improving and training their capacities in the one sex as in the other in this way the widening of the sphere of action for women would operate for good by raising their education to the level of that of men and making the one participate in all improvements made in the other but independently of this the mere breaking down of the barrier would itself have an educational virtue of the highest worth the mere getting rid of the idea that all the wider subjects of thought in action all the things which are generally and not solely of private interest are men's business from which women are to be warned off positively in directed from most of it coldly tolerated in the little which is allowed to them the mere consciousness of women would then have of being human like any other entitled to choose her pursuits urged or invited by the same inducements as anyone else to interest herself in whatever is interesting to human beings entitled to exert the share of influence on all human concerns which belongs to an individual opinion whether she attempted actual participation in them or not this alone would affect an immense expansion of the faculties of women as well as an enlargement of the range of their moral sentiments besides the addition to the amount of individual talent available to the conduct of human affairs which certainly are not at present so abundantly provided in that respect that they can afford to dispense with one half of what nature proffers the opinion of women would then possess a more beneficial rather than a greater influence upon the mass of human belief and sentiment I say more beneficial rather than a greater influence for the influence of women over the general tone of opinion has always or at least from the earliest known period been very considerable the influence of mothers on the early character of their sons and the desire of young men to recommend themselves to young women have in all recorded times been important agencies in the formation of character and have determined some of the chief steps in the progress of civilization even in the Homeric age alpha iota delta omega sigma towards the tau row omega alpha delta alpha sigma epsilon lambda chi epsilon sigma iota pi epsilon pi lambda omega epsilon sigma is an acknowledged and powerful motive of the action in the great Hector the moral influence of women has had two modes of operation first it has been softened by influence those who were most liable to be the victims of violence have naturally tended to be as much as they could towards limiting its fear and mitigating its excesses those who were not taught to fight have naturally inclined in favor of any other mode of settling differences rather than of fighting in general those who have been the greatest sufferers by the indulgence of selfish passion have been the most earnest supporters of any moral law which offered a means of bridling passion women were powerfully instrumental in inducing the northern conquerors to adopt the creed of Christianity a creed so much more favorable to women than any that preceded it the conversion of the Anglo Saxons and of the Franks maybe said to have been begun by the wives of Ethelbert and Clovis the other mode in which the effective women's opinion has been conspicuous is by giving a powerful stimulus to those qualities in men which not being themselves trained in it was necessary for them that they should find in their protectors courage and the military virtues generally have at all times been greatly indebted to the desire which men felt of being admired by women and the stimulus reaches far beyond this one class of imminent qualities since by the very natural effect of their position the best passport to the admiration and favor of women has always been to be thought highly of by men from the combination of the two kinds of moral influence thus exercised by women arose the spirit of chivalry the peculiarity of which is to aim at combining the highest standard of the warlike qualities with the cultivation of a totally different class of virtues those of gentleness generosity and self-abnegation towards the non-military and defenseless classes generally and the special submission and worship directed towards women who were distinguished from the other defenseless classes by the high rewards which they had it in their power voluntarily to bestow on those who endeavored to earn their favor instead of exhorting their subjection though the practice of chivalry fell even more sadly short of its theoretic standard than practice generally falls below theory it remains one of the most precious monuments of the moral history of our race as a remarkable instance of the concerted and organized attempt by a most disorganized and distracted society to raise up and carry into practice a moral ideal greatly in advance of its social condition and institutions so much so as to have been completely frustrated in the main object yet never entirely inefficacious and which has left a most sensible and for the most part a highly valuable impress on the ideas and feelings of all subsequent times the chivalrous idea is the acme of the influence of women's sentiment on the moral cultivation of mankind and if women are to remain in their subordinate situation it were greatly to be lamented that the chivalrous standard should have passed away for it is the only one at all capable of mitigating the demoralizing influences of that position but the changes in the general state of the species rendered inevitable the substitution of a totally different ideal of morality for the chivalrous one chivalry was the attempt to infuse moral elements into a state of society in which everything depended for good or evil on individual prowess under the softening influences of individual delicacy and generosity in modern societies all things even the military department of affairs are decided not by individual effort but by the combined operations of numbers while the main occupation of society has changed from fighting to business from military to industrial life the exigencies of the new life are no more exclusive of the virtues of generosity than those of the old but it no longer entirely depends on them the main foundations of the moral life of modern times must be justice and prudence the respect of each for the rights of every other in the ability of each to take care of himself chivalry left without legal check all forms of wrong which reigned unpunished throughout society it only encouraged a few to do right in preferences to wrong by the direction it gave to the instruments of praise and admiration but the real dependence of morality must always be upon its penal sanctions its power to deter from evil the security of society cannot rest on merely rendering honor to right a motive so comparatively weak in all but a few and which on very many does not operate at all modern society is able to repress wrong through all departments of life by a fit exertion of the superior strength which civilization has given to it and thus to render the existence of the weaker members of society no longer defenseless but protected by law tolerable to them without reliance on the chivalrous feelings of those who are in a position to tyrannize the beauties and graces of the chivalrous character are still what they were but the rights of the weak and the general comfort of human life now rest on a far sure and steadier support or rather they do so in every relation of life except the conjugal at present the moral influence of women is no less real but it is no longer of so marked indefinite a character it has more nearly merged in the general influence of public opinion both through the conjugation of sympathy and through the desire of men to shine in the eyes of women their feelings have great effect in keeping alive what remains of the chivalrous ideal in fostering the sentiments and continuing the traditions of spirit in generosity in these points of character their standard is higher than that of men in the quality of justice somewhat lower as regards the relations of private life it may be said generally that their influence is on the whole encouraging to the softer virtues discouraging to the sterner though the statement must be taken with all the modifications dependent on individual character in the chief of the greater trials which virtue is subject in the concerns of life the conflict between interest and principle the tendency of women's influence it is of a very mixed character when the principle involved happens to be one of the very few which the course of their religious or moral education has strongly impressed upon themselves they are potent auxiliaries to virtue and their husbands and sons are often prompted by them to acts of abnegation which they would never have been capable of without that stimulus but with the present education and position of women the moral principles which have been impressed on them cover but a comparatively small part of the field of virtue and are moreover principally negative forbidding particular acts but having little to do with the general direction of the thoughts and purposes i am afraid it must be said that disinterestedness in the general conduct of life the devotion of the energies to purposes which hold out no promise of private advantages to the family is very seldom encouraged or supported by women's influence it is small blame to them that they discourage objects of which they have not learned to see the advantage and which withdraw their men from them and from the interests of the family but the consequence is that the women's influence is often anything but favorable to public virtue women have however some share of the influence in giving the tone to public moralities since their sphere of action has been little dwindled and since a considerable number of them have occupied themselves practically in the promotion of objects reaching beyond their own family and household the influence of women counts for a great deal in two of the most marked features of modern european life it's aversion to war and its addiction to philanthropy excellent characteristics both but unhappily if the influence of women is valuable in the encouragement it gives to these feelings in general in the particular applications the direction it gives to them is at least as often mischievous as useful in the philanthropic department more particularly the two provinces chiefly cultivated by women are religious proselytism and charity religious proselytism at home is but another word for in bittering of religious animosities abroad it is usually a blind running at an object without either knowing or heeding the fatal mischiefs fatal to the religious object itself as well as to all other desirable objects which may be produced by the means employed as for charity it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned and the ultimate consequence to the general good are apt to be at complete war with one another while the education given to women an education of the sentiments rather than of the understanding and the habit inculcated by their whole life or looking to immediate effects on persons and not to remote effects own classes of persons make them both unable to see and unwilling to admit the ultimate evil tendency of any form of charity or philanthropy which commends itself to their sympathetic feelings the great and continually increasing mass of unenlightened and short-sighted benevolence which taking the care of people's lives out of their own hands and relieving them from the disagreeable consequences of their own acts saps the very foundation of the self-respect self-help and self-control which are the essential conditions both of individual prosperity and of social virtue this waste of resources and of benevolent feelings and doing harm instead of good is immensely swelled by women's contributions and stimulated by their influence not that this is a mistake likely to be made by women where they have actually the practical management of schemes of beneficence it sometimes happens that women who administer public charities with that insight into present fact and especially into the minds and feelings of those with whom they are in immediate contact in which women generally excel men recognize in the clearest manner the demoralizing influence of the alms given or the help afforded and could give lessons on the subject to many a male political economist but women who only give their money and are not brought face to face with the effects it produces how can they be expected to foresee them a woman born to the present lot of women and content with it how should she appreciate the value of self dependence she is not self dependent she is not taught self dependence her destiny is to receive everything from others and why should what is good enough for her be bad for the poor her familiar notions of good are blessings descending from a superior she forgets that she is not free and that the poor are that if what they need is to be given to them unearned they cannot be compelled to earn it that everybody cannot be taken care of by everybody but there must be some motive to induce people to take care of themselves and that to be helped to help themselves if they are physically capable of it is the only charity which proves to be charity in the end end of chapter four part one recording by niki solovan chicago chapter four part two of the subjection of women this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox dot org recording by niki solovan the subjection of women by john stewart mill chapter four part two these considerations show how usefully the part which women take in the formation of general opinion would be modified for the better by that more enlarged instruction and practical conversancy with the things which their opinions influence that would necessarily arise from their social and political emancipation but the improvement it would work through the influence they exercise each in her own family would be still more remarkable it is often said that in the classes most exposed to temptation a man's wife and children tend to keep him honest and respectable both by the wife's direct influence and by the concern she feels for their future welfare this may be so and no doubt often is so with those who are more weak than wicked and this beneficial influence would be preserved and strengthened under equal laws it does not depend on the woman's servitude but is on the contrary diminished by the disrespect which the inferior class of men always at heart feels towards those who are subject to their power but when we ascend higher in the scale we come among a totally different set of moving forces the wife's influence tends as far as it goes to prevent the husband from falling below the common standard of approbation of the country it tends quite as strongly to hinder him from rising above it the wife is the auxiliary of the common public opinion a man who is married to a woman his inferior in intelligence finds her a perpetual dead weight or worse than a dead weight a drag upon every aspiration of his to be better than the public opinion requires him to be it is hardly possible for one who is in these bonds to attain exalted virtue if he differs in his opinion from the mass if he sees truths which have not yet been dawned upon them or if feeling in his heart truths which they nominally recognize he would like to act up to those truths more conscientiously than the generality of mankind to all such thoughts and desires marriage is the heaviest of drawbacks unless he be so fortunate as to have a wife as much above the common level as he himself is for in the first place there is always some sacrifice of personal interest required either of social consequence or of pecuniary means perhaps the risk even of the means of subsistence these sacrifices and risks he may be willing to encounter for himself but he will pause before he imposes them on his family and his family in this case means his wife and daughters for he always hopes that his sons will feel as he feels himself and that what he can do without they will do without willingly is the same cause but his daughters their marriage may depend on it and his wife who is unable to enter into or understand the objects for which these sacrifices are made who if she thought them worthy any sacrifice would think so on trust and solely for his sake who could participate in none of the enthusiasm or self-approbation he himself may feel while the things which he is disposed to sacrifice are all in all to her will not the best in most selfish man hesitate the longest before bringing on her this consequence if it be not the comforts of life but only social consideration that is at stake the burden upon his conscience and feelings is still very severe whoever has a wife and children has given hostages to mrs. Grundy the approbation of that potentiate may be a matter of indifference to him but it is of greatest importance to his wife the man himself may be above opinion or may find sufficient compensation in the opinion of those of his own way of thinking but to the women connected with him he can offer no compensation the almost invariable tendency of the wife to place her influence in the same scale with social consideration is sometimes made a reproach to women and represented as a peculiar trait of feebleness and childishness of character in them surely with great injustice society makes the whole life of a woman in the easy classes a continued self-sacrifice it exacts from her an unremitting restraint of the whole of her natural inclinations and the sole return it makes to her for what often deserves the name of a martyrdom is consideration her consideration is inseparably connected with that of her husband and after paying the full price of it she finds that she is to lose it for no reason of which she can feel the cogency she has sacrificed her whole life to it and her husband will not sacrifice it to a whim a freak an eccentricity something not recognized or allowed for by the world in which the world will agree with her in thinking a folly if it thinks no worse the dilemma is hardest upon that very meritorious class of men who without possessing talents which qualify them to make a figure among those whom they agree in opinion hold their opinion from conviction and feel bound in honor and conscience to serve it by making profession of their belief and giving their time labor and means to anything undertaken in its behalf the worst case of all is when such men happen to be of a rank and position which of itself neither gives them nor excludes them from what is considered the best society when their admission to it depends mainly on what is thought of them personally and however unexceptionable their breeding and habits their being identified with opinions and public conduct unacceptable to those who give the tone of society would operate as an effectual exclusion many a woman flatters herself nine times out of ten quite erroneously that nothing prevents her and her husband from moving in the highest society of her neighborhood society in which others well known to her and in the same class of life mix freely except that her husband is unfortunately a dissenter or has the reputation of mingling in low radical politics that is she thinks which hinders george from getting a commission or a place caroline from making an advantageous match and prevents her and her husband from obtaining invitations perhaps honors which for ought she sees they are as well entitled to as some folks with such an influence in every house either exerted actively or operating all the more powerfully for not being asserted is it any wonder that people in general are kept down in that mediocrity of respectability which is becoming a marked characteristic of modern times there is another very injurious aspects in which the effect not of women's disabilities directly but of the broad line of difference which those disabilities create between the education and character of a woman and that of a man requires to be considered nothing can be more unfavorable to that union of thoughts and inclinations which is the ideal of married life intimate society between people radically dissimilar to one another is an idle dream unlikeness may attract but it is likeness which retains and in proportion to the likeness is the sustainability of the individuals to give each other a happy life while women are so unlike men it is not wonderful that selfish men should feel the need of arbitrary power in their own hands to arrest in limana the lifelong conflict of inclinations by deciding every question on the side of their own preference when people are extremely unlike there can be no real identity of interest very often there is conscientious difference of opinion between married couple on the highest points of duty is there any reality in the marriage union where this takes place yet it is not uncommon anywhere when the woman has an earnestness of character and it is a very general case in Catholic countries when she is supported in her descent by the only other authority to which she is taught to bow the priest with the usual barefacedness of power not accustomed to find itself disputed the influence of priests over women is attacked by Protestant and liberal writers less for being bad in itself than because it is a rival authority to the husband and raises up a revolt against his infallibility in England similar differences occasionally exist when an evangelical wife has allied herself with a husband of a different quality but in general this source at least of dissension is got rid of by reducing the minds of women to such a knowledge that they have no opinions but those of mrs. Grundy or those which the husband tells them to have when there is no difference of opinion differences merely of taste may distract greatly from the happiness of married life and though it may stimulate the amateury propensities of men it does not conduce to married happiness to exaggerate by differences of education whatever may be the native differences of the sexes if the married pair are well bred and well behaved people they tolerate each other's tastes but is mutual toleration what people look forward to when they enter into marriage these differences of inclination will naturally make their wishes different if not restrained by affection or duty as to almost all domestic questions which arise what a difference there must be in the society which the two persons will wish to frequent or be frequented by each will desire associations who share their own tastes the persons agreeable to one will be indifferent or positively disagreeable to the other yet there can be none who are not common to both for married people do not now live in different parts of the house and have totally different visiting lists as in the reign of louis the 15th they cannot help having different wishes as to the bringing up of the children each will wish to see reproduced in them their own tastes and sentiments and there is either a compromise and only a half satisfaction to either or the wife has to yield often with bitter suffering and with or without intention her occult influence continues to counterwork the husband's purposes it would of course be extreme folly to suppose that these differences of feeling in inclination only exist because women are brought up differently from men and that there would not be differences of taste under any imaginable circumstances but there is nothing beyond the mark in saying that the distinction and bringing up immensely aggravates those differences and renders them wholly inevitable while women are brought up as they are a man and a woman will but rarely find in one another a real agreement of tastes and wishes as to daily life they will generally have to give it up as hopeless and renounce the attempt to have in the immediate associate of their daily life that idiom vile idiom no le which is the recognized bond of any society that is really such or if the man succeeds in obtaining it he does so by choosing a woman who is so complete a nullity that she has no vile or no le at all and is as ready to comply with one thing as another if anybody tells her to do so even this calculation is apt to fail dullness and want of spirit are not always a guarantee of the submission which is so confidently expected from them but if they were is this the ideal of marriage what in this case does the man obtained by it except an upper servant a nurse or a mistress on the contrary when each of two persons instead of being a nothing is a something when they are attached to one another and are not too much unlike to begin with the constant partaking in the same things assisted by their sympathy draws out the latent capabilities of each for being interested in the things which were at first interesting only to the other and works a gradual assimilation of the tastes and characters to one another partly by the insensible modification of each but more by a real enriching of the two natures each acquiring the tastes and capabilities of the other in addition to its own this often happens between two friends of the same sex who are much associated in their daily life and it would be a common if not the commonest case in marriage did not the totally different bringing up of the two sexes make it next to an impossibility to form a really well assorted union where this remedy whatever differences there might still be in individual tastes there would at least be as a general rule complete unity and unanimity as to the great objects of life when the two persons both care for great objects and are a help and encouragement to each other in whatever regards these the minor matters of which their tastes may differ are not all important to them and there is a foundation for a solid friendship of an enduring character more likely than anything else to make it through the whole of their life a greater pleasure to each to give pleasure to the other than to receive it i have considered thus far the effects on the pleasures and benefits of the marriage union which depend on the mere unlikeness between the wife and the husband but the evil tendency is prodigiously aggravated when the unlikeness is inferiority mere unlikeness when it only means difference of good qualities may be more a benefit in the way of mutual improvement than a drawback from comfort when each emulates and desires and endeavors to acquire the others peculiar qualities the difference does not produce diversity of interest but increased identity of it and makes each still more valuable to the other but when one is much the inferior of the two in mental ability and cultivation and is not actively attempting by the other's aid to rise to the other's level the whole influence of the connection upon the development of the superior of the two is deteriorating and still more so in a tolerably happy marriage than in an unhappy one it is not with the impunity that the superior in intellect shuts himself up within inferior and elects that that inferior for his chosen and soul completely intimate associate any society which is not improving is deteriorating and the more so the closer and more familiar it is even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually as the phrase is king of his company and in his most habitual company the husband who has a wife inferior to him is always so when his self-satisfaction is incessantly ministered to on the other hand on the other he insensibly imbibes the modes of feeling and of looking at things which belong to a more vulgar and a more limited mind than his own this evil differs from many of those which have hitherto been dwelt on by being an increasing one the association of men and women in daily life is much closer and more complete than it ever was before men's life is more domestic formerly their pleasures and chosen occupations were among men and in men's company their wives had but a fragment of their lives at the present time the progress of civilization and the turn of opinion against the rough amusements and convivial excesses which formerly occupied most men in their hours of relaxation together with it must be said the improved tone of modern feeling as to their reciprocity of duty which binds the husband towards the wife have thrown the man very much more upon the home and its inmates for his personal and social pleasures while the kind and degree of improvement which has been made in women's education has made them in some degree capable of being his companions and ideas and mental tastes while leaving them in most cases still hopelessly inferior to him his desire of mental communion is thus in general satisfied by a communion from which he learns nothing an unimproving and unstimulating companionship is substituted for what he might otherwise have been obliged to seek the society of his equals in power and his fellows in the higher pursuits we see accordingly that young men of the greatest promise generally cease to improve as soon as they marry and not improving inevitably degenerate if the wife does not push the husband forward she always holds him back he ceases to care for what she does not care for he no longer desires and ends by disliking and shunning society congenial to his former aspirations and which would now shame his falling off from them his higher faculties both of mind and heart cease to be called into activity and this change coinciding with the new and selfish interests which are created by the family after a few years he differs in no material respect from those who have never had wishes for anything but the common vanities and the common pecuniary objects what marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties identical in opinions and purposes between whom there exists the best kind of equality similarity of powers and capabilities with reciprocal superiority in them so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other and can have alternatively the pleasure of leading and being led in the path of development i will not attempt to describe to those who can conceive it there is no need and to those who cannot it would appear the dream of an enthusiast but i maintain with the profoundest conviction that this and this only is the ideal of marriage and that all opinions customs and institutions which favor any other notion of it or turn the conceptions and aspirations connected with it into any other direction by whatever pretenses they may be colored are relics of primitive barbarism the moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence when the most fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal justice and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy within equal in nights and in cultivation thus far the benefits which it has appeared that the world would gain by ceasing to make sex a disqualification for privileges and a badge of subjection are social rather than individual consisting in an increase of the general fund of thinking and acting power and an improvement in the general conditions of the association of men and women but it would be a grievous understatement of the case to omit the most direct benefit of all the unspeakable gain in the private happiness to the liberated half of the species the difference to them between a life of subjection to the will of others and a life of rational freedom after the primary necessities of food and raiment freedom is the first and strongest want of human nature while mankind are lawless their desire is for lawless freedom when they have learned to understand the meaning of duty and the value of reason they incline more and more to be guided and restrained by these in the exercise of their freedom but they do not therefore desire freedom less they do not become disposed to accept the will of other people as the representative and interpreter of those guiding principles on the contrary the communities in which the reason has been most cultivated and in which the idea of social duty has been most powerful are those which have most strongly asserted the freedom of action of the individual the liberty of each to govern his conduct by his own feelings of duty and by such laws in social restraints as his own conscience can subscribe to he who would rightly appreciate the worth of personal independence as an element of happiness should consider the value he himself puts on it as an ingredient of his own there is no subject on which there is a greater habitual difference of judgment between a man judging for himself and the same man judging for other people when he hears others complaining that they are not allowed freedom of action that their own will has not sufficient influence in the regulation of their affairs his inclination is to ask what are their grievances what positive damage they sustain and in what respect they consider their affairs to be mismanaged and if they fail to make out in answer to these questions what appears to him a sufficient case he turns a deaf ear and regards their complaint as the fanciful quarrelousness of people whom nothing reasonable will satisfy but he has a quite different standard of judgment when he is deciding for himself then the most unexceptionable administration of his interests by a tutor set over him does not satisfy his feelings his personal exclusion from the deciding authority itself appears the greatest grievance of all rendering it superfluous even to enter into the question of mismanagement it is the same with nations what citizen of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom even if he could believe that good and skillful administration can exist among a people ruled by a will not their own would not the consciousness of working out their own destiny under their own moral responsibility be a compensation to his feelings for great rudeness and imperfection in the dealings of public affairs let him rest assured that whatever he feels on this point women feel in fully equal degree whatever has been said or written from the time of Herodotus to the present of the ennobling influence of free government the nerve and spring which it gives to all the faculties the larger and higher objects which it presents to the intellect and feelings the more unselfish public spirit and calmer and broader views of duty that it engenders and the generally loftier platform on which it elevates the individual as a moral spiritual and social being is every particle as true of women as of men are these things no important part of individual happiness let any man call to mind what he himself felt on emerging from boyhood from the tutelage and control of even loved and affectionate elders and entering upon the responsibilities of manhood was it not like the physical effect of taking off a heavy weight or releasing him from obstructive even if not otherwise painful bonds did he not feel twice as much alive twice as much a human being as before and does he imagine that women have none of these feelings but it is a striking fact that the satisfactions and mortifications of personal pride though all in all to most men when the case is their own have less allowance made for them in the case of other people and are less listened to as a ground or justification of conduct than any other natural human feelings perhaps because men compliment them in their own case with the names of so many other qualities that they are seldom conscious how mighty and influence these feelings exercise in their own lives no less large and powerful is their part we may assure ourselves in the lives and feelings of women women are schooled into suppressing them in their most natural and most healthy direction but the internal principle remains in a different outward form an active and energetic mind if denied liberty will seek for power refused the command of itself it will assert its personality by attempting to control others to allow any human beings no existence of their own but what depends on others is giving far too high a premium on bending others to their purposes where liberty cannot be hoped for and power can power becomes the grand object of human desire those to whom others will not leave the undisturbed management of their own affairs will compensate themselves if they can by meddling for their own purposes with the affairs of others hence also women's passion for personal beauty and dress and display and all the evils that flow from it in the way of mischievous luxury and social immorality the love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism where there is least liberty the passion for power is the most ardent and unscrupulous the desire for power over others can only cease to be a depraving agency among mankind when each of them individually is able to do without it which can only be where respect for liberty in the personal concerns of each is an established principle but it is not only through the sentiment of personal dignity that the free direction and disposal of their own faculties is a source of individual happiness and to be fettered and restricted in it a source of unhappiness to human beings and not least to women there is nothing after disease indigence and guilt so fatal to the pleasurable enjoyment of life as the want of a worthy outlet for the active faculties women who have the cares of a family and while they have the cares of a family have this outlet and it generally suffices for them but what of the greatly increasing number of women who have had no opportunity of exercising the vocation which they are mocked by telling them is their proper one what of the women whose children have been lost to them by death or distance or have grown up married and formed homes of their own there are abundant examples of men who after a life engrossed by business retire with a competency to the enjoyment as they hope of rest but to whom as they are unable to acquire new interests and excitements that can replace the old the change to a life of inactivity brings on we melancholy and premature death yet no one thinks of the parallel case of so many worthy and devoted women who having paid what they are told is their debt to society have brought up a family blamelessly to manhood and womanhood having kept a house so long as they have a house needing to be kept are deserted by the sole occupation for which they have fitted themselves and remain with undiminished activity but with no employment for it unless perhaps a daughter or daughter-in-law is willing to abdicate in their favor the discharge of the same functions in her young household surely a hard lot for the old age of those who have worthily discharged as long as it was given to them to discharge what the world accounts their only social duty of such women and of those to whom this duty has not been committed at all many of whom pine through life with the consciousness of thwarted vocations in activities which are not suffered to expand the only resources speaking generally are religion and charity but their religion though it may be one of feeling and of ceremonial observance cannot be a religion of action unless in the form of charity for charity many of them are by nature admirably fitted but to practice it usefully or even without doing mischief requires the education and the manifold preparation the knowledge and the thinking powers of a skillful administrator there are few of the administrative functions of government for which a person would not be fit who is fit to bestow charity usefully in this as in other cases preeminently in that of the education of children the duties permitted to women cannot be performed properly without there being trained for duties which to the great loss of society are not permitted to them and here let me notice the singular way in which the question of women's disabilities is frequently presented to view by those who find it easier to draw a ludicrous picture of what they do not like than to answer the arguments for it when it is suggested that women's executive capabilities and prudent councils might sometimes be found valuable in the affairs of state these lovers of fun hold up to the ridicule of the world as sitting in parliament or in the cabinet girls in their teens or young wives of two or three and twenty transported bodily exactly as they are from the drawing room to the house of commons they forget that males are not usually selected at this early age for a seat in parliament or for responsible political functions common sense would tell them that if such trusts were confided to women it would be to such as having no special vocation for married life or preferring other employment of their faculties as many women even now prefer to marriage some of the few honorable occupations within their reach have spent the best years of their youth in attempting to qualify themselves for the pursuits in which they desire to engage or still more frequently perhaps widows or wives of forty or fifty by whom the knowledge of life and faculty of government which they have acquired in their families could by the aid of appropriate studies be made available on a less contracted scale there is no country of Europe in which the ableist men have not frequently experienced and keenly appreciated the value of the advice and help of clever and experienced women of the world in attainment both of private and public objects and there are important matters of public administration to which few men are equally competent as such women among others the detailed control of expenditure but what we are now discussing is not the need which society has of the services of women in public business but the doll and hopeless life to which it so often condemns them by forbidding them to exercise the practical abilities which many of them are conscious of in a wider field than one to which some of them never was and to the others is no longer open if there is anything vitally important to the happiness of human beings it is that they should relish their habitual pursuit this requisite of an enjoyable life is very imperfectly granted we're all together denied to a large part of mankind and by its absence many a life is a failure which is provided in appearance with every requisite of success but if circumstances which society is not yet skillful enough to overcome render such failures often for the present inevitable society need not itself inflict them the injudiciousness of parents a youth's own inexperience or the absence of external opportunities for the congenial vocation and their presence for an uncongenial condemn numbers of men to pass their lives in doing one thing reluctantly and ill when there are other things which they could have done well and happily but on women this sentence is imposed by actual law and by customs equivalent to law what in an enlightened society's color race religion or in the case of a conquered country nationality or to some men sex is to all women a preemptory exclusion from almost all honorable occupations but either as such cannot be fulfilled by others or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance sufferings arising from causes of this nature usually meet with so little sympathy that few persons are aware of the great amount of unhappiness even now produced by the feeling of wasted life the case will be even more frequent as increased cultivation creates a greater and greater disproportion between the ideas and faculties of women and the scope which society allows to their activity when we consider the positive evil caused to the disqualified half of the human race by their disqualification first in the loss of the most inspiring and elevating kind of personal enjoyment and next in the weariness disappointment and profound dissatisfaction with life which are so often the substitute for it one feels that among all the lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the inevitable imperfections of their lot on earth there is no lesson which they more need than not to add to the evils which nature inflicts by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one another their vain fears only substitute other and worse evils for those which they are idly apprehensive of while every restraint on the freedom of conduct of any of their human fellow creatures otherwise then by making them responsible for an evil actually caused by it dries up pro Tanto the principal foundation of human happiness and leaves the species less rich to an inappreciable degree in all that makes life valuable to the individual human being end of chapter four part two recording by Nikki Sullivan Chicago end of the subjection of women by John Stuart Mill