A feminist in Victorian London
In 1869 John Stuart Mill, with the essay The servitude of women, co-opted gender equality and women's political rights into the liberal narrative. This important inclusion, absent in his major work on political philosophy published 10 years earlier, was undoubtedly the result of the partnership with his wife and muse Harriet Taylor Mill.
In 1851 Mill had published another clearly feminist essay under her own name The Enfranchisement of Women (transl. it. On women's equality and empowerment, Einaudi, 2002) to later republish it under his wife's name, “Mrs Stuart Mill”. It is now recognized that the essay was actually written by Harriet Taylor. Who else could these words belong to about the condition of women in the Victorian age and beyond:
The real question is whether it is right and proper for half of the human race to go through life in a state of enforced subordination to the other half; whether the best state of human society is to be divided into two parts, one of individuals endowed with will and independent existence, the other of their humble companions, each attached to one of them for the purpose of raising its children and make the house pleasant for him. If this is the role assigned to women, it is but a form of politeness to educate them for it and to make them believe that the greatest good fortune that can happen to them is to be chosen by a man for this purpose and that any other career than the world judges happy and honorable to be barred from them by law, not by nature and destiny.
However, when we ask why the existence of one half of the species should be merely ancillary to that of the other, why should each woman be a mere appendage of a man, not allowed to have interests of her own so that nothing can compete in her mind , with his interests and pleasures, the only reason we can be given is that men like it that way. It is agreeable to them that they live for themselves, and women for themselves: and they have long succeeded in getting their subjects to regard the qualities and conduct which are agreeable to their rulers as their proper virtues.
The influence on the thought of Mill
The nature of his wife's influence on the father of liberalism has often been the subject of discussion among scholars of the English philosopher and economist, but a recent synthesis work by Dale Miller for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ascertained that Taylor's influence over Mill was mainly expressed in bringing the philosopher's attention to three themes that were particularly close to her heart: socialism, women's rights and her utopian vision on the perfectibility of humanity .
Mill himself recognized the importance of his wife's contribution to his thinking and gave her considerable credit in writing her most important work The principles of political economy, which he did not hesitate to define as "a four-handed job". As for Enfranchisement of Women he recognized that his role was that of mere reviewer and scribe.
The dedication to the wife of the second edition of Essay on Liberty, published the year after her death, was a real tribute to Harriet:
All that I have written for many years, belongs to you as much as to me… If only I were able to convey to the world half of the great thoughts and noble feelings that are buried with you, I would be the conduit of greater benefits than can ever come. from whatever I write, deprived of the stimulus and comfort of his unparalleled wisdom.
The Feminist Footprint on Modern Liberalism
There is no doubt that Harriet Taylor, a sophisticated, brilliant and fascinating woman who Mill met in 1830 and later married, had an important influence on his thinking, redefining some aspects and giving him those original traits that still characterize him today.
The birth of modern liberalism therefore also bears a feminine imprint. It is difficult to define how much Harriet Taylor can be considered a co-author, but it is certain that certain chapters of Principles of political economy such as the one dedicated to the future of the working class would not have existed without her contribution.
Taylor also revised the writings of the English philosopher by purifying them of expressions that today we would consider sexist, but which at the time were not at all. Harriet in fact replaced "man" with "person" and "he" with "people". A revision of the language that Mill also tried to introduce into legislative and juridical language.
If Mill and Harriet were living in our times, there's no doubt they would have championed feminist causes like the #MeToo movement. They fought against the abuse of power by men even at home. Between the mid-40s and early 50s, the couple co-wrote a number of articles exposing how the legal system viewed domestic violence.
Approach to socialism
From a young age Harriet Taylor (girlfriend's surname Hardy) approached radical circles to become an activist of the Unitarian church very tolerant of radical ideas and in favor of equal rights between men and women. It was while attending the milieu of the Unitarian church in London that she met John Stuart Mill who struck her with her attitude to treat her as an intellectual equal to the point of entrusting her with the revision of some of her writings.
Little is known about the personal life of this feminist who claimed women's rights in Victorian society, although there are two direct documentary sources. The Nobel prize-winning economist Friedrich von Hayek – who published part of the personal correspondence between her and Mill – underlined the importance of her figure, her strong convictions contrary to the stale customs of the time, which relegated women to a secondary role in social and family life. She appears to have had no higher education, but she was a self-taught and cultured woman.
Harriet Taylor has only published two short essays and a few loose poems. In 1851 the article The Liberation of Women which appeared in “The Westminster Review”, founded by the radical philosopher Jeremy Bentham, on which outstanding women such as Mary Shelley wrote. In the article, Taylor speaks of education as the path to women's emancipation, she defends women's right to vote and political representation. Influenced by Owen's socialism, she tackles social issues such as access to the labor market under conditions of equal treatment and wages with men. Though the condition of women was compassionate in Victorian England, she was optimistic and confident that equal political and social rights and freedoms for women would come in the future.
Taylor's socialist ideas also influenced the thinking of Mill who broke away from the classical school to assert the need for income distribution through the increase in workers' wages. Regarding Taylor's influence on the development of Mill's thought, Maurice Dobb, historian of socialism, writes that «Mill began to be semi-socialist after his fateful encounter with Harriet Taylor in 1830.'
Although Harriet published very little, her importance in liberal storytelling is not secondary, having used her intellectual influence on Mill to spread the ideas that were close to her heart. And it can be said that Harriet Taylor has done a splendid job of seeding the thought of the father of liberalism with themes that she otherwise would have incorporated into the liberal narrative only much later.
