Harriet Taylor Mill

Agora

Harriet Taylor Mill

1807–1858

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Women must have the vote, education and access to every profession, because without economic independence equality is only a word.

Placement

Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism · Northern Europe · Politics & Law, Society & History, Ethics, Gender & Feminism

Her essay “The Enfranchisement of Women” (1851) demanded the vote, education and access to every profession; John Stuart Mill called her the co-author of “On Liberty” and of his thinking on women.

Key ideas

Enfranchisement of women
Economic independence of women
Collaboration with Mill

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Influence

Influenced by 1

John Stuart Mill influenced

influenced by
From 1830 Taylor Mill worked out her views in exchange with Mill, beginning with their essays on marriage and divorce (c. 1832); her ‘Enfranchisement of Women’ followed (1851). J. S. Mill and H. Taylor, essays on marriage and divorce (c. 1832), in F. A. Hayek, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor (1951); H. Taylor Mill, “Enfranchisement of Women”, Westminster Review (1851); SEP “Harriet Taylor Mill”
Evidence: AI draft
influenced
Mill’s Autobiography (1873) calls Taylor Mill co-author of On Liberty (1859) and source of the social ideas of the Political Economy; the extent of her share is disputed. J. S. Mill, Autobiography (1873); On Liberty (1859); Principles of Political Economy (1848); SEP “Harriet Taylor Mill”
Evidence: AI draft
John Stuart Mill › 1806–1873

Works

1851The Enfranchisement of Women
Published in the Westminster Review: women need the vote, education and every profession – not protection.

Position

The extent of Taylor Mill’s contribution is disputed: Mill’s “Autobiography” calls her the co-author of “On Liberty” and the source of the social ideas in his “Political Economy”, while some scholars suspect exaggeration. Her own essay “The Enfranchisement of Women”, published anonymously in 1851, is more radical than Mill’s later “Subjection of Women”. It demands for women equal rights in education, the professions and political life; it argues that women’s economic dependence is the root of their subjection and that a wife should contribute to the family income rather than be maintained; and it rejects the idea that women’s proper influence is exercised indirectly through men.

Life & context

Harriet Taylor Mill (1807–1858), born Harriet Hardy in London, married the pharmacist John Taylor at eighteen. In 1830 she met John Stuart Mill; the two formed a close intellectual friendship, tolerated by her husband, and married in 1851 after Taylor’s death. She published little under her own name, and Mill claimed that much of his work from the 1840s on was written jointly with her. She died in Avignon in 1858.