On May 20th, 1867, John Stuart Mill rose to speak before the United Kingdom’s House of Commons. A year earlier, Mill, a philosopher elected to Parliament as a Liberal Party MP for the City of Westminster, had presented to his fellow legislators the first-ever mass petition in favor of giving British women the right to vote. Now, as his fellow MPs debated the Second Reform Act, he introduced an amendment that would replace each instance of the word “man” in the major voting rights bill with the word “person.” If the amendment passed, women in the UK would be formally eligible to vote for Parliament for the first time, subject to the same property and wealth restrictions their male counterparts faced.
Mill’s amendment could expect a frosty reception in Victorian England. Decades earlier, the radical orator Henry Hunt faced derision in Parliament when he called for women’s suffrage. The UK’s government had only recently established limited child custody and civil divorce rights for women, and it was not until 1853 that pressure from feminists and other social reformers drove the passage of legislation formalizing and strengthening the legal penalties for domestic violence. Previously, a husband would be charged with a criminal offense in only the most extreme circumstances.
Separate Spheres
The very structure of Victorian society was set against women participating in public life, let alone voting. Many Victorians believed in “separate spheres” for the sexes, in which men occupied the public sphere of paid labor and political participation while women were expected to concern themselves with the private sphere of household management and the upbringing of children. Proponents of the separate spheres believed these distinct roles were not just socially beneficial, but rooted in the supposedly different natures of men and women. The Industrial Revolution intensified ideas about separate spheres, as more and more men worked outside the home, and the ability of such men to support their families financially without paid labor from their wives became a status marker for the growing middle class. Victorian feminists seeking equality and social participation had to contend with these widely-held beliefs about nature and propriety, as well as with unjust laws.
How did the Mills challenge separate spheres and other Victorian prejudices?
John Stuart Mill’s wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, was a trailblazing philosopher and writer in her own right. The future couple met as young people, when Harriet was married to her first husband, John Taylor. What soon developed was a friendship that challenged contemporary notions of propriety and of a woman’s proper place. John and Harriet Mill were regular participants in dinners and discussion groups that included both men and women. Both were prolific writers, and they often developed ideas together. So influential was Harriet as an intellectual collaborator that John once stated that their work was so entangled as to make it difficult and “of little consequence” to tell their contributions apart.
John and Harriet’s intellectual partnership intensified when they married in 1851, following John Taylor’s death. Both Mills were early feminists, Harriet having published “The Enfranchisement of Women” the year of their marriage and John having renounced the legal authority over wives given to husbands by Victorian law. Unlike many people of their time, the Mills rejected notions of natural differences between men and women, arguing that the exclusion of women from public life was a matter of social prejudice and economic dependence. They believed that education, as well as legal, political, and social equality, would free women from subordination and allow them to cultivate talents, abilities, and interests to the betterment of all society. Furthermore, the Mills argued that the subjugation of women harmed men as well, hindering their moral and intellectual development.
The Mills remained close collaborators until Harriet’s death in 1858. Her influence on her husband continued long after her passing, notably in his 1869 work, The Subjection of Women. The couple’s determination to chart their own course was carried on by Harriet’s daughter, Helen Taylor, a feminist activist in her own right. In John’s later years, he continued his women’s rights activism alongside his step-daughter. In fact, the younger Taylor was a member of the Kensington Society, the same society of women activists that authored the suffrage petition John presented to Parliament in 1866.
What happened to John Stuart Mill’s women’s suffrage amendment?
John Stuart Mill spoke eloquently before Parliament on behalf of his suffrage amendment, articulating the principles he and Harriet had developed together over their years of collaboration and rebutting points against giving women the vote. Despite all his powers of intellect and argument, he failed to persuade enough of his colleagues to win passage. The amendment was voted down, 194 to 73. Nonetheless, the activism of the Mills and their fellow Victorian feminists left its mark. There would not be another decades-long lull between calls for women’s suffrage. From 1867 on, suffrage legislation was introduced almost every year. By 1928, all British women had finally won the right to vote.
