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Is Mill's liberal feminism masculinist?William Stafford aa Department of History, University of Huddersfield , Queensgate,Huddersfield, HD1 3DH, UKPublished online: 23 Jan 2007.

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Journal of Political Ideologies (June 2004),9(2), 159179

Is Mills liberal feminismmasculinist?WILLIAM STAFFORD

Department of History, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate,Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK

ABSTRACT John Stuart Mill is examined as a test case of the charge levelledby some feminist critics that liberal ideology is essentially masculinist. Thischarge is rejected on the grounds that it misinterprets Mill, fails to recognize thevariety and flexibility of liberal ideology, and falsely assumes unchangingconcepts of masculinity and femininity. An older tradition regards this represen-tative liberal as a feminine philosopher, and it can be argued that Millfeminized his radical heritage. His ideology sustains policy proposals that payattention to women, his conception of subjectivity breaks with a neo-Hobbesianmodel which he would balance with feminine qualities, and his concept of thecitizen is neither explicitly nor implicitly masculine. He does not assume agendered public/private divide, nor rank the public above the private; and in thelight of all his writings the charge that he consigns most women to the domesticis exaggerated.

IntroductionA frequent feminist charge is that most Western political ideologies are irre-deemably masculinist: Many feminists no longer believe that these theoriesare marred only by a superficial sex-blindness, or sexism. The problem is nowlocated at a much more fundamental level. It cannot be simply a matter ofremoving superficial biases from socio-political theories, since the bias is nowunderstood as intrinsic to the structure of the theories in question.1 Liberalism,as the dominant Western political ideology, one moreover which proclaims itsprogressive modernity and egalitarianism, has particularly been the target ofsuch charges; and Mill, conventionally regarded as a paradigmatic liberal, hasbeen judged guilty by some (but not all2) feminist commentators.

The oldest feminist charge against liberal ideology, which has also beenlevelled against Mill, is that it trusts to the implementation of formal, legalequality, but that without economic and cultural transformations this will fail toliberate women.3 From the point of view of equality feminism, his masculinism

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is supposedly revealed by the fact that, in spite of his environmental theory ofmind and character, in The Subjection of Women he gives ground to those whopropose natural differences between the sexes when he speculates in a conven-tional manner about the different capacities and characters of men and women.4It is also said that he fails to break free from the gendered public/privatedistinction which, it is claimed, is intrinsic to the structure of liberal ideology:5Like a man when he chooses a profession, so, when a woman marries, it mayin general be understood that she makes choice of the management of ahousehold, and the bringing up of a family, as the first call upon her exer-tions and that she renounces, not all other objects and occupations, but allwhich are not consistent with the requirements of this.6 By thus leavingeconomic power in the hands of men, Mill it is said frustrates his aim of sexualequality within marriage; wives will remain subordinate as long as they remaindependent on husbands for subsistence.7 Carole Pateman reminds us that Millthought men became better citizens as a result of the experience of participatingin public affairs, and that he favoured democratic participation in the workplace.How can wives who have chosen private life develop a public spirit? Womenwill thus exemplify the selfish, private beings, lacking a sense of justice, whoresult, according to Mill, when individuals have no experience of public life.8Without equal participation, and equal parenting, patriarchy cannot be elimi-nated.9

From the point of view of difference feminism Mills failure is that, typicallyof liberalism, he contributes to the advancement only of women who mimicmen. His citizenindeed his ideal humanis constructed according to amasculine model, as a rational individual needing a protected zone of indepen-dence, whose major relations with others are contractual and for whom theprincipal virtue is justice. A rugged individualism [is] envisioned by Hobbes orLocke, or by J.S. Mill for that matter.10 This is to ignore an alternative modelof subjectivity associated with women and alleged to be at odds with liberalindividualism, one prioritizing love and care rather than impartial justice,connection and dependence instead of independence, and mutual services whichcannot precisely be stipulated in a contract.11

He would also appear to be, from the point of view of corporeal feminism,a paradigmatic example of a thinker who asserts a hierarchical mind/body binaryimplicitly relegating women to a lower level. Mills disparagement of the bodyis revealed by his obsessive Malthusian worries about reproduction, his apparentdistaste for sex as an animal function and his idealization of heterosexualpartnership as a purely mental relationship.12 Mill celebrates masculine reasonand disparagesindeed fearsfeminine nature associated with the body, withemotion and imagination.13

The issues raised here are important, not just in arriving at a sound assessmentof Mills thought, but also for liberal ideology itself. Many of the chargeslevelled against his liberal feminism have received a thorough response. Forexample, Mary Shanley, Gail Tulloch and Maria Morales have demonstratedbeyond reasonable doubt that Mill was not concerned merely with formal, legal

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equality.14 Kate Nash has powerfully argued that Mill does not ignore difference,and that his use of the public/private distinction is fundamentally ungendered.Wendy Donner has contended that Mills was not an individualist ethic, but acaring one. Nadia Urbinati has made a strong case for the thesis that Mills idealof subjectivity was not masculine, but androgynous.15

This paper will not revisit issues which have already received adequatetreatment. Instead it will add to the case made by those who have defendedMills feminismand the possibility of combining liberalism and feminismina number of ways. It will argue that an important aspect of Mills dissatisfactionwith his radical inheritancethe dissatisfaction which led to his mental crisis inhis early twentieswas because it was excessively and unacceptably masculin-ist. He wanted to regender it. In part he wished to make it expressive of adifferent, more woman-friendly masculinity. But also he wished to infuse afeminine element into it, thereby enriching and improving it. Now clearly I amnot saying that Mill himself would formulate it as I have just formulated it: forthe obvious reason that my formulation is a twenty-first century one. Mill neversaid and almost certainly could not have said that he wanted to regender radicalliberalism: but I am saying that with hindsight, that is in part what his revisionsadd up to, and that there is textual support for my interpretation. When I say thatMill wished to refashion his inheritance so as to make it less or differentlymasculine, or more feminine, I do not mean to imply that Mill wascommitted to a belief in essential or natural masculine and feminine characteris-tics: I take him to be writing about what were conventionally regarded asmasculine and feminine. Second, I shall discuss his conception of citizenship,asking whether he implicitly defines the citizen as masculine. Third, I shall addsome reflections to the vexed issue of whether he betrays his feminism byslipping back into a gendered public/private distinction. At a number of pointsI shall suggest that the charges are not innocent of anachronism and ahistoricism:anachronistic in that they fail to situate Mill in his nineteenth-century context,ahistorical in that they construct a model of liberal feminism, and of liberalism,which fails to recognize the variety and historical specificity of different formsof liberal ideology. They make the mistake of supposing that certain masculin-ist concepts are intrinsic to the core of liberal ideology and fail to recognize theextent to which its component concepts can be rearranged, redefined, modifiedand re-prioritized so as not to carry a masculine bias.

The feminine philosopherThere is a prima facie paradox in charging Mill with masculinism, given that thecontrary view has been more enduring. During his life and since, the oppositeaccusation has often been levelled and he has been smeared as a femininephilosopher. According to John Morley, Disraeli, when Mill made an earlyspeech in Parliament, raised his eyeglass, and murmured to a neighbour on thebench, Ah, the Finishing Governess.16 His subsequent advocacy of womens

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issues in parliament confirmed this image, graphically represented in the rathernasty series of cartoons depicting him as a woman in the magazine Judy.17

These pictures inaugurated a long line of prose accusations of a similar nature.In a hostile obituary of Mill in Frasers Magazine, Abraham Hayward wrote, a`propos Mills relationship to his wife:

After a brief struggle the feminine influence overcame the masculine; and the wheels of thereasoning machine, as he calls himself at one period, revolved at the bidding of thesentimental socialist. But the harder and softer elements of his character never blended;they rose to the surface alternately; and hence much of the subsequent incoherence of hisopinions and his life.18

In the same year, in the conservative Quarterly Review, John Wilson drew acontrast between Mill and his critic James Fitzjames Stephen, whose Liberty,Equality, Fraternity had just been published: he referred to Mill as a femininephilosopher in explicit contrast with the masculine vigour of Fitzjames Stephen.With all his speculative daring, there was a sort of gentleness and even a sortof timidity in the temper of the younger Mill, which showed themselves inmaturer years in attempts to reconcile differences between conflicting socialcreeds.19

In the same year again another conservative publication, Blackwoods Edin-burgh Magazine, remarked on Mills limited acquaintance with married lifemaking specific reference to the fact that he had no children, insinuating that notto have fathered children was to be less than a man.20 Mills disciple and friendAlexander Bain fed this insinuation in his biography of Mill of 1882:

I am not singular in the opinion that in the so-called sensual feelings, he was belowaverage; that, in fact, he was not a good representative specimen of humanity in respect ofthese; and scarcely did justice to them in his theories. he made light of the difficulty ofcontrolling the sexual appetite.21

Freud appears to have had this idea of Mill, commenting of Mills Autobiogra-phy that it was so prudish or so ethereal that one could never gather from it thathuman beings consist of men and of women.22 As recently as 1993 anAustralian philosopher, David Stove, writes that Mill was a man of weak sexualimpulse.23

But to return to the late nineteenth century, the most comprehensive andexplicit assertion of Mills femininity is to be found in Leslie Stephens TheEnglish Utilitarians of 1900. Stephen writes:

James Mill was a man, and born to be a leader of men. He was rigid, imperative, andcapable of controlling and dominating. John Stuart Mill was far weaker in that sense, andweaker because he had less virility. One effect is obvious even in his philosophy. Aphilosopher, I think, owes more than is generally perceived to the moral quality which goesinto masculine vigour.

His feelings were as tender as a womans. They were wanting, not in keenness, butin the massiveness which implies more masculine fibre. Mill could never admit anyfundamental difference between the sexes. That is a great but a natural misconception

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for one who was in character as much feminine as masculine. He had some of the amiableweaknesses which we at present regard as especially feminine. The most eminentwomen, hitherto at least, are remarkable rather for docility than originality. Mill wasespecially remarkable for his powers of assimilation.24

The image of the feminine philosopher stuck. Even Mills friend and reverentialdisciple John Morley reported the opinion of Meredith that Mill was spinster-ish.25 These charges were repeated in 1949 by Basil Willey in his Nineteenth-Century Studies,26 and in 1967 by R.J. White in his introduction to a new editionof James Fitzjames Stephens Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.27 Janice Carlisles1991 study John Stuart Mill and the Writing of Character argues that Milloriginally wanted a heroic mans career in politics; deprived of that because ofhis civil service job at India house, he chose to be a writer instead and by thatdecision, joining a group who were passive, impotent and marginal, implicitlygendered himself as feminine. When he finally entered parliament he got hischance at last to be a real man but failed: in order not to reveal his impotenceand lack of courage, he took refuge in supporting extreme, hopeless causeswhich he would never have to fight for in any real sense because they wereuniversally regarded as crotchetssuch as the enfranchisement of women andthe nationalization of the land.28 Even Alan Ryan implicitly feminizes Mill whenhe stresses his passivity, his receptivity to the influence of others, his need tosubmit to an authority figure and his embarrassing subservience in domesticlife.29

Is all of this irrelevant, in that the charge of femininity was levelled at hischaracter, not his ideology? Is it merely a way of smearing and discrediting aphilosopher who had turned traitor to his sex? As the quotations illustrate, thesemasculine critics almost invariably implied that his femininity found ex-pression in his thought. In what follows I shall suggest that they were notentirely wrong: though in many cases their conceptions of masculinity andfemininity were crude and essentialist. The important point that these chargesreveal to the twenty-first century scholar is that conceptions of masculinity andfemininity are complex and historically variable. This is a point of significancefor contemporary feminist debates.

Paying attention to womenIn what ways can it be claimed that Mill feminized his radical liberal heritage?There is a simple, familiar and indisputable sense in which Mill found hisfathers radicalism unacceptably masculine. In his Essay on Government JamesMill argued for representative government and a wide franchise so that thepeople could protect themselves against the oppression which would inevitablyensue if power were placed in the hands of the one or the few. But notoriously,in a throwaway remarkthe only reference to women in the essayhe dis-missed the need of votes for women, the interest of almost all of whom isinvolved either in that of their fathers or in that of their husbands.30

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In spite of this, in some respects James Mills thought was not a masculinediscourse. His psychological theory was a Helvetian associationism whichdenied any innate mental or moral inferiority based on sex. In this respect he wasmore woman-friendly than Bentham, who contended that women are commonlyinferior in point of strength of intellectual powers and firmness of mind. Theyare morally different too because of their greater sympathetic sensibility, and itappears that Bentham regarded these differences as natural, related to thediffering physiological structure of the sexes.31 This was not James Mills view:whereas Bentham saw a correlation between bodily and mental strength, JamesMill maintained that bodily strength was unfavourable to mental development.32What is strikingly masculine about James Mills thought is the comprehensiveway in which he ignored women. Take for example his Encyclopaedia Britan-nica article on education. It is curious that he could write a general article oneducation, discuss the different kinds appropriate to different classes, refer to theHelvetian doctrine of original mental equality and then make no reference at allto the education of women. When he discusses what he calls domestic education,he totally ignores mothersmerely remarking how nurses spoil children andprepare them to be tyrants by giving in to their tantrums. When he discusses thephysical factors that affect education, he lists sex along with eleven other factors,but after discussing several of these, when he comes to sex he declares himselfobliged, by the rapid absorption of the space allotted us wholly to omit [it]. Hislist of the failures of educationthe bad son, the bad brother, the bad husband,the bad father, the bad neighbour, the bad magistrate, the bad citizenis a listof bad men, as if no women existed.33 John Stuart Mill by contrast did not ignorewomen, their education and their civil rights. This was to feminize radicalliberalism in the simple sense of paying attention to women, adjusting itspractical recommendations, changing it into a political ideology which hadsomething to offer them.

Rejection of neo-HobbesianismJames Mills radicalism and indeed much eighteenth-century elite radicalism isbased upon a neo-Hobbesian psychology. Neo-Hobbesianism depicts men asmotivated by selfish passions, especially for wealth and power, restrained fromharming others only by fear of the consequences. Men are by nature aggressiveand competitive, ruthless and domineering if they can get away with it. JamesMill and Bentham may not think this an ideal human character, they certainlyaccept that there are countervailing sympathetic motives and that public-spiritedheroes are occasionally found: but they do not think that public spirit can berelied upon to restrain anti-social conduct. They accept egoism as a norm anddevote their energies to proposing ways of managing it.

Arguably this psychological theory and therefore this brand of radical liberal-ism is a particular and impoverished representation of masculinity. It makes akind of sense, it has a certain air of plausibility, as long as talk is of men.Men is what Hobbes and his successors say; and it is a classic instance of the

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use of the pronoun in a way which erases women. Ostensibly the pronounembraces all humans: but on examination it becomes clear that it ignores half thehuman race. For if we substitute women, immediately the theory looks suspect.This is not to say that men are essentially selfish, women essentially unselfish.But it is a fact that neo-Hobbesianism, as a representation of human behaviour,however inadequate as an account of men is totally implausible as a representa-tion of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women, or indeed most womenin most periods. Competing, aggressing, exploiting, domineering have not beensalient traits of female behaviour, if only because most women have had fewopportunities to do such things. At the very least an account of humanpsychology which brought women into the picture would give weight toconciliating, caring, nurturing and self-sacrifice.34

It is well known that Mill repudiated this theory of motivation by the late1820s, and that his mature thought (for example, his essay Utilitarianism) laysstress on altruism.35 He came to think that Bentham (and by implication his ownfather) had been too willing to accept egoism as a brute fact, that he had failedto propose an alternative, altruistic ideal of personality and consequently had notsufficiently explored ways of promoting that alternative. A central theme ofHamburgers last book is Mills crusade against egoism.36 Wendy Donner hassuggested that Mills departures from the Hobbesian individualism of his fatherand Bentham align him with feminist thought.37 Consequently, his Representa-tive Government is not built solely upon the neo-Hobbesianism which underpinshis fathers Essay on Government. For a major theme of Representative Govern-ment is the transformation and improvement of human nature, the fostering ofwider sympathies and public spirit. Without thisif people remain narrow-minded and selfishMill thinks free government will be impossible.38 Morefundamentally, as chapter 3 of On Liberty demonstrates, Mills liberalism has atits core a concept of individuality as Bildung, self-development, which is distinctfrom the individualism of Hobbesian or economic man.

So from a twenty-first century feminist point of view it can be claimed thatwhether Mill realized it or not, his repudiation of the neo-Hobbesianism of theolder radical liberalism was a rejection of a particular representation of mas-culinity. But did Mill himself have any sense of the difference between thetheory of moral motivation of his teachers and his own theory as a genderdifference? There is evidence to suggest that he did, on the basis of a ratherconventional account of actually existing (though of course not natural oressential) masculine and feminine characteristics. One area where it may befound is in his thoughts about national character. In common with muchVictorian public discourse, Mill genders the character of different nations; andhe aligns this gendering with the binary of neo-Hobbesianism/altruism.

To say that the Anglo-Saxon (therefore English) racial character was mascu-line, the Celtic feminine, was standard, and Mill echoes this. Standard too is hisjudgement that the French and the Irish are Celts.39 He wrote to Comte You areFrench, and at all times it has been remarked that the French character has tosome extent the faults and the qualities peculiar to young people and to

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women while the faults of the English character are more in the oppositedirection up to a certain point the characteristics regarded as feminine havealways been recognized in the French.40 Comte must have been deeply offendedby this, given his opinion that women were eternal children, naturally inferior tomen.

The English, Mill remarks, have a tendency to revolt against compulsion andto assert the claims of individuality; the Englishman can stand alone in allsenses, physical, intellectual, and moral. He insists upon owing everything tohimself. The English are remarkable for the virtues which consist in curbingimpulse, and resisting temptation; stern integrity, justice, forethought, self-de-nial, veracity.41 This is a commonplace Victorian view of the masculinecharacter. The character of Celts, as Mill describes it, is strikingly similar to theconventional feminine character sketched in The Subjection of Women. TheFrench and the Irish, he maintains, are impressible, all alive to the sensation ofthe moment, excitable, susceptible to influence, soft and mobile. They arecharacterized by sociability and demonstrativeness, given to ardent and generousemotions but also to vanity. The French have a passion for poetry and a love ofbeauty and imaginative emotion.42 In common with many of his contemporaries,Mill thought of imagination and love of beauty as feminine characteristics, andthat poetic natures, emotional and self-expressive, were always in part femininenatures.43

Now to relate the binary of neo-Hobbesianism/altruism to national character.Mill went to France when he was fourteen, and was very happy there. InEngland, he tells us, he had experienced a low moral tone, a taking for grantedthat conduct is always directed towards low and petty objects, an absence ofinterest in things of an unselfish kind, and a sneering depreciation of highfeelings. In France he found elevated sentiments as the current coin of humanintercourse, sympathy, and a contrast between the frank sociability and amiabil-ity of French personal intercourse, and the English mode of existence in whicheverybody acts as if everybody else was either an enemy or a bore.44 Sympathyand fellowship, he remarks, are indispensable to the Irish peasant.45 Earlier hehad insisted that the English national character was dominated by the commer-cial spirit and therefore the disposition to sacrifice every thing to accumulation,and that exclusive & engrossing selfishness which accompanies it.46 Explicitly,therefore, the neo-Hobbesian type which his father and Bentham built into thecore of their political ideology is representative of the English national characterbut need not be accepted, for it is not universal (and, Mill believes, it isenvironmentally produced and therefore modifiable). Implicitly, a neo-Hobbe-sian personality is conventionally masculine: sympathy and benevolence,normal in the Irish and French national characters, are conventionally feminine.

Explicitly also he writes of the character of his wife Harriet as peculiarlyfeminine in that her feelings and inclinations all pointed to a life not ofself-help or self-assertion but of loving reliance on the love and care of others.Her unselfishness was that of a heart which thoroughly identified itself

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with the feelings of others.47 In a letter to Comte he wrote that sympathy wasmore predominant in women, egoism in men.48

A major practical consequence of his dissatisfaction with neo-Hobbesianismwas his advocacy of the culture of the feelings, and he sought to cultivate hisown by turning to Wordsworths poetry. He claimed that Wordsworth had taughthim not to think of life as a perpetual struggle (we might add, as Hobbesdepicted it), but rather to multiply himself as it were in the enjoyments of othercreatures.49 Mill projected what he perceived to be the failure of his ownupbringing on to the national character of the English in general: It isindifference, moral insensibility, which we have need to get rid of.50

Given that Mill associates feeling with the feminine, his advocacy of theculture of the feelings is clearly a feminization of his radical liberalism.Furthermore he thinks that women have a special part to play here: Theeducation which it does belong to a mother to give, and which if not imbibedfrom them is seldom obtained in any perfection at all, is the training ofthe affections; and through the affections of the conscience, and the wholemoral being.51 He did not dissent from Comtes view that family life was theonly school open to mankind in general, in which unselfishness can belearnt, and the feelings and conduct demanded by social relations be madehabitual.52 Just as he thought that Harriets influence had made him a betterhuman being, so likewise he thought that Clotilde de Vaux had had a beneficialeffect on Comte, ennobling and softening his character, and improving hisfeelings.53

Mills celebration of emotion, and insistence upon the cultivation of thefeelings, is undoubtedly one of the reasons why some of the critics mentionedin section II of this paper dubbed him a feminine philosopher. The ideal ofmasculinity of Carlyle, Kingsley and the Stephens was in self-conscious oppo-sition to the emotionalism of early romanticism, which they regarded aseffeminate. Like Mill they saw the poetparadigmatically Shelleyas femininebecause of his self-expression, but unlike Mill they did not admire this. Kingsleythought that Shelley was tender and pitiful as a woman; and yet, when angry,shrieking and railing and hysterical as a woman.54 Carlyle thought that express-ive forms and self-revelation were unmasculine.55 From this standpoint, Millsconfessional autobiography, and his celebration of self-consciousness, thatdaemon of the men of genius of our time56 could not but appear discreditable.Mill thought himself deficient in emotion, and was ashamed of this: the Stephensexplicitly subscribed to an undemonstrative stoicism. Their affectation of acertain amount of bluff philistinism went hand-in-hand with this; Leslie Stephenthought that it would have been better for Mill if he had played a little cricketas a boy, instead of reading all that Greek and Latin.57

The qualities of a democratic citizenryThe preceding section has demonstrated that Mill does not accept that socialtheory must always deal with rational, contract-making individuals, calculators

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of self-interest, therefore (according to some feminist critics) men. I have not yetproved this in relation to Mills ideal of citizenship. For the citizen, the personwho is entitled to political inclusion, may explicitly or implicitly be thought ofas male. Indeed his identity or worthiness as a citizen may be established by acontrast between his characteristics, and the unworthy, unfitting characteristics ofa female. So for example according to Joan Landes the democratic citizen of theFrench revolution is explicitly a man, defined by rationality, control of emotionand ability to take a public view, detaching himself from purely privateconcerns. Women must be politically excluded because they are irrational,governed by feelings and immersed in family loyalties.58 Or alternatively, asKant maintained, the citizen may be characterized by independence, for exampleeconomic independence in not being a servant or an employee.59 Non-workingwives or daughters therefore would not be qualified for inclusion. In radicaldiscourse prior to the reform act of 1867 the respectable labouring mandeserving admittance to the franchise was marked off from the rough, unworthyresiduum by his characteristics as worker, householder, taxpayer and supporterof a family.60 As a consequence, so critics argue, liberal ideology, imprisoned inthis masculinist way of thinking, when it advocates the enfranchisement ofwomen ignores difference, thinking of citizens as if they were male and thereforenot allowing for the different concerns of women, and the different qualities theycould bring to political life.

Now does Mill, in spite of his commitment to the enfranchisement of women,define the person worthy of inclusion in implicitly masculine terms, so thatwomen can only be citizens if they are like men? Patently there are two pointswhere Mill does not entirely escape this. First, his denial of the vote to those inreceipt of public relief: By becoming dependent on the remaining members ofthe community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights withthem in other respects. Those to whom he is indebted for the continuance of hisvery existence, may justly claim the exclusive management of those commonconcerns, to which he now brings nothing, or less than he takes away.61Apparently here Mill has cited earning and tax-paying as criteria for citizenship,inadvertently providing an argument against enfranchising economically depen-dent women. In another place, however, he writes of independent voters, thosewho are desirous of voting for unpatronised persons of merithere indepen-dence signifies detachment from class interests.62 Whether anyone is so indepen-dent is questionable; but at least this is not a gendered criterion. His mainconcern in denying the vote to those in receipt of public relief is to deprive ofpolitical weight those who have a selfish motive for increasing public spendingbut who are not restrained by the payment of taxes. The non-earning, non-tax-paying wives of tax-paying men would not have that motive.

Second, Mill advocates fancy franchises, giving extra votes to better edu-cated individuals. The primary way of identifying these would be by occu-pationextra votes for employers, foremen, bankers, merchants, manufacturersand members of the liberal professions. So how could those married womenwho, in Mills opinion, would be unlikely to engage in waged work, qualify for

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extra votes? There would be a way; extra votes, he thinks, should be allotted tothose presenting certificates of educational achievement, and indeed specialexams ought to be laid on which people could take in order to earn extra votes.63Still it seems unfair that women should have to earn what men get gratis. Injustice to Mill it should be said that by the time he came to finalize hisAutobiography, he had largely abandoned fancy franchises.64

Elsewhere, the qualities Mill requires in a democratic citizenry are notgendered. He thinks that the good citizen requires certain qualities of mindwhich we might put under the somewhat imprecise and catch-all label ofrationality, but he does not think that women are necessarily deficient in thesequalities. Some have maintained that he reintroduces natural difference in theSubjection of Women, thereby giving an opening to those who would allocaterationality to men. For he speculates that the greater average brain size of themale might yield a greater capacity for sustained and logical thinking, while thesmaller average brain size of the female might permit greater mental agility andflexibility, rendering her more intuitive.65 But in his correspondence withAuguste Comte, to whom he had mentioned the theory, he states that it was notbecause it was my own opinion; he cited it but because I knew it was held byseveral eminent physiologists and because it was the only one among theoriesof this kind which did not appear to me to be in flagrant contradiction with thefacts.66 Annas, Tulloch and Morales have contended that Mill fails to freehimself entirely from a notion of womans nature,67 as evidenced for example bysuch statements as in the case of women, a hot-house and stove cultivation hasalways been carried on of some of the capabilities of their nature.68 But thisdoes not mean even a residual or unconscious acceptance of essentially andeternally different gendered natures. Associationists like Mill implicitly workwith a distinction between human nature and human character. They do notdeny that there is a nature not only of the body but also of the mind, but theirconception of the latter is a thin one, embracing no more than the ability toreceive impressions (some accompanied by pain, somepreferredby plea-sure), to recall them in memory and to associate them in accordance with a verysmall number of laws. Nature may vary in different individuals to a limitedextent, in that for example one individual may have a greater susceptibility to aparticular pleasure or pain than another.69 This may have an impact on character,but all aspects of character are susceptible to and modifiable by the influence ofeducation and environment.70 Gender characteristics are just that, aspects ofcharacter. So if a certain character is required of the citizen, no nature absolutelydenies it to women.

Mill requires the voter to be well-informed about matters of public concern,and ideally to care about them and be capable of impartiality. Even if he wereto concede to the critics of female suffrage that nineteenth-century womenlacked these qualities, Mill does not make them a condition of citizenship. Onthe contrary, he optimistically believes that giving people the vote will causethem to become thoughtful, knowledgeable and responsible in relation to publicaffairs.71 If women are narrow-minded and exclusively focussed on family and

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personal likings, this is a consequence of political exclusion which will berectified by their inclusion.72

In fact Mill does not think that partiality is gendered, and more likely to befound in women than in men. After all, rationality (even if it were assumed thatmen have more of it) does not in itself imply impartiality; a Hobbesian manwould be a rational calculator of self-interest. Mill concedes that womanlysympathy may express itself as an extended selfishness,73 a selfishness on behalfof family and friends: but he thinks that men are just as likely to be selfishwithout the sympathy, and that the dominant commercial spirit in England hasmade men narrowly selfish, devoted only to themselves and their families.74 Itwas conventional to think that masculinity implied superior self-discipline andcontrol of the passions (and in this sense men were more likely to be rational,women, dominated by their feelings, irrational):75 Mill on the contrary wrote toComte that in his experience reason was more likely to prevail over passion inwomen than in men.76

It is indisputable that in certain senses Mill wished women to become morerational: indisputable too that he systematically and pervasively elevates mindabove body. Does this mean that in spite of himself he has bought into a maleor masculine model of subjectivity, implicitly repressing the female or feminine?Such a conclusion, sustained by a supposition of enduring ideals of masculinityand femininity, looks less secure when attention is paid to the variety andevolution of those ideals in the Victorian age.

Several historians have recently contended that a different conception ofmasculinity rose to prominence during the Victorian period.77 It was pioneeredby muscular Christianity, the Christian manliness of Charles Kingsley andThomas Hughes, whose writings had a great influence, not least upon the youngLeslie Stephen.78 The essential point to notice is that their ideas of gender do notfit any pattern of binaries which associate men with mind and culture, womenwith body and nature. Masculinity is instead associated with bodily strength andforce shading over into brutality; body gains over mind, action over thought.79Kingsley celebrated both sexuality and a healthy animalism, writing Let usnever use those words animal and brutal in a degrading sense.80 This rough,forceful, unintellectual style of masculinity was not new. It had clear affinitieswith an older aristocratic one, associated with field sports (Kingsley was ahunting parson), prize-fighting and the turf,81 and preserved long term in thepublic schools, where perhaps the Stephens picked it up. It is interesting thatStephen points to the total lack of understanding between Mill and the genial,hearty, flesh-and-blood Tories that Mill confronted in the House of Commons.82It was from the point of view of this masculinity that Mill was smeared as thefeminine philosopher. For it was far removed from Mills conception ofrational and domestic manliness, far removed too from what he, an intellectualpar excellence, one moreover who took a low view of sexuality and whofathered no children, represented. But the main point to take from this is thatMills ranking of mind above body cannot simply be understood as a subscrip-tion to an unchanging, transhistorical ranking of men above women, even if he

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thought that men were essentially more rational, and women essentially morecorporealwhich he did not.

Masculine rationality has been associated with a morality of justice bycontrast with feminine feeling which sustains a morality of sympathy.83 In hisessay on Bentham, Mill drew a contrast between a morality for regulatingworldly affairs, and a morality concerned with sexual relations, family, andsocial and sympathetic connexions.84 But he never supposed that women werecapable only of the latter. Of Harriet he wrote that The passion of justice mighthave been thought to be her strongest feeling, but for her boundless generosity,and a lovingness ever ready to pour itself forth upon any or all human beingswho were capable of giving the smallest feeling in return.85 The best humanbeing combines reason and feeling in the highest degree: Thought and feelingin their lower degrees antagonise, in their higher harmonise. Much thought andlittle feeling make a mental voluptuary who wastes life in intellectual exercisefor its own sake. Much feeling and little thought are the common material of thebigot and fanatic. Much feeling and much thought make the hero or heroine.86This illustrates Mills androgynous ideal of personality for men and womenalike. Some have questioned his idealization of androgyny, arguing for examplethat his commitment to individuality precluded endorsement of any one modelof subjectivity, or that he repudiated both masculinity and femininity.87 But asfor example Urbinati has shown, there is a weight of textual evidence, scatteredthrough his writings across the span of his life, to prove his commitment to suchan ideal.88 Therefore he cannot justly be charged with surreptitiously endorsinga hierarchical gender binary; rather his aim is to transcend that binary.

Other binaries structure his thinking about subjectivity. As well as enteringinto the gender binary, the words man and manly can also have meaning bycontrast with child, animal and brute.89 These relationships play just as importanta part in Mills thought as those embodied in the contrast masculine/feminine.One of the pervasive structures of his thought is a developmental and hierarchi-cal conception of stages or levels: savage, barbarian, semi-civilized, civilized,and always underlying this, animal or brutal and human or manly. So, just togive one example, manliness is associated with domestic virtue in Mills articleson domestic violence; like the magistrates, Mill saw men who beat their wivesas brutal, animal, cowardly, unmanly.90 When the epithet manly is used in thisway, by contrast with brutal, it is of course perfectly possible to apply it towomenas Mill does.91

In accordance with this way of thinking he believed that representativegovernment was inappropriate to insufficiently civilized nations where certainmental and moral characteristics were lacking in the people; so for example hethought India was not yet ready. But the mental and moral characteristics hecites are not conventionally masculine ones. For example, representative govern-ment will not work unless the people have acquired habits of obedience, anduntil they are prepared to settle their disagreements by means other thanviolence.92 We might think that obedience was something that nineteenth-centurywomen were better at than men, having had more practice at it. If we were to

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gender obedience, we might allocate it to the feminine rather than to themasculine. As for habits of non-violence, Mill thinks that the mitigation ofbrutality and the rule of force in the middle ages was largely due to the influenceof women.93

Given a sufficient level of civilization for representative government, whatqualifies people for the suffrage, in Mills view? They must be able to read, writeand multiply, they must not be in receipt of poor relief. Apart from these criteria,the main characteristic making it imperative that they have the vote is weakness,vulnerability, need for protection. The vote protects the weak against the strong.Women satisfy this criterion just as well as men do. Indeed, Mill insists, noneneed political protection so much as those who are in domestic dependence,since none are so much exposed to wrong.94 Dependence, not independence, herequalifies a person for political inclusion. Fundamentally James Mill agreed withthis, and so it is all the more astonishing that he restricted the vote to men. ForJames Mill too the primary purpose of the vote was self-protection. Neither didMill senior wish to exclude all those who were dependent; rather, he wished tomake all voters independent, by means of the secret ballot. More generally Milljunior did not endorse a masculine fantasy of independence; in the spirit ofwhat Gilligan would term a feminine ethic of care he wrote that it is part of theperfection of woman to be dependent, as it is of the perfection of man too(dependent, we mean, for affection, a dependence, which is, as all dependenceought to be, reciprocal).95

Mills doctrine of citizenship did not ignore difference; indeed women needthe vote precisely because they are different.96 Women should participate inmaking those laws which specifically affect them.97 For example he came tothink that the issue of divorce could not properly be tackled until women had thevote and could play a part in deciding it.98 If this concern to represent differencedistanced his liberalism from the universalism of Locke or Kant, it was notfundamentally at odds with British political discourse, which throughout theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries proposed a parliament giving voice to thedifferent interests of the nation.99 Historians of political thought should be waryof concluding that a handful of prominent philosophers, not all British, arerepresentative of British public discourse and practice; and feminists should bewary of concluding that liberal ideology is always universalist in this sense.

There are other respects in which Mill thought that women in general maypossess characteristics fitting them for political inclusion, which men in generalmay lack. Conversely, certain common masculine characteristics may be inimi-cal to good political conduct. The possession of power, the power which menhave in the home, is corrupting. It fosters an antipublic selfishness, and sympathywith political tyranny. The skills women acquire in managing a household equipthem to manage other things, for example public institutions and even the publicfinances.100 In his experience as an Indian administrator, he told a correspondent,he found that by far the greater number of able rulers were women regents.101Because of their sympathies and moral sensibilities, enfranchised women wouldcompel the legislature to grapple with the great physical and moral evils of

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society.102 A letter written jointly with his stepdaughter suggests that thewarmth of heart which all women ought to have should make them especiallyindignant about atrocities such as those perpetrated by Governor Eyre.103

This section has shown that in Mills view, to be citizens women do not needto be like men. To be good citizens they need to acquire knowledge and concernabout public affairs; but this is not a condition of citizenship. Instead Mill thinksit will be a consequence. Indeed, his arguments could be read as implying thatan ideal citizen body would either contain men and women who had escapedfrom the gender binary into an androgyny or humanity, or would be balanced bywomen with their (conventionally) special characteristics.

Public and privateThe accusation levelled by some feminists against liberalism in general, and Millin particular, is that (a) a distinction between public and private is fundamentalto the structure of liberal ideology; (b) this binary is always gendered; and (c)the (feminine) private is always disempowered and disesteemed. Perhaps thevery idea and ideal of liberty implies the truth of (a), in that it rests upon thenotion of a space, however defined, protected from interference; but (b) and (c),presenting an abstract and ahistorical account of the binary, are false, as Millsthought proves. For evaluations and rankings of public and private havevaried.104 If classical republicanism ranked the public above the private, meaningthe domestic, Victorian thought had ceased to do this, and Mill is no exception.When in parliament, he refused invitations to political dinners with the PrimeMinister, Gladstone, on more than one occasion, and expressed his preferencefor the quiet comforts of home with his stepdaughter to the noisy eulogiums ofthe world. He declared As for the social influences which so often corrupt ortame men when they go into Parliament, I shall protect myself against those bykeeping out of their way.105 Mills view here is the opposite of that of classicalrepublicanism. He is not here concerned with a tendency of the private to corruptthe public: instead he celebrates the private as a protection against the corruptionof the public. There was nothing odd or unusual about this: Victorian publicdiscourse sanctified the home and maintained that its virtues could triumph overa heartless world.106

More fundamentally, public and private are relational terms with noessential meaning, and so the boundary between them is drawn in differentplaces, at different times and in different contexts, even in different works by thesame author. The terms do not in themselves require that private shall meandomestic and feminine. As for example Morales has argued, Mills convictionthat the quality of domestic life is crucial to the quality of political life subvertsthe distinction between the domestic and the public.107 Here Mills opinion wasthe opposite of that of his father, who classified education into the domestic, thetechnical, the social and the political: like Godwin, or Helvetius, James Millcontended that the political was the most powerful, that mens characters wereformed above all by the political system under which they lived.108 Above all,

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as Nash has argued, the meaning of On Liberty is that the private is not thedomestic, which Mill would open to public scrutiny and regulation; the protectedprivate space is the inner core of individual subjectivity, and in this sense thebinary is not gendered.109

We are left with that page and a half, which has attracted an inordinatequantity of commentary, at the end of chapter 2 of The Subjection of Womenwhere Mill apparently reinstates a gendered binary and consigns married womento the home as dependents on their earning husbands. Defenders of Mill haveargued that this doctrine is not fundamental to the structure of his thought, andtherefore of liberalism. It is contingent upon a particular historical material andcultural context which made it virtually impossible for a married mother to thinkthat to combine managing and caring responsibilities with income-earning workwould be a practical or eligible option.110 This is surely right; and specifically inrelation to the middle classes we ought to recognise the difficulty and theimportance of managing (that word should be emphasized) a household staffedwith servants and with few labour-saving devices, in the nineteenth century, andthe status that conferred. In Mills England, if a man interfered in the manage-ment of the house this could be regarded as infringing his wifes rights and evenas grounds for separation.111 In his early memorandum to Harriet Taylor onmarriage, Mill made light of the burden and status of household management,but he did not make this mistake in The Subjection of Women.112 Perhaps it isin light of this that we are to understand the letters which embarrassedtwentieth-century commentators, in which Mill sought the advice of his absentwife about the rats in the shed, the domestic consumption of coals and mutton,and the purchase of underwear.

In addition, that contentious page-and-a-half should be taken in the context ofother writings. For example in 1834 he advocated freer divorce as

The only means by which women can be elevated in the social scale. The naturalconsequence of greater freedom in respect to the dissolution of marriage would be thatwomen, like men, would be either provided for by their parents, or taught to provide forthemselves; that they would no longer be under a kind of moral necessity of allyingthemselves to some man; and would become, what they have never yet been, really theequals of men.113

The Principles of Political Economy insists that special legal restrictions shouldnot be placed on the work of women in factories; women should have freedomof choice in relation to work.114 Indeed Women employed in factories are theonly women in the labouring rank of life whose position is not that of slaves anddrudges.115 Pateman reminds us that Mill thought participation in workersco-operatives a vital training for democracy;116 in his discussion of this he writesassuming of course that both sexes participate equally in the rights and in thegovernment of the association.117 In a footnote to this in the 1862 edition hecommended the Rochdale co-op because women participated in governing it,and in 1870 he campaigned for women to be elected to the newly-institutedSchool Boards.118 In 1854 he had insisted that women should cease to be setapart for this function [of breeding], and should be admitted to all other duties

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and occupations on a par with men.119 When Mills writings are consideredentire, therefore, it is not just to conclude that he endorsed a doctrine of genderedseparate spheres.

ConclusionIt may or may not be the case, as socialist feminists have contended, thatliberal feminism does not provide a complete solution to the subjection ofwomen. To agree with this would not be to deny the real achievements of liberalfeminism. The graver charge is that liberal feminism is essentially, structurallymasculinist. But this charge can be rebutted by one example of a liberalfeminist whose thought does not exhibit a masculine structure. Unless one agreeswith the paradoxical and ultimately unconvincing argument of Joseph Ham-burgers last book that Mill was not a liberal at allneither a radical libertariannor a moderate conservative liberal, in that there was no private, inner core ofsubjectivity which he would protect from interferencehe must be seen as acrucial test case for the possibility of combining liberalism with feminism, towhich he was indisputably and passionately committed.120 This article hasargued that there was nothing essentially masculine about Mills thought. In partthis follows from the historians insistence that notions of the essential feminineor essential masculine are false, ahistorical abstractions. But even if we workwith some conventional or current account of masculine and feminineasMill himself does in The Subjection of Womenthe charge will not stick. Milldid not tacitly assume that the citizen is male; he did not even think that menas they were would be better citizens than women as they were. He ignoredneither women nor their actual, contemporary difference. When his writings areconsidered as a whole it is not just to say that he re-entrenched gendered separatespheres. He did not operate with a masculine model of subjectivity. On thecontrary, one important aspect of his reworking of the creed of his youth was hisrepudiation of precisely such a model, as he regendered his radical heritage. Millwas not a feminine philosopher; but neither was he a masculine one, and that iswhat Leslie Stephen and other masculinist critics sensed and resented.

The charges which have been levelled against liberal feminism are notrebutted, however, only by the lone example of J.S. Mill. For they apply to ahighly selective construction of liberal ideology which proposes as key compo-nents a Kantian universalism and abstract rationalism, a strong prohibition ofpublic meddling with heads of private households, and a laissez-faire doctrineprioritizing individualistic economic man. This is not the only form that liberalideology has taken. The new liberalism of the late nineteenth century chal-lenged or modified all of these components.121 It adopted and developed Millsstress upon altruistic, community-building emotions and licensed state action toameliorate social ills, with him crossing the threshold into the domestic domainonce deemed private. Therefore we might make the modest claim that thisevolution of liberalism, which Mill to an extent anticipated, enabled him to freethe ideology from its erstwhile masculine bias. More boldly, we might speculate

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that his determination to feminize radical liberalism encouraged him to pavethe way for those later developments.

Notes and references1. M. Gatens, Power, bodies and difference, in M. Barrett and A. Phillips (Eds), Destabilizing Theory:

Contemporary Feminist Debates (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), p. 120.2. Dissenters include G. Tulloch, Mill and Sexual Equality (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf,

1989); W. Donner, John Stuart Mills Liberal Feminism, Philosophical Studies, 69 (1993), pp. 155166;S. Mendus, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor on Women and Marriage, Utilitas, 6:2 (1994),pp. 287299; K. Nash, Universal Difference. Feminism and the Liberal Undecidability of Women(Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998); M. H. Morales, Perfect Equality: John Stuart Mill onWell-Constituted Communities (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).

3. D. Coole, Women in Political Theory (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1988), p. 152.4. J. Annas, Mill and the subjection of women, Philosophy, 52, (1977), pp. 184186.5. C. Pateman, Feminist critiques of the public/private dichotomy, The Disorder of Women (Cambridge:

Polity Press, 1989), pp. 118120.6. Reference is made to the complete edition Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (hereafter CW), J. M.

Robson and others (Eds), 33 Volumes (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1962 1991).Mill, Subjection of Women (1869), CW, 21, p. 298.

7. Pateman, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 123.8. Pateman, ibid., p. 130.9. Pateman, ibid., pp. 129, 135.

10. Z. Eisenstein, Equalizing privacy and specifying equality, in Nancy J. Hirschmann and Christine diStefano (Eds), Revisioning the Political: Feminist Reconstructions of Traditional Concepts in WesternPolitical Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), p. 182.

11. The verdict of C. di Stefano as described by Nash, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 30.12. E. Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana

University Press, 1994).13. C. di Stefano, Rereading J.S. Mill: Interpolations from the (M)Otherworld, in M. S. Barr and R.

Feldstein (Eds), Discontented Discourses. Feminism/Textual Intervention/Psychoanalysis (Urbana &Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. 164167.

14. M.L. Shanley, Marital Slavery and Friendship: John Stuart Mills The Subjection of Women, in M. L.Shanley and C. Pateman (Eds), Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press,1991).

15. Nash, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 66; Donner, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 157; N. Urbinati, John Stuart Mill on Androgynyand Ideal Marriage, Political Theory, 19:4 (1991), pp. 626648.

16. J. Morley, Recollections (London: Macmillan, 1917), p. 55.17. For the cartoons in Judy depicting him as a woman see J. Carlisle, John Stuart Mill and the Writing of

Character (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1991).18. Frasers Magazine, 8, 18 (December, 1873) p. 673.19. Liberty: Contemporary Responses to John Stuart Mill, in A. Pyle (Ed) (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994),

p. 324.20. Pyle, ibid., p. 299.21. A. Bain, John Stuart Mill (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1882), p. 149.22. E. Jones, Sigmund Freud: Life and Works, 2 Volumes (London: Hogarth Press, 1953), Volume I,

pp. 191192.23. D. Stove, The Subjection of John Stuart Mill, Philosophy, 68 (1993), p. 12.24. L. Stephen, The English Utilitarians, Volume 3, John Stuart Mill (1st edn., 1900), (London: Duckworth

& Co., 1912), pp. 7173.25. Morley, op. cit., Ref. 16, pp. 5455.26. B. Willey, Nineteenth-Century Studies (1st edn., 1949), (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), p. 151.27. J. F. Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, in R. J. White (Ed) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1967), p. 3.28. Carlisle, op. cit., Ref. 17, pp. 8687, 112, 114.29. A. Ryan, Sense and Sensibility in Mills Political Thought, in Michael Laine (Ed), A Cultivated Mind:

Essays on J.S. Mill presented to John M. Robson, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), pp. 126,128129.

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30. James Mill, Political Writings, in T. Ball (Ed) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 27.31. J. Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, in J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart

(Eds) (London: Athlone Press, 1970), pp. 6465.32. James Mill, op. cit., Ref. 30, pp. 166167.33. James Mill, ibid., pp. 181, 168.34. C. Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 2223, 79, 90.35. W. Stafford, John Stuart Mill (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 3435; Mill, Remarks

on Benthams Philosophy, 1833, CW, 10, pp. 1415.36. J. Hamburger, John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).37. Donner, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 157.38. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, 1861, CW, 19, pp. 377, 390, 469.39. D. Alderson, Mansex Fine. Religion, Manliness and Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century British Culture

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 116, 118; S. K. Kent, Gender and Power inBritain, 16401990 (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 214. A classic statement of Victorian cliches aboutrace is Robert Knox, The Races of Men: A Fragment (London, Henry Renshaw, 1850).

40. Mill, Letter to Auguste Comte, 30 August 1843, CW, 13, p. 594 (my translation); article in the MorningChronicle on the condition of Ireland, 26 October 1846, CW, 24, p. 916.

41. Mill, Review of Michelets History of France, 1844, CW, 20, p. 237; article in the Morning Chronicleon the condition of Ireland, 17 December 1846, CW, 24, p. 973; The Irish Character, 22 January 1832,CW, 23, p. 398.

42. Mill, Review of Michelets History of France, 1844, CW, 20, pp. 235236; Writings of Alfred de Vigny,1838, CW, 1, p. 466; The Irish Character CW, 23, p. 398.

43. J. M. Robson, Mill on Women and Other Poets, Victorian Studies Association Newsletter, 12 (1973),pp. 1317; Alderson, op. cit., Ref. 39, p. 38; H. Sussman, Victorian Masculinities. Manhood andMasculine Poetics in Early Victorian Literature and Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),pp. 4344; N. Vance, The Sinews of the Spirit. The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literatureand Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 93.

44. Mill, Autobiography, CW, 1, p. 61.45. Article in the Morning Chronicle on the condition of Ireland, 2 December 1846, CW, 24, p. 973.46. Mill, Letter to Gustave dEichthal, 15 May 1829, CW, 12, p. 31; see also his review of the writings of

Alfred de Vigny, 1838, CW, 1, p. 466.47. Draft & final version of the Autobiography, CW, 1, pp. 195, 621.48. Mill, Letter to Auguste Comte, 30 August 1843, CW, 13, p. 593.49. Mill, Debating speech on Wordsworth and Byron, 30 January 1829, CW, 26, p. 441.50. Mill, Letter to Gustave dEichthal, 15 May 1829, p. 32.51. Mill, On Marriage, CW, 21, p. 44.52. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, 1865, CW, 10, p. 310.53. Mill, ibid., p. 332.54. Quoted in Alderson, op. cit.,, Ref. 39, p. 38.55. Sussman, op. cit., Ref. 43, pp. 4344; Vance, op. cit., Ref. 43, p. 93.56. Mill, Bentham, CW, 10, pp. 9293.57. Stephen, op. cit., Ref. 24., p. 9.58. J. B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 1988), pp. 4546, 147148.59. Kant, Political Writings, in H. Reiss (Ed) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 139.60. K. McClelland, Englands Greatness, the Working Man, in C. Hall, K. McClelland and J. Rendall (Eds),

Defining the Victorian Nation. Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Acts of 1867 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 9899; Kent, op. cit., Ref. 39, p. 157.

61. Mill, Representative Government, CW, 19, p. 472.62. Mill, ibid., p. 464.63. Mill, ibid., p. 476.64. Mill, Autobiography, CW, 1, p. 262.65. Mill, Subjection of Women, CW, 21, pp. 302310.66. Mill, Letter to Auguste Comte, 30 October 1843, CW, 13, p. 605 (my translation from Mills French).67. Annas, op. cit., Ref. 4, pp. 181, 184; Tulloch, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 121, 132; Morales, op. cit., Ref. 2,

pp. 131135.68. Mill, The Subjection of Women, CW, 21, p. 276.69. Hence Mills speculationit is no more than thatin The Subjection of Women that the greater nervous

susceptibility often attributed to women may be natural. But he also speculates that it may be

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environmental, remarks that it is characteristic of some men and not all women, and insists that it is nodisqualification for any citizenship role.

70. See Mills discussion in his System of Logic, Book VI, Chapter 4.71. Mill, Parliamentary Speech on Electoral Franchise for Women, 17 July 1866, CW, 28, pp. 9293.72. Mill, Letter to T. E. Cliffe Leslie, 5 October 1869, CW, 17, p. 1642.73. Mill, Three Essays on Religion, 1874, CW, 10, pp. 394395.74. Mill, Letter to Gustave dEichthal, 15 May, 1829, CW, 12, pp. 3132.75. Sussman, op. cit., Ref. 43, pp. 1011.76. Mill, Letter to Auguste Comte, 30 October, 1843, CW, 13, p. 607.77. This thesis was anticipated in David Newsomes neglected Godliness and Good Learning (London: John

Murray, 1961).78. D. Rosen, The volcano and the cathedral: muscular Christianity and the origins of primal manliness, in

D. E. Hall (Ed), Muscular Christianity: embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1994), p. 39.

79. A. Clark, Gender, class and the constitution: franchise reform in England, 18321928, in J. Vernon(Ed), Re-reading the Constitution. New Narratives in the Political History of Englands long NineteenthCentury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 249253; Alderson, op. cit., Ref. 39,pp. 5658; Kent, op. cit., Ref. 39, p. 203; Vance, op. cit., Ref. 43, p. 109.

80. Quoted in S. L. Robertson, Degenerate effeminacy and the making of a masculine spirituality in thesermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in D. E. Hall (Ed), Muscular Christianity: embodying the VictorianAge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 151; and in Rosen, op. cit., Ref. 78, pp. 2425.

81. Vance, op. cit., Ref. 43, pp. 1115.82. Stephen, op. cit., Ref. 24, p. 65.83. J. Rendall, Virtue and Commerce: Women in the Making of Adam Smiths Political Economy, in E.

Kennedy and S. Mendus (Eds), Women in Western Political Philosophy, (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1987),pp. 5859.

84. Mill, Bentham, CW, 10, p. 98.85. Mill, Autobiography, CW, 1, p. 195.86. Mill, Diary, 1854, CW, 27, p. 660.87. E. Spitz, On Shanley, Marital Slavery and Friendship , Political Theory, 10:3 (1982), pp. 461462;

Morales, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 132.88. Urbinati, op. cit., Ref. 15, pp. 626648.89. B. Hilton, Manliness, Masculinity and the mid-Victorian Temperament, in Lawrence Goldman (Ed),

The Blind Victorian. Henry Fawcett and British Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1989), p. 65.

90. J. Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship. Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life (London:Routledge, 1992), p. 48.

91. Mill, House of Commons Speech on the Admission of Women to the Electoral Suffrage, 20 May 1867,CW, 28, pp. 156, 157.

92. Mill, Representative Government, CW, 19, pp. 415416.93. Mill, The Subjection of Women, CW, 21, pp. 327328.94. Mill, Representative Government, pp. 479480.95. Mill, Article on Fontana and Pratis St. Simonism in London, 2 February 1834, CW, 23, p. 680.96. As Nash has argued, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 66.97. Mill, Letter to Dr. Emile Honore Cazelles, 30 May 1869, CW, 17, p. 1609.98. Mill, Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 23 June 1869, CW, 17, p. 1618; Letter to John Nichol, 18 August

1869, CW, 17, p. 1634; Letter to Henry Keylock Rusden, 22 July 1870, CW, 17, p. 1751.99. H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property. Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London:

Methuen, 1979), pp. 149150.100. Mill, Speech on Womens Suffrage, 18 July 1869, CW, 29, pp. 376377.101. Mill, Letter to Mrs. Charlotte Speir Manning, 14 January 1870, CW, 17, p. 1687.102. Mill, Speech on Womens Suffrage, 26 March 1870, CW, 29, p. 387.103. Mill, Letter to Priscilla McLaren, 12 December 1868, CW, 16, pp. 15211522.104. J. B. Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 45,

131.105. Mill, Letter to George Grote, 22 August 1865, CW, 16, p. 1096.106. J. Tosh, A Mans Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 29, 7678, 138139.107. Morales, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 149.108. James Mill, op. cit., Ref. 30, p. 193.

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109. Nash, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 66.110. Tulloch, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 3132.111. Hammerton, op. cit., Ref. 90, pp. 101, 131.112. Mill, On Marriage, CW, 21, p. 43; The Subjection of Women, CW, 21, pp. 297298.113. Mill, article on Fontana and Pratis St. Simonism in London, CW, 23, p. 680.114. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, CW, 3, pp. 952953.115. Mill, ibid., p. 953.116. Pateman, op. cit., Ref. 8, p. 130.117. Mill, Principles of political Economy, CW, 3, p. 794.118. Mill, Letter to Charles Loring Brace, CW, 17, p. 1799; Speech on elections to School Boards, CW, 29,

p. 401.119. Mill, Diary, 1854, CW, 27, p. 664.120. Hamburger, op. cit., Ref. 36. To discuss Hamburgers thesisa better-argued version of the charges

levelled by Cowlingis beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say that Hamburgers valid insightsare elaborated into a strained and ultimately unconvincing interpretation based on highly selectivereading; for discussion see e.g. the (not unfriendly) review by S. Yamashita in Utilitas, 13, 3 (2001),pp. 360363.

121. Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 197,200201, 251.

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