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ABSTRACT
Harriet Taylor Mill and Anna Wheeler are two nineteenth-century British feminists generally over-shadowed by the fame of the men with whom they co-authored. Yet both made important and interesting contributions to political thought, particularly regarding deconstruction of (i) the patriarchal institution of marriage; and (ii) the current property regime which, in dominating workers, unfairly distributing the product of labour, and encouraging ‘individualism’, they believed did little to maximize the general happiness. Both were feminists, utilitarians, and socialists. How they link these elements is both interestingly similar, and interestingly different. This article has four aims. Firstly, to make a strong claim concerning their authorial hand in works often considered to be solely the work of their male co-author. Secondly, to sketch those co-authoring relationships, and consider whether Taylor and Mill may even have consciously constructed their early letters ‘On Marriage' based upon what they knew of Thompson and Wheeler’s relationship. Thirdly, to map out their shared (though not identical) claim that marriage was a form of slavery, and the proposals they offered to free women from the domination of patriarchal relationships. Fourthly, to explore the way in which both thought female emancipation would be most truly realized via cooperative socialism.
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my thanks to Alison Stone, Charlotte Alderwick and two anonymous reviewers for comments on this piece, as well as the organisers and attendees of “Wollapolooza!” at APSA 2018 and 2019; ISUS 2018; CSiW conference (Johannesburg, 2018); “Bridging the Gender Gap Through Time” workshop (Kings College, London, 2018); Workshop on Mill (Lancaster, 2017) and Symposium on J.S. Mill’s Subjection of Women at 150 (Cyprus, 2019) where some of these ideas were first tried out in public. I also want to thank the AHRC for the award of a Leadership Fellowship, for which project this piece forms an initial part.
Notes
1 See McCabe, “Harriet Taylor Mill”; “Harriet Taylor”; Cory, “Rhetorical Re-Visioning”; Jose, “Without Apology”; and Philips, “Beloved and Deplored”.
2 I follow Cory (“Rhetorical Re-Visoning”, 114) in treating Thompson as the Letter’s sole author.
3 Though see Dooley (Equality in Community, 79–80) for why these might not have been Wheeler’s only reasons.
4 The concluding “Address to Women” is generally seen as being more by Wheeler than Thompson, though her authorship should not be limited to that section, – see Cory, “Rhetorical Revisioning”, 113–9; Jose, “Without Apology”, 831–2; and Dooley, Equality in Community, 69–70 for analysis of Wheeler’s distinctive style, and evidence of it in Appeal.
5 For more on their relationship, see McCabe, “Harriet Taylor Mill”; Rossi, “Sentiment and Intellect”; and Miller, “Harriet Taylor Mill”.
6 The various drafts of both essays are undated. Taylor’s is written on paper watermarked 1831 and 1832, and Jacobs (“Chronology”, xlii) gives an 1832 date as does Hayek for Mill’s piece. However, for plausible text-based reasons, Robson (“Textual Introduction”, lix–lx) suggests summer 1833 for Mill’s piece because of which, and because she quotes Tennyson’s Eleanore, first published in 1833, I give this date for Taylor’s piece, too.
7 See also Jose (“Without Apology”, 833–4) for discussion of why Wheeler was not more formally acknowledged as the co-author; and Cory (“Rhetorical Re-Visioning”, 106) for discussion of the implications of a portrait of Wheeler being the frontispiece and (111–3) how Thompson reverses the usual gendered authorial roles in his “Introductory Letter”.
8 The dedication read: “To Mrs. John Taylor. as the most eminently qualified of all persons known to the author either to originate or to appreciate speculations on social improvement, this attempt to explain and diffuse ideas many of which were first learned from herself, is with the highest respect and regard, dedicated.”
9 See Philips (“Beloved and Deplored”, 632–3) for an interesting analysis of why Mill might have made this assertion in the Autobiography.
10 Rossi (“Sentiment and Intellect”, 20–22 and 24–6) gives a good account of the feminist Utilitarian/Unitarian background of both Taylor and Mill when they met.
11 However, though Mill does often give ‘exalted’ rather than everyday examples in Subjection, sometimes this is because he is referring to specific arguments about women-as-rulers (Philips, “Beloved and Deplored”, 633; Mill, Subjection, 299–322). It is true, though, that there is no corresponding passage to that probably authored by Taylor (though the surviving copy is in Mill’s hand) where she charts how women’s practical involvement in politics (e.g. Abolition and prison reform) has had a beneficial effect, making people more capable of acting in the common good (Mill and Taylor, Papers on Women’s Rights, 385).
12 Jose (“Without Apology”, 843) notes that, when Subjection was published “slavery had been abolished in the British Empire”. We might also add that 13th Amendment had been passed in the USA. Appeal, however, was written eight years before the British Slavery Abolition Act. Thus, he argues Mill “could not presuppose, as could Wheeler and Thompson, an energised antislavery discourse” in the audience of his work. Arguably, though, Mill is attempting (as with other feminists) to extend the energy of the Abolitionist movement to what they saw as female slavery, rather than letting its momentum fade. Moreover, the fact that the American Civil War (1861–65) was so recent a memory, and had ended in victory for the North and the passing of the 13th Amendment, adds rhetorical weight to Mill’s claim about women’s slavery: slavery was now abolished in countries which considered themselves ‘advanced’ everywhere but in the home. Slavery was legal in more places when Appeal was published, it is true, but slavery was still politically salient in Mill’s day. (Though increased knowledge of the conditions experienced in the Southern States of America may underly Taylor’s caution regarding claiming marriage is slavery, and wives are slaves.)
13 I am very aware that this way of speaking – and the Appeal’s appeal to the position of enslaved people in the Caribbean – might cause offence to the modern reader, perhaps more aware of – or more sensitive towards – the horrors and injustice of trans-Atlantic slavery, and the vast gulf in experience between even a woman in Wheeler’s position (white and wealthy, though married to an abusive husband with no legal, political or economic rights as a single woman) and that of any enslaved African. I am not endorsing Wheeler’s claim (or, later, Taylor’s and/or Mill’s), just laying it out.
14 Interestingly, the ‘marriage as slavery/women as slaves’ trope is more visible in Mill’s work (see particularly Subjection of Women, 264–7 and 271). He even added a footnote to the 1859 reprint of Enfranchisement which called working-class women, in particular, “household slave[s]” (Mill, footnote to Taylor, Enfranchisement, 404. See also editor’s notes to the publication history of this work on 393.)
15 Jose (“Without Apology”, 842) highlights how this phrase also links Thompson, Wheeler, Taylor and Mill.
16 See Cory (“Rhetorical Re-Visioning”, 120) for an interesting analysis of Wheeler’s view of gender power-relations in socialism.
17 Again, this has strong echoes of Fourier: see McCabe, “Mill and Fourierism”, 35–61.