JULIET MITCHELL
387
The writer to whom I wish
to
refer finally in this sketch of the
relationship between feminism and the concept of equality is John
Stuart Mill. To offer a somewhat sweeping generalization , after Mill ,
in England the feminist struggle moves from being predominantly the
utterances of individuals about a philosophical notion of equality to
being an organized political movement for the attainment, among
other things , of equal rights . Of course, the one does not exclude the
other, it is a question of emphasis .
In
a lucid and powerful manner, Mill's essay, "The Subjection of
Women " (1869), written at the height of the Victorian repression of
women , resumes with a new coherence the arguments with which we
have become familiar . Thus he has a clear perspective on the argument
that maddened the earlier writers , that women 's characteristics and
social status were "natural": "What is now called the nature of
women is an eminently artificial thing-the result of forced repression
in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others," and, "So true is
it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that every–
thing which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men
being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears
unnatural. " Mill also looks back with clarity on the history of democ–
racy and of women's rights-or rather lack of them .
Where the seventeenth-century women looked to their own new
society for change and Wollstonecraft, with the example of the first
radical years of the French Revolution at hand, looked to change her
society, Mill, writing from within an industrial capitalism that had
hardened into fairly extreme conservatism, had to stand aside and
argue from the best of the past and the hope of the future. Most
importantly , the justice and morality he wants have not yet been found
in the world : "Though the truth may not yet be felt or generally
acknowledged for generations to come , the only school of genuine
moral sentiment is society between equals, " and, "We have had the
morality of submission, and the morality of chivalry and generosity;
the time is now come for the morality of justice ."
But Mill's lucidity, unlike Wollstonecraft's exuberance, forces
him to constrict his own vision . Although at one moment he speculates
that the reason why women are denied equal rights in society at large is
because men must confine them to the home and the family, he does
not pursue the implications of this insight and instead program-
