스튜어트 밀의 자유의 원리와 여성의 종속

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze John Stuart Mill’s principle of liberty, including women’s liberty and subjection in marriage during the 19th century. This study also examines how Stuart Mill advocates women’s liberty in his two books, On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, and why he cannot successfully complete his goals as a feminist. Mill emphasizes that the nature of submissive women is an enforced, artificial concept since their subjection stands against the law of nature. Mill refutes this so called “law of nature” in English marriage through which women accepted men’s judgments. My focus is to find the root of Mill’s contempt over the legal enslavement of women in marriage. Unexpectedly, Mill’s final prescription to end the subjection of women is to encourage sympathetic spousal friendship in the marital relationship. We are forced to recognize his contradictory idea; Mill’s solution to the legal enslavement of women was arguably ambivalent about women’s liberty and equal rights in Victorian society. Mill’s perception of women’s subjection, however, contributes to women’s recognition of freedom, leading to feminism in the 20th century.