Dans sa vie privée comme dans sa vie publique, Mill s'acharna à démontrer la nécessité d'accorder aux femmes l'égalité avec les hommes et à dénoncer les mauvaises conditions de vie des femmes, combat dont l'apogée fut la publication de ce livre en 1869.Malgré l'amélioration relative de la condition des femmes depuis l'époque de Mill, L'assujettissement des femmes demeure un ouvrage actuel où l'auteur traite le problème de l'inégalité des sexes avec sincérité et une grande foi.

En avance sur son temps, Stuart Mill signe une oeuvre essentielle dans laquelle il défend le droit des femmes. Au-delà de l'engagement féministe, ''l'assuejtissement des femme'' soulève une réflexion qui reste, pres de 150 ans aprés sa premiére publication, d'une actualité brulante.

The Subjection of Women John Stuart Mill - John Stuart Mill wrote the revolutionary essay The Subjection of Women with notes that it was strongly influenced by his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. Modern scholars have questioned the legacy that husband constructed for wife in which he has been accused of making exorbitant claims about her intelligence and influence. Despite that revisionist approach, however, The Subjection of Women strongly resembles in both content and character an essay titled The Enfranchisement of Women published by Harriet in 1851. In that essay, she argued in favor of a utilitarian approach to equality which asserted the presence of hostility toward women kept them subjugated at all levels of society. The Subjection of Women was published by in 1869.The Subjection of Women is notable for situating John Stuart Mill at the forefront of the developing notion of a feminist movement. Not exactly called that, those who were daring enough to suggest that women could be the intellectual equal of men were viewed as profoundly radical in their thinking at best and dangerously delusional at worst.Over the course of four chapters, Mill carefully delineates his argument for an innate equality existing between the sexes and then goes on to suggest that this innate equality is being stifled by denial of access to education. Mill also calls on reform to change existing social structures. Overlaying all this a fundamental appeal to the simple morality of the issue. Indeed, Mill makes an caustic appeal to intellectual evil of the immorality of subjugating women as second class citizens due the prejudicial limitations of birth and birth alone.It is within the realm of morality that Mills essay take attains level of truly revolutionary literature. While raising irrefutable scientific points, the appeal cuts most deeply in his assertion that subjection of women is a systemic choice based on scientific ignorance, but also willful disregard of empirical evidence.

The Subjection of Women, which Mill wrote in 1861 but did not publish until 1869, is one of the seminal texts of feminism and aroused more antagonism than anything Mill ever wrote. Conservatives predicted it would do to the English family what socialism would do to England's economy. Liberals believed that women would vote conservative. Many prominent Englishwomen, such as Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and George Eliot, opposed women's suffrage. Even such advanced thinkers as Sigmund Freud were hostile to the book.In The Subjection of Women Mill argues with lucidity, force and more than usual metaphorical eloquence that "the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes-the legal subordination of one sex to the other-is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality..." Mill does battle on two fronts, that of intrinsic justice and that of utility. He sees the subjection of women as not only inherently wrong, but intertwined with all the evils of existing society. In support of his central principle, Mill argues that there is no basis in nature for the inferior status of women. He likens the position of the Victorian wife to that of a domestic slave and discourses on the debasing nature of all master-slave relations. He provides historical evidence of what women are capable of achieving and he speculates upon the benefits that will accrue to society as well as individuals from female emancipation, most especially from equality in marriage, which Mill describes as the only remaining legal form of slavery.This new critical edition shows that Mill's classic work has lost none of its relevance. The cross-disciplinary approach of the book can be useful in literature, history, or sociology courses as well as womens studies.