Harriet Taylor Mill
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Harriet Taylor Mill (née Harriet Hardy) (1807 – 1858) was a philosopher and women's rights advocate. She was an original member of the Kensington Society that produced the first petition requesting votes for women. Taylor also took part in the agitation for women to be allowed to take part in local government and after the passing of the 1870 Education Act served as a member of the London School Board. Her extant corpus of writing is very small, and she is largely remembered for her influence, which he said was very great, on her second husband, John Stuart Mill, one of the pre-eminent thinkers of the 19th century.
Harriet Hardy married her first husband, John Taylor, in 1826, when she was eighteen. With him, she had three children: Herbert, Algernon, and Helen. John and Harriet Taylor both became active in the Unitarian Church and developed radical views on politics. They became friendly with William Fox, a leading Unitarian minister and early supporter of women's rights. Harriet Taylor moved in radical circles and in 1830 she met the philosopher John Stuart Mill.
Taylor was attracted to Mill, the first man she had met who treated her as an intellectual equal. Mill was impressed with Taylor and asked her to read and comment on the latest book he was working on. The two became very close friends and likely had a romance even while she was still married to John Taylor.
In 1833 she lived in a separate residence from her husband, keeping her daughter with her while Taylor raised the two older boys. Over the next few years Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill exchanged essays on issues such as marriage and women's rights. Those essays that have survived reveal that Taylor held more radical views than Mill on these subjects. Taylor was attracted to the socialist philosophy that had been promoted by Robert Owen in books such as The Formation of Character (1813) and A New View of Society (1814). In her essays Taylor was especially critical of the degrading effect of women's economic dependence on men.
Except for a few articles in the Unitarian journal Monthly Repository, Taylor published little of her own work during her lifetime. However, Taylor read and commented on all the material produced by John Stuart Mill. In his autobiography, Mill claimed that Harriet was the joint author of most of the books and articles that were published under his name. He added, "when two persons have their thoughts and speculations completely in common it is of little consequence in respect of the question of originality, which of them holds the pen."
After Taylor died in 1849, Taylor and Mill waited two years before marrying in 1851, after 21 years of friendship. Taylor was hesitant to create even more of a scandal than the pair already had, and her radical views on marriage and equality prevented her from wishing to enter a marriage. After their marriage, Taylor wrote many essays, including The Enfranchisement of Women, under Mill's name. Many of her arguments in this piece would be developed in J. S. Mill's The Subjection of Women, published eleven years after her death.
A letter written by Mill in 1854 suggests that Taylor was reluctant to be described as joint author of Mill's books and articles. "I shall never be satisfied unless you allow our best book, the book which is to come, to have our two names on the title page. It ought to be so with everything I publish, for the better half of it all is yours".
J. S. Mill called her a valuable contributor to much of his work, especially On Liberty.
Harriet Taylor Mill died in Avignon after developing severe lung congestion, a consequence of tuberculosis, on 3 November 1858. Her daughter Helen completed the writing of The Subjection of Women, along with Mill.
Upon her death, Mill wrote:
| “ | Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom. | ” |
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Rossi, Alice S. (1970). Sentiment and Intellect: The Story of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, in Rossi, Alice S. (Ed), Essays on Sex Equality. The University of Chicago Press.
