John Stuart Mill Quotes

The very nature of the marriage contract was…nothing but giving up liberty, estate, authority, and everything to man, and the woman was indeed a mere woman ever after – that is to say, a slave.

… laws make every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passions

The married woman as family provider beside the man, often also in place of the man, but always however subservient to the man's dominion - this is the worst form of woman slavery our time has created.

No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is. Hardly any slave, except one immediately attached to the master's person, is a slave at all hours and all minutes

There is no slave, after all, like a wife...Poor women, poor slaves All married women, all children and girls who live in their father's house are slaves.

The bold defiance of a woman is the certain sign of her shame, - when she has once ceased to blush, it is because she has too much to blush for.

If a woman earned a dollar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar.

From the cradle to the grave she is subject to the power and control of man. Father, guardian, or husband, one conveys her like some piece of merchandise over to the other.

But it will be said that the husband provides for the wife, or in other words, he feeds, clothes and shelters her! I wish I had the power to make every one before me fully realize the degradation contained in that idea.

Do you not yet understand what has made woman what she is? Then see what the sickly taste and perverted judgment of man now admires in woman.

Marriage is such a lottery …. the poor woman is virtually a slave to her husband.

Marriage has ever been a one-sided matter, resting most unequally upon the sexes. By it, man gains all- woman loses all; tyrant law and lust reign supreme with him- meek submission and ready obedience alone befit her.

The only method of restoring the natural equality of dignity between men and women, lies in the demolishment of that elaborate theological structure which maintains that woman is made for the possession of man in a sense in which man is not made for woman, and that celibacy, per se, is a state of superior purity. Nature and common sense (not metaphysical sense) demonstrate that there is no good reason why any man or any woman should take, claim, or wield “lordship” over another.

Marriage is to woman a state of slavery. It takes from her the right to her own property, and makes her submissive in all things to her husband.

I belong to that degraded race called woman – who whether her lot be cast among Jew, or Turk, heathen or Christian is yet a slave.

Having deprived her [women] of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise. thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he [men] has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns …. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty. and to administer chastisement.

The very being and existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage

What rights have women? ... [they are] punished for breaking laws which they have no voice in making. All avenues to enterprise and honors are closed against them. If poor, they must drudge for a mere pittance—if of the wealthy classes, they must be dressed dolls of fashion—parlor puppets...

Marriage finally became acceptable to the churches when laws were established that could make it a means of depriving women of incomes and property, and making wives the equivalent of slaves.

Our government and its social policies, its tax breaks, the way school days work, so much of the country we live in is built for married couples with a male breadwinner and a female domestic laborer. Government needs to be massively altered in order to serve this population.

[The married woman is] is a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, and serves her master's passion; [and] who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail at his dictation.

Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.

The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her judgment, her own conscience, her own will.

Thus the woman, who had perversely exceeded her proper bounds, is forced back to her own position. She had, indeed, previously been subject to her husband, but that was a liberal and gentle subjection; now, however, she is cast into servitude.

All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.