HARRIET

TAYLOR
MILL
 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Born Harriet Hardy, in London, 8 October 1807
Died inAvignon, 3 November 1858

There isnt much information about her early-life

The next available record is about her marrying

John Taylor just after her 18th birthday
She had three children in the first five years of
her marriage
As most of those times marriages, hers was not

very happy either

Letters to friends infer that while Harriet felt a
kind of affection for her husband, his intellect
was no match for her own
 She found a matching intellect in John Stuart
Mill, around 1830
This is when they met and started their very
close friendship
Taylor was attracted to Mill, who treated her
as an intellectual equal and collaborated with
her on many of the texts published under his
name
Eventually, in 1833 she started living in a
separate residence from her husband,
keeping her daughter with her
Her husband agreed to Harriet's friendship
with Mill in exchange for the "external
formality" of her residing "as his wife in his
house.
After John Taylor died in 1849, Taylor and Mill
waited two years before marrying in 1851.
 She wrote the essay The Enfranchisement of
Women, which was published in 1851
Many of her arguments in this piece would be
developed in Mill's later essay,The
Subjection of Women, which was published
eleven years after her death
The Subjectionand actually most of Mills
work is more conservative than Taylor's
Enfranchisement.
EARLY ESSAYS ON MARRIAGE AND
DIVORCE

The Essay by Harriet Taylor Mill

Why do you think that John Stuart Mill and

Harriet Taylor Mill decided to express their
opinion on this matter?
 THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF
WOMEN
(1851)
What is the enfranchisement?
the enfranchisement of women = their
admission, in law and in fact, to equality in
all rights, political, civil, and social, with the
male citizens of the community (Harriet
Taylor Mill)
The essay was published in one of the most
prestigious periodicals in England.
It drew on published reports in the New York
Tribune to describe the series of womens
rights conventions that were underway back
then in the United States.
HARRIET TAYLOR MILL
JOHN STUART MILL
 WHO
INFLUENCED
WHOM?
 THE SITUATION AND THE NATURAL
INCLINATIONS OF BOTH PARTIES MUST
HAVE COMBINED FROM THE BEGINNING TO
MAKE THE POSITION OF WOMEN AND
THEIR POSITION IN MARRIAGE ONE OF THE
MAIN TOPICS OF COMMON INTEREST TO
MILL AND HARRIET TAYLOR

(F. A. HAYEKSJOHN STUART MILL AND HARRIET

TAYLOR, 57)
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Harriet Taylor Mill Essay - Critical Essays

John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor, and Womens

Liberty

Harriet Taylor Mill