John Stuart Mill - male chauvinist pig

[kev67]

I have been reading The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill. I don't know if he is one of the greatest philosophers, but he must have been one of the most influential. Generally, in the essay, he has been a good feminist, but I thought he might have been a bit unfair here:


If we consider women’s works in modem times, and
contrast them with men’s, either in literary or in the fine
arts, the inferiority that we can see boils down to one thing—a
very significant thing—namely a lack of originality. Not a
total lack; for any production that has any substantive value
has an originality of its own—is a conception of the mind
that produced it, not a copy of something else. The writings
of women abound in thoughts that are ‘original’ in the sense
of being not borrowed but derived from the thinker’s own
observations or intellectual processes. But women haven’t
yet produced any of the great and luminous new ideas that
form an era in thought, or any of the fundamentally new
conceptions in art that open a vista of possible effects not
before thought of, and found a new school. Their composi-
tions are mostly based on the existing fund of thought, and
their creations don’t deviate far from existing types. This is
the sort — the only sort —of inferiority that their works do
manifest. There is no inferiority in execution , the detailed
application of thought, the perfection of style. In respect of
composition and the management of detail, our best novelists
have mostly been women; and modern literature doesn’t
contain a more eloquent vehicle of thought than the style
of Madame de Staël, or a finer specimen of purely artistic
excellence than the prose of Madame Sand, whose style
acts on the nervous system like a symphony of Haydn or
Mozart. What is mainly lacking, I repeat, is high originality
of conception.


The essay was published about 1866/7. I can think of five female authors who had written something original by then:

1. Jane Austen - credited with inventing free indirect speech;
2. Mary Shelly - arguably the first science fiction book;
3. Charlotte Brontë - first book for adults written from a child's perspective in the first person (so I've heard);
4. Emily Brontë - surely nothing like Wuthering Heights had been written before;
5. Elizabeth Gaskell - the portrayal of realistic working class people and their political opinions must have been fairly original in a novel.

[Danik 2016]

I think this is a very narrow point of view, but I am not aquainted with the book as a whole.

The first question that occurs me:What does he mean exactly with "lack of originality."

Then what does he actually know about feminine production?

Last but not least: is this gentleman avare of the situation of feminine education in England in the second part of the 19 C? Those women that had access to education where supposed to be accomplished, not to have ideas!

[Vota]

1. Goethe is more likely to have created free indirect speech.
2. Can't argue with this.
3. May be true, so I'll take your word for it - for now.
4. The little I know about the book supports your statement.
5. I'm reading Tom jones right now, and less than halfway through the book he has already introduced various social classes and their differing political opinions. The book was published in 1749.

I wouldn't call Mill a feminist, at least in the modern sense. He greatly loved and respected his best friend - his wife, praising her intellectual ability and sagaciousness in his autobiography.

His opinions about originality were partially incorrect. He was correct in that the greatest insights into human nature and Nature itself had been, and arguably, still are produced by men.

You might want to save the clickbait titles for YouTube.

[kev67]

I think this is a very narrow point of view, but I am not aquainted with the book as a whole.

The first question that occurs me:What does he mean exactly with "lack of originality."

Then what does he actually know about feminine production?

Last but not least: is this gentleman avare of the situation of feminine education in England in the second part of the 19 C? Those women that had access to education where supposed to be accomplished, not to have ideas!

I thought he meant that no female artists had spearheaded a new school or movement, e.g. a new type of music or a new style of painting. J.S. Mill then gives reasons for this: basically lack of opportunity and a lack of numbers in the field. I don't know, but I would be surprised if this was true in literary fiction.

He sort of agrees with you on the third point. He said that women were taught to draw, paint and play music, but only up to an amateur level. As an amateur you cannot compete with professionals because you cannot devote the time.

[OrphanPip]

Neither Goethe nor Austen invented free indirect discourse, they are notable as novelists who deployed it with skill and regularity in their novels. However, I think it's a bit pointless in literature to talk about creating a new movement. Apart from Modernist movements that deliberately sought to break with tradition and experiment with arbitrary aesthetics, most literary movements evolve gradually and concurrently with other movements. Literature isn't like science, it's not inherently progressive and advancing through breakthroughs. Literary styles shift and evolve without particular direction. We can point to certain iconic texts that represent a shift in styles, peeks and beginnings of movements, but invention in literature is something hard to pin down.

Frankenstein is a gothic novel indebted to Walpole as much as it is a pioneering text in science fiction. Modern science fiction owes a debt to Swift and Defoe, and to leagues of realist novelists who influenced the style of writing if not the content.

[Danik 2016]

"Apart from Modernist movements that deliberately sought to break with tradition and experiment with arbitrary aesthetics, most literary movements evolve gradually and concurrently with other movements. Literature isn't like science, it's not inherently progressive and advancing through breakthroughs. Literary styles shift and evolve without particular direction."
I can´t agree with you there, Pip. For me it is very clear that History doesn´t affect only the contents but also the forms and styles chosen by the artists (including Literature) to present their works.
Thinking of some very general example: Romanticism was linked in some countries, for example in Brazil, with an increasing feeling of national identity.
Realism on its turn is linked to the increasing importance of some lower classes as artistic subjects.
I might go on and on...

[OrphanPip]

"Apart from Modernist movements that deliberately sought to break with tradition and experiment with arbitrary aesthetics, most literary movements evolve gradually and concurrently with other movements. Literature isn't like science, it's not inherently progressive and advancing through breakthroughs. Literary styles shift and evolve without particular direction."
I can´t agree with you there, Pip. For me it is very clear that History doesn´t affect only the contents but also the forms and styles chosen by the artists (including Literature) to present their works.
Thinking of some very general example: Romanticism was linked in some countries, for example in Brazil, with an increasing feeling of national identity.
Realism on its turn is linked to the increasing importance of some lower classes as artistic subjects.
I might go on and on...

Let me clarify, I didn't mean that there's no direction to how literary movements develop, but that they aren't inherently progressive like science, which builds on previous knowledge (some of which might be thrown out as its invalidated but overall it moves forward not backwards). Literary movements can be routed in going back to previous traditions, emulating foreign cultures, or reacting to current events like the French Revolution in the case of Romanticism. Literary influence is also complicated by the fact that it's not a unified system like maths or science.

[Danik 2016]

Pip- I agree with you that it is more difficult to trace the traditions of a literary system than in science where the sources have to be declared.
But I also believe with the School of Frankfurt that the Artistic Expressions, whatever they are, are an authentic product of their time also in the form chosen to express itself. For example, series films and soap operas, it doesn´t matter in which time the story is set, inevitably deal with contemporaneous issues.
Kev-Sorry for answering only now, I have to do it by bits.And I had to search for the thread, because of the spam
"I thought he meant that no female artists had spearheaded a new school or movement, e.g. a new type of music or a new style of painting. J.S. Mill then gives reasons for this: basically lack of opportunity and a lack of numbers in the field. I don't know, but I would be surprised if this was true in literary fiction."

This has to do basically with the feminine condition. The women where mostly confined to their homes and they often read only fiction and poetry. Their field of observation and action was usually narrow. And the English woman writers were in a far more privileged condition as to education, as their sisters from most other countries.
This Virginia Woolf links go deeper into the subject. They might interest you:

http://s.spachman.tripod.com/Woolf/professions.htm

A Room of Ones Own http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791.txt

"He sort of agrees with you on the third point. He said that women were taught to draw, paint and play music, but only up to an amateur level. As an amateur you cannot compete with professionals because you cannot devote the time."

The fact is IMO that they were not intended to be professional artist. Their accomplishments were to be used to entertain the ir families and their friends. As soon as women professionalised in art they observed and represented society. Austen, the Brontës and VW are good examples.

[kev67]

This has to do basically with the feminine condition. The women where mostly confined to their homes and they often read only fiction and poetry. Their field of observation and action was usually narrow. And the English woman writers were in a far more privileged condition as to education, as their sisters from most other countries.
This Virginia Woolf links go deeper into the subject. They might interest you:

http://s.spachman.tripod.com/Woolf/professions.htm

A Room of Ones Own http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791.txt

I have heard people discussing A Room of One's Own although I have not read it. I suspect she and J.S. Mill were in agreement by and large.
I could not help thinking that actually, female writers, in Britain at least had not done too badly in the 100 years before Woolf wrote her essay. In fact, I thought there was more a lack of working class writers than female writers. Working class people lacked time, education, money, encouragement and space to write even more than middle class women.

[Danik 2016]

I think you are right there. There are more books about the English working class than by the working class. Certainly none among the 50 most important titles.

[desiresjab]

I believe Mill was every bit the gentle man. Came from a deeply religious family, if I remember correctly. He was a child prodigy of the intellect. I do not believe he did mathematics but he learned languages easily, something mathematics prodigies are often capable of.

When I was a young kid my mother purchased an encyclopedia set from Safeway Stores there was some kind of special on. One double page was devoted to portraits of famous men and estimates of their IQ's. Mills was one of the highest on the list at around 200, right there with Leibniz and Goethe, also perennial contenders on such lists that I have seen many of since then. Poor old Newton was only clocking in at around 180 on that particular list, though I have seen more modern lists where ol' Isaac makes 200.

Anyway, it hardly seems appropriate to think of JS Mill as a chauvinist pig when there are so many superior candidates to represent the dark side. I realize such titles can have the purpose of generating discussion. The quoted remarks of JS Mill here in no way earn him that crude appellation.

[desiresjab]

I just read the Wiki-peja article on Mill. Okay, he was not religious. But he was the first member in the history of parliament to advocate for womens' right to vote.

[kev67]

Anyway, it hardly seems appropriate to think of JS Mill as a chauvinist pig when there are so many superior candidates to represent the dark side. I realize such titles can have the purpose of generating discussion. The quoted remarks of JS Mill here in no way earn him that crude appellation.

I was not really accusing him of being a male chauvinist pig. It was just that one argument regarding artistic lack of originality that I thought was wrong. I thought he might have been wrong once or twice in his essay, 'On Liberty' as well. Nevertheless, he was a very influential thinker.

[Danik 2016]

The problem IMO is being aquainted with both sides of the coin. If someone wants to go further into the matter I recomend Virginia`s essays on the subject. And they make a very good read whether you agree with them or not. I almost prefer them to her fiction.