The Subjection of Women Quotes

Quotes

“Women have, however, some share of influence in giving the tone to public moralities since their sphere of action has been a little widened, and since a considerable number of them have occupied themselves practically in the promotion of objects reaching beyond their own family and household. The influence of women counts for a great deal in two of the most marked features of modern European life—its aversion to war, and its addiction to philanthropy.”

John Stuart Mill

Women’s input to the societal welfare cannot be minimalist for they have the potential to auspiciously transmute the society as long as their voices are accorded opportunity for manifestation. Women countersign harmony by dissenting combats between various countries. Besides, the women’s partaking in philanthropic ventures has been contributory in refining the European ethos.

“As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another: while the education given to women—an education of the sentiments rather than of the understanding—and the habit inculcated by their whole life, of looking to immediate effects on persons, and not to remote effects on classes of persons—make them both unable to see, and unwilling to admit, the ultimate evil tendency of any form of charity or philanthropy which commends itself to their sympathetic feelings.”

John Stuart Mill

Women’s engrossment is charity is a superlative engagement which advances the lives of the recipients of the charity; they portray sentimentalities that are valuable in plummeting hostility which is dominant during war. Through charity, the women accentuate the worth of aiding others which is the personification of decency and altruism.

“Less than forty years ago, Englishmen might still by law hold human beings in bondage as saleable property: within the present century they might kidnap them and carry them off, and work them literally to death. This absolutely extreme case of the law of force, condemned by those who can tolerate almost every other form of arbitrary power, and which, of all others, presents features the most revolting to the feelings of all who look at it from an impartial position, was the law of civilized and Christian England within the memory of persons now living: and in one half of Anglo-Saxon America three or four years ago, not only did slavery exist, but the slave trade, and the breeding of slaves expressly for it, was a general practice between slave states. Yet not only was there a greater strength of sentiment against it, but, in England at least, a less amount either of feeling or of interest in favour of it, than of any other of the customary abuses of force: for its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised; and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence. So extreme an instance makes it almost superfluous to refer to any other: but consider the long duration of absolute monarchy”

John Stuart Mill

Mill’s allusion to slavery proves the magnitude of the Englishmen’s subsidization of the notion apropos the inequity of human beings. Their solicitation of force indicates that Englishmen would go to the extreme extent as long as it would affirm their professed power over the other races. Although England portrayed the persona of a civilized nation with the inherent prerogative to colonize other lands and evangelize Christianity, their blatant commendation of slavery is an embodiment of uncivilization. The permanency of unqualified monarchy government in England proclaims disparity since the members of the Monarchy are reckoned to be superior. Accordingly, inequity is an omnipresent exhibition in countless scopes of existence.

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