John Stuart Mill

This guy did not even have a chance to be anything else but great. By the age of fourteen he was taught the amount of information a middle-aged man knew. It was no wonder he had a nervous breakdown at such a young age. He did find his calling though. Can you guess what it was? Of coarse, it was writing. It seems writing was a way for him to show an emotional side that he was unable to share early on in his life. He was not the only one under his father’s control. His father showed the same complete control over his household and his mother. My guess is this is why he is so strong on women’s rights. To see his mother in that slave state must have had a real lasting effect on him. I guess in a sense he could relate to them because his rights were also limited growing up. Their lifestyles seem pretty similar with women being a slave to the kitchen and he being a slave to the books in my opinion. Lets look at one of his writing called “The Subjection of Women,” who by the way gives half of the credit to his wife for writing it.

Some will object, that a comparison cannot fairly be made between the government of the male sex and the forms of unjust power which I have adduced in illustration of it, since these are arbitrary, and the effect of mere usurpation, while it on the contrary is natural. But was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it? There was a time when the division of mankind into two classes, a small one of masters and numerous one of slaves, appeared, even to the most cultivated minds, to be natural, and the only natural, condition of the human race.
(from the Subjection of Women)

The idea that women are slaves is more than apparent in this piece. What is even a bigger topic is the one of how they were ok with it. How they took this to be natural and idea that had to let the reader at least give that idea a second thought. This is as far as I saw from him. He was a men who stood for women when it was not considered fashionable. This makes him a pretty interesting individual and I am pretty sure a well loved men around the ladies as well……….. wink wink