How, according to Mill, could the state of marriage be improved?
Are his grounds good ones?

What is marriage? In Mill's time it could be described as the last surviving form of slavery in Britain. Although the first tentative shoots of reform were beginning to emerge, still when a woman married she surrendered her property, her rights and even her body to her husband with no recourse to the law should the husband abuse these privileges [Warburton, p321; Mill, pp32-33]. If "tolerably cautious" a husband could go so far as to torture and murder his wife without much fear of legal repercussions [Mill, p37]. As women were poorly educated, and prevented from participating in any kind of powerful or lucrative profession, they were forced into marriage to survive and were entirely powerless to change their conditions once they were there [AC]. Mill considered that this was a state that needed improvement.

The first barrier to improvement in the married state was the legal situation, and this is what Mill argued for a change to [AC]. The law gave "despotic power" to the husband [Mill, p43], and little or no power to the wife. Surely the thing to establish therefore is equality before the law. Either a woman's property should remain solely the woman's, or if her property is to be shared with the husband then his property must also be shared with her [Mill, p50]. If even a slave has the right to refuse sexual advances, then so should a wife [Mill, p33]. If a husband can file for divorce because of adultery, then a wife should have that right also. It is only by equality before the law that the state of marriage can be made just [Mill, p45].

However, just as Marx observed that political emancipation does not automatically bring true emancipation, so Mill observed that merely removing the legal restrictions on women would not automatically and overnight bring emancipation from the slavery of marriage. There were huge inequalities in eduction between men and women. From the earliest age, women were encouraged in the qualities of meekness and obedience, and taught that the loftiest goal to reach for was finding and serving a husband.

A slave is unlikely to transcend, or even to protest his condition if he has been brought up believing that slavery is an ideal he should aspire to. So too did women in Mill's time happily accept their state in the misguided belief that marriage was the best of all possible worlds. Thus, after equality before the law, the next way in which the state of marriage could be improved was by giving women equality of education.

So, would these measures improve the state of marriage? Certainly it would improve the lot of married women. If marriage really could be considered the last state of slavery, then any changes are hardly going to make matters worse. The suffering and persecution endured by wives every day could hardly, according to Mill, be overstated [Mill, p85]. Even if the cases were extremely rare, any change that would make them rarer still would be an improvement.

Simply from the point of view of justice and ethics, marriage must surely be improved by women's freedom. Slavery based on ethnicity was by this time considered deplorable. So too was absolute rule by a hereditary monarch, and yet in marriage a woman was enslaved to a man who had absolute power over her, and who had acquired that power through accident of birth alone. Indeed, in old English law, the murder of a husband by a wife was known as petty treason [Mill, p32]. If slavery is unjust, and absolute power through birthright is unjust, then by analogy marriage is unjust. If justice is an improvement upon injustice, then the treatment of wives as equals of their husbands is an improvement of the state of marriage.

So, granting woman equality before the law would certainly improve their state and the moral state of society, but to answer the question of whether the state of marriage itself would be improved we must first consider the question : what is marriage for?

Is marriage a legal contract between a man and a woman? If so, it can be compared to other legal contracts between people, such as that between business partners [Mill, p41]. No business would be set up with one partner entirely subject to the other. Rather, duties and responsibilities are either split equally or according to the partners' relative skills and proclivities. The business is most successful when each partner is doing what they do best.

Therefore, a marriage could also be improved by treating husband and wife as equal partners, and by distributing duties according to their individual strengths. Note that Mill does not advocate any radical change from traditional gender roles. He still maintains that a woman is best suited to child rearing and should forego any activities - like a career - that would interfere with that [Mill, p51]. However, he does go on to say that this is not a universal rule. In some marriage partnerships it may be that the husband is the more talented child carer, and the wife the stronger wage-earner. In such a case, the marriage state would be improved by allowing each to do that which they do best. Of course, for the wife to stand any chance as a wage-earner, even if she had the natural strengths for it, she would require an education and upbringing that fostered those strengths.

What if marriage is more than just a contract, but is an emotional bond based on love? Do such bonds require one partner to be dominant and the other to be submissive, or would they be improved through equality?

Mill puts great stock in the idea of a marriage of equals [Mill, pp102-103; also Shanley p363]. While opposites may attract, it is the similarities that keep couples together [Mill, p98]. With men and women so different, in education and in status, no marriage will ever be as emotionally sound as it could be. Consider also the effect on the man's character of being given absolute dominion over another human being. Unless the man is a saint, this can only have a detrimental effect on the relationship, fostering contempt from the man and fear from the woman. The old adage about the corruption of absolute power holds as true for a husband as for a ruler.

Mill also suggests that when men and women consider themselves equals, they can then form bonds of friendship [Warburton, p324]. Throughout history it was considered impossible for men and women to become friends, precisely because they were considered unequal. A marriage that includes a an element of friendship between the man and woman would be stronger than one without.

If marriage is considered as simply a mechanism for the production of children, then anything that better enables a woman to raise a child would be an improvement. With women so little in charge of themselves, and so poorly educated, their efforts to raise their children were severely hampered. Additionally, with men and women being brought up believing such radically different things about the ideal qualities of character and aspirations for life, there would inevitably be conflicts between husband and wife over how best to raise the child [Mill, pp99-100]. Consider also the distorting effects on the character of a boy being instructed by a woman. While he is learning from her she is necessarily superior in ability, yet he is taught that he in fact is her superior. He will grow up to either believe he is superior in ability to all women, even those who are teaching him, or he to believe he has the right to command her despite her superiority [Mill, p87].

In fact, the only aspect of marriage that would not improve is that of the man. From a position of unchallenged superiority, he is to be reduced to mere equality. Unless he genuinely did enter into marriage out of love, then he has lost out.

Many great wonders of the ancient world would have been impossible without slaves. Freeing the slaves may have been just, and would have benefited the slaves, but the architecture would not have been so monumental. This is the only way in which freeing women could be seen to detract from the state of marriage.

A hundred years on, much of what Mill suggested has been put into practice. So, has the state of marriage been improved? Were his grounds good ones? The number of people getting married is falling. The number of people getting divorced is rising. Children born out of wedlock are now commonplace. It would be easy to suggest that the state of marriage has suffered greatly, but I would say the opposite. With the social pressure to get married quickly disappearing, people are now getting married because they want to rather than because they feel they must. The rising divorce rates are a good sign, as it means less people are remaining trapped in a marriage that makes them miserable. If a couple are doomed to spend the rest of their lives together because of one night's indiscretion that resulted in a pregnancy, that child would be raised under a cloud of resentment. Far better for a child to have one parent who loves it than two parents who resent it. Certainly the state of marriage has changed, and in many ways it has changed in exactly the way Mill's critics would have warned. However, while we have lost quantity, we have gained quality.

According to Mill, the state of marriage could be improved through equality both in law and in education. However you consider the state of marriage, his grounds appear to be good.

Bibliography

• Mill 1988ed. The Subjection of Women; Hackett
• Warburton et al, 2000. Reading Political Philosophy; Routledge
• Mary Lyndon Shanley. The Hope of Friendship; in Warburton 2000.
• Janet Radcliffe Richards. Mill and Sexual Inequality; in Warburton 2000.
• Wolff 1996. An Introduction to Political Philosophy; Oxford University Press
• Audio Cassette 6 : Nigel Warburton interviews Janet Radcliffe Richards