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Helen Taylor
1831-1907
The outlines of Helen Taylor's life, until the death of her step-father, John Stuart Mill, should be familiar to any readers of this series: her life was discussed in connection with her mother Harriet Taylor Mill and with her step-father John Stuart Mill. Yet, Helen Taylor was a woman's suffrage advocate and woman's rights activist in her own right and her activities on behalf of women continued until her own death.
After John Stuart Mill's death, Helen Taylor added a postscript then published his Autobiography, fulfilling one of his last wishes. In 1876, she ran a bitterly fought and successful campaign for the London School Board in the borough of Southwark, a seat she held following the next two elections. During her nine years on the school board, Taylor fought for poor children, for equal pay for male and female teachers, and for equal financial support for boys and girls schools. In 1885 Taylor ran for Parliament as the Camberwell Radicals's candidate, but her nomination was refused by the returning officer, as expected.
Josephine Butler's campaigns against the Contagious Diseases Acts had stimulated a feminist desire to raise the morals of society and to replace the double sexual standard with a single one – woman's. William Stead's 'Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon', a newspaper series which broke the story about "white slavery" (female sexual slavery) in Victorian England, added momentum to Butler's campaign. In the 1880s, Taylor turned her attention to the "moral purity movement," joining the Moral Reform Movement when it was founded in 1881. Of special concern was to help "fallen women," to eliminate the sexual double standard, and to erase the legacy of the Contagious Diseases Act in India. At the end of the decade Taylor was working on Home Rule in Ireland. By 1900, nearly seventy years of age, Helen's health deteriorated and she retired from public life.
My original plan was to focus on the petition for woman suffrage submitted by John Stuart Mill to Parliament on June 17, 1866. The authorship of the petition is attributed to Helen Taylor's and it was published in the Westminister Review in January 1867 under Helen Taylor's name. My plans changed rather quickly when I stumbled across a later review which Taylor wrote of the book Women's Rights as Preached by Women Past and Present, by "A Looker-on" (London, 1881). Looker-on writes about "a remarkable little book, with the quaint title, Women not inferior to Man; or, a short and modest Vindication of the natural Right of the Fair Sex to a perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem with the Man. (Printed for John Hawkins, at the Falcon, in St. Paul's Church Yard, MDCCXL.)" Having run across Sophia's Women not inferior to Man in the past, I just had to pull my copy out and see what she had to say about women, political power, and suffrage. Although Sophia did not address suffrage or political power directly, she made it completely clear in her 1739 work that she believed that women were capable of successfully and wisely wielding political power and the powers of the state. She advocated expanding educational opportunities for women and opening professions to them, including "giving laws, pleading cases in court, and serving as magistrates with all the emblems of authority."
"They are so accustom'd to see things as they now are, that they cannot represent to themselves how they can be otherwise. It wou'd be extremely odd they think to see a Woman at the head of an army giving battle, or at the helm of a nation giving laws, pleading causes in quality of counsel, administring justice in a court of judicature, preceded in the street with sword, mace, and other ensigns of authority; as magistrates, or teaching rhetoric, medicine, philosophy, and divinity, in quality of university professors. . . . For if Women are but consider'd as rational creatures, abstracted from the disadvantages imposed upon them by the unjust usurpation and tyranny of the Men, they will be found, to the full, as capable as the Men, of filling these offices."
Research on Sophia (see Schorrenberg) pointed me to an even earlier work that influenced her greatly, Francois Poullain de la Barre's The Equality of the Two Sexes (1673). In Equality, de la Barre uses the new method of Cartesian analysis to arrive at the conclusion that the status of women is not something inherent in the nature of men or women but is the result of custom. In this remarkable work, he postulates a strikingly modern theory to explain the rise of male dominance and argues against the traditional exclusion of women from most aspects of society. Like Sophia, he does not advocate votes for women – in the mid-17th century, very few people in very few places had the vote and expanding democracy for neither men nor women was discussed. Like Sophia, he did, however, advocate opening universities and the legal professions, indeed, all professions including the top military positions, to women.
Our investigation into the life of Helen Taylor lead in a number of directions: to the biographies and writings of her mother and her step-father, the work of other women in the woman suffrage movement, to the wider Victorian woman's movement, and to two pre-19th century advocates of political power for women.
Today four selections are presented:
1) My original selection for Helen Taylor, The Ladies' Petition (1867)
2) Taylor's work in which she discusses Sophia, Women's Rights as Preached by Women (1881)
3) An excerpt of Sophia's Woman Not Inferior to Man (1739) in which Sophia talks about political power for women, and
4) An excerpt from de la Barre's Equality of the Two Sexes (1673) in which he discusses improving educational and professional opportunities for women, including political power for women.
References:
Francois Poullain de la Barre, A. Daniel Frankforter (trans.) and Paul J. Morman (trans.), Equality of the Two Sexes, 1673 [Lewiston, UK: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989]
Shiela R. Herstein, A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985]
Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (eds.), Sexual Equality: Writings by John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, and Helen Taylor [Toronto: University of Toronto, 1994]
'Sophia: British Feminism in the Mid Eighteenth Century' by Barbara Brandon Schorrenberg
Sophia, A Woman Of Quality, Woman Not Inferior To Man: Or, A Short And Modest Vindication Of The Natural Right Of The Fair-Sex To A Perfect Equality Of Power, Dignity, And Esteem, With The Men (1740) printed by John Hawkins, at the Falcon in St Paul's Church-Yard. MDCCXXXIX.
Additional On Line Resources:
Helen Taylor, The Claim of Englishwomen to the Suffrage Constitutionally Considered (1867)
Helen Taylor, The Claim of Englishwomen to the Suffrage Constitutionally Considered (1867)
Draft letter, Helen Taylor to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Jane Rendall, 'A Moral Engine': Feminism, Liberalism and the English Woman's Journal
Sophia, Woman Not Inferior to Man (Excerpt)
Kier Hardie, "The Citizenship of Women: A Plea for Woman's Suffrage" in W.T. Stead (ed.), Coming Men on Coming Questions, No: VI, (1905) on-line at The W.T. Stead Resource Site.
The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon: W. T. Stead and the Making of a Scandal
Return to Women's History Month 2003 Table of Contents
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last updated February 2003