"Examines the work of three nineteenth-century utilitarian feminist philosophers: Catharine Beecher, Frances Wright, and Anna Doyle Wheeler.

This essay examines the life and work of early socialist thinker Anna Doyle Wheeler, who, with the Owenite theorist William Thompson, was author of The Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretentions of the Other Half, Men …. In analyzing her thought, I employ a typological model for the development of a feminist consciousness proposed by Michèle Riot-Sarcey and Eleni Varikas. These authors posit three types of a feminist “pariah” consciousness: 1) exceptional woman feminism 2) subversive (...) feminism, and 3) collective feminism. Within this framework Anna Wheeler falls between positions one and two; she was an exceptional or token woman who nevertheless advocated subversive feminist doctrines of radical change, including calls for collective female action. The essay ends with a discussion of Wheeler's relationship to William Thompson as example of woman's traditional access to philosophy, that is, through a male mentor. (shrink)

The question, “Why has Harriet Taylor MM appeared in the history of philosophy as she has?” has several answers. The answers intertwine the personality and polities of Harriet, the sexism of those who wrote of her, misunderstandings of the means and meaning of her collaboration with John Stuart Mill, and the disturbing challenge of her questioning.

In his Autobiography, John Stuart Mill tells us that though his conviction regarding the equality of the sexes was a result of his earliest engagements with political subjects, it remained an abstract idea before his relationship with Harriet Taylor began. Crediting her as the author of “all that was best” in his writings, Mill's praise of his wife has not been well received by many of his readers, and scholars have long questioned her capacities as an intellectual and as a (...) political thinker. I argue that such doubts reflect a narrow standard for adjudicating Taylor Mill's intellectual worth, and what counts as intellectual labor more broadly. Examining Taylor Mill's own writings in fact illuminates and challenges the gendering practices that have sustained scholarly interrogations of Taylor Mill and of her relationship to JS Mill. I make this case first by drawing attention to her “experiential politics” as a credible source of intellectual scholarship, and second by raising questions about the gendered aspects of how intellectual labor has been defined and evaluated in studies of the canon. (shrink)

This essay examines the life and work of early socialist thinker Anna Doyle Wheeler, who, with the Owenite theorist William Thompson, was author of The Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretentions of the Other Half, Men... (1825). In analyzing her thought, I employ a typological model for the development of a feminist consciousness proposed by Michèle Riot-Sarcey and Eleni Varikas (1986). These authors posit three types of a feminist "pariah" consciousness: 1) exceptional woman feminism 2) (...) subversive feminism, and 3) collective feminism. Within this framework Anna Wheeler falls between positions one and two; she was an exceptional or token woman who nevertheless advocated subversive feminist doctrines of radical change, including calls for collective female action (in which she nonetheless did not participate). The essay ends with a discussion of Wheeler's relationship to William Thompson as example of woman's traditional access to philosophy, that is, through a male mentor. (shrink)