Marriage as Bondage

Mill critiques the institution of marriage, describing wives as legal bond-servants with no rights to property, children, or personal autonomy, and argues that marriage is the only remaining legal slavery.

The chapter describes women's dependence on men as a 'primitive state of slavery' that has only been mitigated, not abolished.

Marriage is described as the only remaining legal bondage, with the wife's position worse than that of slaves in some legal systems.

Mill declares marriage the only remaining legal bondage, a monstrous contradiction to modern principles, and the sole case of human servitude after the abolition of negro slavery.