Liberating Conversations: John Stuart Mill and Mona Caird

Abstract

AbstractThis essay considers how the New Woman writer Mona Caird engaged with John Stuart Mill’s ideas on liberty of discussion. It offers a brief history of Caird scholarship and considers the importance of free discussion to fin‐de‐siècle New Woman debates. It outlines four elements of Millian philosophy which Caird draws on in her fictional depictions of conversation: male‐female friendship, independent thought, self‐development, and a quest for precision in word choice and usage. Finally, it traces these elements through Caird’s novels and short stories, charting a development from her nineteenth‐century fiction – which focuses on private discussion in upper‐class domestic settings – to her twentieth‐century novels – which consider directly how private conversational practices translate into political and scientific discussion groups open to a greater diversity of participants.