Many people believe that marriage is important today, but it pales in importance compared to the importance of marriage in the Victorian era. In the Victorian era, women were expected to marry a man of the same or higher social status, be good wives, and be the mother of her husband's children. Very few marriages begin with love, but a woman's life is not complete without marriage. Over time, the role of married women has evolved greatly and they now have rights and privileges. John Stuart Mill was one of the great thinkers of the Victorian era and his essay The Subjection of Women talks about how women had few privileges and were slaves to their husbands. He also says that women are their own people and should be free. It was a rare sight for a man of that era. Mill provided a much-needed reality check for the ethical treatment of women and also generated ideas for the women's rights movement, which was quite rare for a man in this period. His essay On Freedom highlights the importance of having complete freedom to express one's opinion. If anyone else had been as courageous as Mill before the Victorian era, the women's movement might be more advanced today than it is. The Victorian era was a time of considerable change in the lives of the British. Victoria became Queen of England in 1837, at the age of eighteen. During his reign, Britain became the most powerful country in the world, as it had the largest empire that had ever existed. Victoria ruled over a quarter of the world's total population (Moore). Despite having a woman in power in Britain, British women had very little authority, dignity, or rights in matters of marriage or property...... middle of paper... ...eat political thinkers: Plato to the present. Harcourt Brace & Company, USA, 1991. Hamilton, Melissa. “Romance Ever After” www.romanceeverafter.com Date accessed: April 4, 2004. Hoppe, M. The Victorian Wedding. www.literary-liaisons.com/article003.html Date of consultation: April 5, 2004. Martin, Judith. Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. Crown Publishers; New York, NY, 1982. Mill, John Stuart. On Freedom. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 2A. Ed. David Damrosch et al. New York: Longman, 2002. 1075-1086. Mill, John Stuart. The subjugation of women. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 2A. Ed. David Damrosch et al. New York: Longman, 2002. 1086-1095. Moore, Melissa and Melanie Ulrich. “The problems of women yesterday and today”. www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/marriage.shtml Date accessed: April 3, 2004.