Patriarchal Attitudes by Eva Figes
"Patriarchal Attitudes" by Eva Figes is a pivotal exploration of the social, economic, and cultural roots of women's oppression in Western society. Published in 1970 during a time of significant political and social upheaval, alongside other influential feminist works, Figes's analysis addresses the deep-seated patriarchal norms that have historically defined and restricted women's roles. She argues that women are shaped by their cultural upbringing rather than any intrinsic inferiority, echoing sentiments from earlier feminist philosophers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir.
Figes critically examines works by notable figures such as Moses, Rousseau, and Freud, revealing a pervasive fear and demonization of women that has been embedded in the Western canon. Through her detailed analysis, she illustrates how societal structures prioritize male needs and aspirations while marginalizing those of women. The book serves as both a historical account and a call to action, encouraging women to reclaim their narratives and identities in a culture that often overlooks their contributions. Figes's work is not only a reflection on past attitudes but also a foundation for ongoing discussions about gender equality and the necessity of recognizing women's voices in every aspect of society.
On this Page
Patriarchal Attitudes by Eva Figes
First published: 1970
Type of work: Social criticism
Form and Content
Eva Figes’s 1970 publication Patriarchal Attitudes was one of a group of three books that came out that year explicating the history and root causes of women’s oppression by men. It was a banner year for women; as Figes’s book hit the stores, along with Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch the next year, the women’s liberation movement was born into a world already at a fever-pitch of political excitement over the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. Women who had learned how to organize working for other issues were ready to challenge the basic tenets that ruled their own lives and enforced their oppression.
Figes offered the analysis women needed in their quest for equality. Taking up the age-old question “What makes a woman a woman?” she reviewed centuries of teaching, economics, and social science. Figes concludes that the way in which people are nurtured, not their innate nature, determines their values and actions. People become what culture teaches them to be, and the mainstream cultural works that Figes had just reviewed were extraordinarily hostile to women.
Figes uses the words of some of Western civilization’s most renowned speakers to show the widespread fear of women that permeates Western society. She quotes Moses, Giovanni Boccaccio, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sigmund Freud, and others, marching through the canon of written works that contain Western culture’s most revered ideas. Ancient Hebrew myth, John Milton, and the poetic tradition all add their voices to the cultural chorus. Figes unearths a society that idealizes woman when she identifies completely with a man’s desires and demonizes her whenever she opposes him.
Chapter by chapter, Figes shows that Westerners live in a world in which man controls woman to elevate himself. In Western religion, in economics, in philosophy, science, and psychology, male needs are presumed to be universal human needs, while women are forced into a mold that denies their most basic personal goals and aspirations.
It is the breadth of Figes’s analysis that makes her position difficult to dispute. By allowing her argument to grow out of the words of culture’s most revered icons, she uses their presumptive brilliance to prove her points. The work is short, not quite two hundred pages including notes, bibliography, and index, but it presents a comprehensive view of Western society and women’s lives within it. Patriarchal Attitudes provides readers a context within which to place current pronouncements upon the nature of women, along with enough information to deconstruct the assumptions underlying contemporary culture.
Context
Eva Figes is only one in a long line of women philosophers who have attempted to delineate the causes and history of female oppression. Mary Wollestonecraft first posited the notion that women’s upbringing rather than their inherent nature was responsible for their seeming inferiority. Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, and countless other theorists have made the same arguments that Figes worked out. Even in the face of such history, Figes believed that she worked in isolation. Perhaps that feeling of isolation is the key to the significance of her work, for while the ideas that she outlines are not new, they are ideas that are continually being forgotten. Figes’s work marks the beginning of a great period of female scholarship that took as its primary task the rediscovery of women’s cultural heritage. Patriarchal Attitudes demonstrates the great need for women to seek their image and identity in the words and works of their sisters. It teaches that male perceptions exclude much that women find valuable in the world.
Figes’s subsequent works are largely fictional and seek to provide precisely that feminist viewpoint that she taught her readers to value. Highly experimental both stylistically and philosophically, they examine issues of identity and history through the eyes and interests of women.
Bibliography
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953. Figes read this classic volume of feminist theory, and although in various articles she claims it offered too little analysis of women as sexual beings, many arguments made by Beauvoir appear in Figes’s work.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W. W. Norton, 1963. Friedan attacks cultural views of women that keep them in the home. In doing so, she takes on Freud and a host of anthropologists, including Margaret Mead.
Tomalin, Claire. “What Does a Woman Want?” New Statesman 26 (June, 1970): 917-918. Tomalin agrees with much of Figes’s analysis but argues that the importance of family was not given enough weight in her work.
Vidal, Gore. “In Another Country.” New York Review of Books 22 (July, 1971): 8-10. Vidal points out the similarities between Patriarchal Attitudes, Sexual Politics, and The Female Eunuch. He elevates Figes’s work above the others, especially endorsing her argument that social conditioning produces human behavior. This is true not only for women, Vidal notes, but also for men.
Woolf, Virginia. The Three Guineas. London: Harcourt, Brace, 1938. Woolf was the first to suggest the connection between sexual oppression and political oppression, a connection that Figes stresses even more strongly in regard to Nazi Germany.