Patriarchy and Matriarchy in Literature

Background

“Patriarch” means “father.” In a patriarchy, belonging to the society, or legitimacy, comes from fathers through ritual and law. Patriarchy provides ruling power to men. “Matriarch” means “mother.” In a matriarchy, belonging to society, or legitimacy, comes from mothers through childbirth. Matriarchy distributes power throughout a community. Matriarchal systems are more likely to have female and male deities and priests. Monotheism is usually considered patriarchal, although worship of the Goddess, or God the Mother, is found in monotheistic models of matriarchy. Patriarchal gods include Zeus, Apollo, and Jehovah; matriarchal goddesses include Demeter, Aphrodite, Artemis, Isis, Afrekete, and Ishtar.

In the nineteenth century, Swiss scholar Johann Jakob Bachofen theorized that prehistoric societies were matriarchies. He attributes to matriarchy the origins of family, the creation of civilization, the beginnings of social structures, and the start of agriculture. Agriculture, however, led to patriarchy. American ethnologist Lewis H. Morgan described matriarchy within American Indian tribes, such as the Iroquois. Morgan influenced the German socialist Friedrich Engels, who theorized that private property, competition, and individualism sprang from patriarchy in Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats (1884, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 1902). In A Room of One’s Own (1929), British author Virginia Woolf brought discussions of patriarchy into literary criticism. Robert Briffault writes extensively about matriarchy in The Mothers: The Matriarchal Theory of Social Origins (1931) and in his novels. In his work, Briffault uses a Darwinian model to describe the evolution of all societies from matriarchy to patriarchy and suggests that the next stage is a more evolved matriarchy.

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung proposed that all humans collectively share a cultural unconscious of archetypes. Among the archetypes are symbols for mothers and fathers. Matriarchy and patriarchy derive from the universal human experience of having parents. Joseph Campbell discusses matriarchy and patriarchy from a Jungian perspective in his study of mythology, The Masks of God (1959–67, 1991). His book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) gives perspectives on patriarchy in folklore.

Nearly all of these theories associate patriarchy with the spread of the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The first patriarch for these religions is Abraham, who married Sarah, the first matriarch in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which traces its ancestry through her son, Isaac. The Islamic tradition traces its ancestry through Ishmael, another son of Abraham by a different mother. Scholars point out that both patriarchs and matriarchs are in the Bible, although feminist critics note that in Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions systems of authority favor patriarchy. Marija Gimbutas’ The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974, 1982) provides a feminist perspective on religion and spiritual matriarchy.

Some myths and folklore portray matriarchy as having failed, providing a need for patriarchy. Some scholars relegate matriarchy to a preliterate time, one before “high” cultures of art, music, and letters. Many twentieth-century feminist scholars took exception to these views, often assigning social problems—such as war, rape, and poverty—to patriarchy. Other feminists have sought to turn the failure myth around, arguing that the “failure” attributed to matriarchy is a false pretense patriarchy uses to usurp women’s power of childbirth.

Twentieth-century anthropologists did not widely accept the notion that matriarchy predated patriarchy. Author Steven Goldberg, in his book The Inevitability of Patriarchy (1974), uses anthropological, biological, and sociological research to argue that patriarchy is unavoidable. Goldberg believed that male dominance is a universal feature of human society and argued against reclaiming matriarchy even in literary form.

American Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Early American literature, even of the colonial period, that questions social values typically favors patriarchal individuality rather than a more communal matriarchal society. Postrevolutionary authors such as Benjamin Franklin, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and Charles Brockden Brown sought to redefine patriarchy by shifting the received language and culture of their British “fathers” to a new language and culture supportive of American revolutionary ideology. In creating their new ideal of patriarchy, they suppressed or ignored voices of women, African slaves, and American Indians, along with oppositional voices among white males. Thomas Jefferson did not think that Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) deserved serious consideration, for example.

The next generation of authors often distrusted their cultural fathers from the colonial and revolutionary periods. James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville were among these writers. These authors were not necessarily sympathetic to women’s movements of their time, but their books address questions raised by the first wave of feminism—associated with abolitionism and suffrage—about women’s roles in society. Literature by this generation of authors challenges patriarchy using various strategies.

Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826) juxtaposes two versions of settlement history, one of patriarchal white settlers and the other of matriarchal Mohicans. Poe uses gothic forms, unreliable male narrators, and female characters whose truth is suppressed by male acts, in an implicit critique of patriarchy. Hawthorne wrote novels critical of the patriarchal Puritans, who greatly influenced American society. Hester Prynne, the adulterous heroine of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), resists patriarchal authority by refusing to reveal the name of her lover. Prynne holds matriarchal power, in that she alone can name the father of her child.

Scholars and authors in the second half of the nineteenth century were aware of Bachofen’s ideas. One twentieth-century scholar noted that The Atlantic Monthly ran several articles on matriarchal myths and rituals from its beginning in the 1850s through 1900. Harriet Beecher Stowe called for a deity with maternal traits of nurturing. Nineteenth-century writing about matriarchy and patriarchy stressed differences between male and female ways of thinking and being.

“Harvest Time” concludes Little Women (1868–69), by Louisa May Alcott, with a matriarchal scene symbolic of the Greek goddess Demeter. The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), by Sarah Orne Jewett, also echoes images of Demeter and her daughter, Persephone. Annie Trumbull Slosson, Kate Chopin, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman all wrote feminist literature with matriarchal themes and with strong women characters who oppose a patriarchal system of oppression or whom patriarchy destroys. This attention to the discrepancies in power between men and women, using themes of patriarchy and matriarchy, corresponds roughly to the ideas of the feminist movement after the Civil War.

Not all authors were swayed by the “new woman” of this period. Henry James, an influential Victorian author, wrote The Portrait of a Lady (1880–81), The Bostonians (1885–86), and The Awkward Age (1899) which portray women who seek self-fulfillment and whom other women betray. The betrayed women come to realize their need to occupy the roles that patriarchy offers. Many Victorian authors sought to uphold traditional social and cultural values in the face of class, racial, and gender conflict that threatened those patriarchal values.

American Literature of the Twentieth Century

The work of Ernest Hemingway, like much twentieth-century literature, generally supports patriarchy. The Sun Also Rises (1926), however, contains what a few scholars interpret as criticism of patriarchal failings. William Faulkner reveals conflicts between an abusive Old South patriarchy and a New South patriarchy, which has its own faults, in Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and the Snopes trilogy: The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1960). John Steinbeck, on the other hand, writes favorably of matriarchy in his novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Steinbeck, who was familiar with the work of Briffault, uses Ma Joad, the squatter’s circle, and Jim Casy to present social ideals consistent with Briffault’s ideas about matriarchy.

The 1950s Beat writers criticized society and patriarchy, but do not often offer a matriarchal alternative. In their writings phallic symbols, from industrial smokestacks to nuclear missiles, represent patriarchal evil and greed. Among those who overtly opposed patriarchy was gay poet Allen Ginsberg. Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums (1958) criticizes patriarchal values in favor of Eastern philosophy, which he argued is characterized by matriarchal values. Active social criticism in literature, including issues of patriarchy and matriarchy, coincided with renewed social activism in the 1960s.

With late twentieth-century feminism came new attention to the competition between patriarchal and matriarchal myths in culture. Consideration by critics shifted in the early 1960s from anthropological uses of the term “patriarchy” toward a more feminist use, which implied critiques of patriarchy. Examples of the shift toward critical examination of patriarchy include Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1970) and Elaine Showalter’s The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory (1985). Literature from all historical periods, cultural origins, and geographic locations comes under the scrutiny of these feminist critics, who have brilliantly attacked the philosophical structures of patriarchy.

Literature increasingly criticized patriarchy or valorized matriarchy from the 1960s through the 1990s, especially among feminists. Adrienne Rich’s poetry, collected in Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963) and Diving into the Wreck (1973), among other titles, has been widely read. Her poem “Mother-Right” in The Dream of a Common Language (1978) contains images of matriarchy and patriarchy while its title resonates with that of Bachofen’s book. Rich published essays on oppression, patriarchy, and matriarchy in On Lies, Secrets, and Silences: Selected Prose 1966–1978 (1979) and Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979–1985 (1986). Southern novelist Gail Godwin writes against patriarchy by representing its effects on women in novels such as The Odd Woman (1974). In later novels, particularly A Mother and Two Daughters (1982), Godwin favors an evolutionary change for men and women that is reminiscent of matriarchy. Works like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969); Joanna Russ’s books And Chaos Died (1970), Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays (1985), On Strike Against God: (a lesbian love story) (1985), and The Female Man (1986) and Marge Piercy’s He, She, It: A Novel (1991) question patriarchy and explore matriarchal and androgynous alternatives. Piercy’s Mars and Her Children: Poems (1992) has underpinnings in matriarchy. Marion Zimmer Bradley, in The Mists of Avalon (1983), reclaims Arthurian legend for matriarchy, casting it as a story of transition from an indigenous, pluralistic, matriarchy to an invading patriarchy with its jealous god. Canadian Margaret Atwood’s short stories, novels, and poems concern themes of patriarchy and matriarchy. Her The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) presents a dystopic view of patriarchy.

American Literature of the Twenty-First Century

Authors continued to explore the concepts of patriarchy and matriarchy through literature into the twenty-first century. The issue became particularly prominent in the context of the controversial election of President Donald Trump in 2016. In the midst of a movement against sexual harassment that also gained influence following the election, writers turned to past literary examples as well as more contemporary writing to discuss the impact of patriarchal societies. Idra Novey's book Those Who Knew (2018) focuses on the legacy of patriarchy by following the story of a corrupt and misogynistic senator. Meanwhile, some authors, such as Lisa See in her 2019 novel The Island of Sea Women, have further explored the topic through examinations of matriarchal societies such as the historical one used as the basis for her story. Furthermore, 2019 saw Atwood's return to the world of The Handmaid's Tale with the publication of the sequel The Testaments.

Identity Literature

According to some scholars, competing patriarchal and matriarchal mythic systems exist in every human culture. Vestiges of matriarchal myths exist in African, Caribbean, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and Western European traditions, among others. Lesbian literature has matriarchy as a major theme, along with criticism of patriarchy. Gay and feminist literatures frequently criticize patriarchy.

Some authors and critics believe that prehistoric, preagricultural cultures were matriarchal. Others reject that idea. At any rate, there is a body of literature that seeks to reclaim a matriarchal past as a way of opposing patriarchy and oppression. Given the havoc wreaked upon various cultures by patriarchy, this literature treats matriarchy as more civilized.

Examples from American Indian traditions include Laguna author Leslie Marmon Silko, who uses Spider Woman as a matriarchal spiritual healer for Tayo and his people in Ceremony (1977). Silko’s Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (1991) portrays clashes between patriarchal Europeans and matriarchal American Indians. The Creek poet Joy Harjo uses matriarchal imagery in poetry published in She Had Some Horses (1983) and The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: Poems (1994).

Among examples from African American writers, Audre Lorde revisits the African myth of Afrekete to identify a black goddess in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982). In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches of Audre Lorde (1984), she strongly criticizes patriarchy and favors a return to matriarchy. The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker contrasts patriarchal abusiveness with a matriarchal alternative made possible by a lesbian love affair. Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) presents the holy matriarchy of Baby Suggs; social institutions, including a sheriff, try to enforce the patriarchal institution of slavery and destroy Baby Suggs’s world. Sethe’s desperate attempt to prevent this destroys Baby Suggs’s spirit.

Bibliography

Bachofen, Johann Jakob. Myth, Religion, and Mother Right: Selected Writings of J. J. Bachofen. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Princeton UP, 1967. Bachofen’s theories influenced literary thinking and criticism about patriarchy and matriarchy.

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God. 4 vols. Arkana, 1991. Traces patriarchy and matriarchy across cultures. Especially useful for discussions of literature is volume four.

Claridge, Laura, and Elizabeth Langland, editors. Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism. U of Massachusetts P, 1990. Gives an overview of how patriarchy applies to literature and criticism even when not the explicit subject of either.

Jordan, Cynthia S. Second Stories: The Politics of Language, Form, and Gender in Early American Fictions. U of North Carolina P, 1989. Analyzes patriarchy and resistance to it in literature from the period after the American Revolution through the mid-1800s.

Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics. Doubleday, 1970. Describes patriarchy’s role in the subordination of women; includes analyses of literature.

Novey, Idra. "On Patriarchy and the Novel." Publishers Weekly, 9 Nov. 2018, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/78530-on-patriarchy-and-the-novel.html. Accessed 20 Sept. 2019.

Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton UP, 1977. Describes resistance to patriarchy in British women’s literature.

Walker, Barbara G. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Harper & Row, 1983. This large reference work is useful for tracking symbolism and allusions related to matriarchy.