Patriarchy and a Woman's Place

The matter of gender relationships is full of ambiguities, contradictions and inconsistencies. Each gender brings its own unacknowledged prejudices to the discourse and there is a persistent discrepancy between theory and practice. For Elizabethan times two features are definite: theoretically men ruled, and in practice women often subverted male domination. Custom, doctrine and law made fathers heads of families. God ruled creation, kings ruled nations and fathers ruled the home. God punished sin, kings punished earthly crime and a man could beat his wife, his children, his servants. Custom recommended moderation in corporal punishment, advocating its avoidance if possible, but its support in law meant it could happen. Beating causing bodily harm was not allowed. There were abusive and violent men who caused serious injury, but they could be protected in individual cases by an all- male legal system. A husband was an authoritarian figure whose word was law and the law supported men. St Paul authorized male dominance in the New Testament, the primary conduct book.

Theoretically then, husbands were dominant and wives supposedly subordinate in all things – in legal status, physical strength, intelligence, virtue.

Patriarchy originates in Genesis when God makes man first, gives Adam dominion over all animals, then makes Eve out of Adam's rib and gives him rule over her. She is designed as ‘an help meet’ (Genesis 2:18) – a companion and assistant. When Adam is tempted by Eve to eat the apple God upbraids him for listening to his wife and acting according to her encouragement rather than God's command against eating the forbidden fruit. This story shows how easily influenced men were by women and is the unacknowledged counterbalance to all the complaints about male domination. In reality, women wielded much greater influence than is usually admitted – and they wielded it by the ancient means – their sexual power.