Feminist Critique Part Two   Patriarchy: A hierarchical structure of power of which male dominace over women is one aspect Pater - father arche - rule         Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve

In Christianity and Biblical traditions, partriarchy is manifest at three levels:

1) The Family

The societies depicted in the Bible tend to be constructed around patriarchal families of which a father is head and whose authority is passed from father to son. The power of this father is greater than we tend to be aware. For example, before the laws of primogeniture, the father could designate his heir and ruled over most aspects of members of the families lives (see the story of Jacob).

Marriage in the Bible is a private contract (Ketubah) between the patriarch of the groom and the patriarch of the bride. It is not a covenant between bride and groom.

In Gen 24, a slave acts as Abraham's agent and the brothers of Rebekah give her in marriage. The fact that Rebekah plays a role and has a say in these negotiations is extraordinary and demands close attention. In this case the feminist critique illuminates the text.

The husband (ba'al = master) pays a purchase price to the father of the bride and she becomes his chattel.

This economic relationship is presupposed in the laws of release in Numbers 30.

In biblical societies, a woman's status is typically defined in relation to a man. When this does not occur, asking the question "Why?" becomes an inportant step in the interpretation of the text.

A woman is either a daughter, wife or mother. The laws of Deut 22 (concerning rape) become comprehensible in light of these relationships.

The misunderstanding of the biology of conception helped perpetuate patriarchal assumptions about the social status of women. In the sixteenth century, Matrin Luther could write, "A woman is never truly her own master. God formered her body to belong to a man, to have and to rear children."

In biblical law, women are clumped together with children and "idiots", that is, as people who need to be constantly under another's governance. Note that the Bible does not depict women as irrational. The preconception that women are ruled by emotions and men by reason is perhaps the legacy of the Greek tradition.

Understanding how patriarchy functions at the level of the family provides insight in to a number of key considerations:

• With what freedom or authority can an individual act? When we underestimate the authority of the father, we tend to judge characters inappropriately for acting in indirect ways to achieve their ends.
• What do anomalies signify? When a woman is granted authority by a man should we read this as implicit praise of the woman of implicit condemnation of the man?

An interesting question: what happens when women do not follow the logical progression from daughter to wife to mother.

Spinsters tend to be depicted in literature in two forms

Sisters who stay in their parental home and are perpetual girls

Daughters who live alone and are witch-like

If one looks in the records of the New England witch trials, one finds that the death of an infant was often the catalyst for the hunt. Midwives who delivered still born or deformed children became suspect.

The history of the superstitions concerning witchcraft is fraught with twists on the ideology of patriarchy. A woman without a man is dangerous or out of control.

The earliest traditon of the image of the witch as a broom rider comes from the tradition of worship of the goddess Diana, a goddess with no partner.

It is perhaps a sign of the tenacity of patriarchy that even witches must be under the authority of some man. By the fourteenth century, superstition that witches answered to Satan and bore his mark as his property prevailed.

The Political Order

The Religious (Sacerdotal) Order

Patriarchy is evident in the priestly cult of the Old Testament and in its heir, the priesthood of the the Christian church. God is the father, the priest (who must be male) are his mediators. We will return to this theme in our study of the ordination of women.

Rosemary Radford Ruether: "Traditional theological images of God as Father have been the sanctification of sexism and heirarchialism precisely by defining this relationship of God as father to humanity as a domination-subordination model and by allowing ruling class males to identify themselves with these divine fatherhood in such a way as to establish themselves in the same kind of hierarchical relationship to women and lower classes." New Heaven/New Earth, p. 65

The fact that presence of patriarchy in the religious order is used to justify patriarchy at the level of the family is evident in Paul's logic in 1 Cor 11:3 "I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ."

Change

Feminist ideology argues that it is not sufficient that women gain permission to enter roles of power within the system. Women in power can be just as abusive as men.

Virginia Woolf: "For we have to ask ourselves, here and now, do we wish to join that [academic] process or don't we. On what terms shall we join the procession. Above all where is it leading us, the procession of educated men? ... Let us never cease from thinking what is the "civilization" in which we find ourselves? What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them? Where in short is it leading us, the procession of the sons of the eduated man?" A Room of Her Own.