13
THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS OF THE CHANGE
FROM MATRIARCHY TO PATRIARCHY
Anne W. Merrill
Department of Anthropology
University of California
Berkeley, California
The first thing that probably comes to mind when one thinks of
anthropology is kinship. Societies are categorized in accordance
with specific kinship systems, such as matrilineal or patrilineal,
of which descent charts and linguistic analyses are made. The main
task of the anthropologist interested in kinship today seems to be
the detailed study of a specific kinship system, in order to dis-
cover how it works.
This particularistic method has not always been the favored
approach of the discipline. In the nineteenth century, anthro-
pologists devoted much of their energies to the development of
evolutionary schemes connected with natural laws. Kinship systems
were especially susceptible to this treatment. Most of the evolu-
tionary theories produced during this period, however, were later
disproven or rejected because of the data upon which they were
based. While acknowledging this fact, I suggest that there is still
value in examining the questions which were asked then, and the
assumptions surrounding them.
If we examine the scholarship on social organization from 1860
to 1890, it becomes apparent that a very different kind of question
was asked then from that to which we are now accustomed. The press-
ing question of the day was why so many systems of kinship differed
from those found in contemporary Western society. Working in the
scientific atmosphere generated by Darwin, theoreticians developed
evolutionary sequences which could account for these variations. It
probably was also inevitable, because of both the desire to carry
hypotheses to their logical extremes and the impact of the first
wave of feminism, that the concept of primeval matriarchies would be
postulated.
At this point, we must define some terms. There is much
confusion about what is meant by "matriarchy" and how it relates
to matrilineality. For the purposes of this paper I will define
"matriarchy" as a society in which an equal or greater amount of
authority is vested in women than in men and in which descent is
traced through the female line. The term "patriarchy" will refer to
any society in which primary authority is controlled by men, with
descent and inheritance traced through the male line.
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The argument for the development of matriarchy goes something
like this: during the evolutionary transition from animal to human,
there was a period of sexual promiscuity when descent could be reck-
oned only through the female line, since paternity was uncertain,
because of either ignorance of the male contribution to reproduction
or the multiplicity of sexual partners. Until there was certainty
of paternity there could be no concept of patrilineality. This idea
was introduced by J. J. Bachofen in 1861 (1967:93) and later sup-
ported by McLennan (1970:65), Morgan (1877:393-504), and Engels
(1954:47), among others. However, the concept of matriarchy was not
universally accepted. Westermarck led the opposition in 1891 with
the publishing of his History of Human Marriage, and was supported
by Maine.
The central point of disagreement between the parties led by
Bachofen and Westermarck was whether or not it was possible for a
system of organization as comparatively strange as matriarchy to
have ever existed. Westermarck was a staunch defender of the status
quo in this debate. His point of view was eventually accepted by
mainstream anthropology. To date, no matriarchy has been proven to
have existed at any point in time. Matriarchy cannot be proven
until universal patriarchy has been disproven. But even with these
considerations, credit must be given to the matriarchists for their
imaginativeness.
The proponents of the theory that an early period of matriarchy
existed had a special problem to solve. If social organization was
originally matriarchal, why is it now patriarchal? For those who
did not posit a different system, the answer to "Why patriarchy?"
was simply "human nature." Certainly this answer is difficult to
refute, but it is hardly edifying. The defenders of matriarchy were
forced to devote more thought to the question and came up with more
interesting solutions to the puzzle.
Bachofen, the originator of the term "mother-right," came
to his conclusions almost entirely through examination of literature.
He stated, "There is only one mighty lever of all civilization and
that is religion" (1967:85). Using this as his starting point, he
focused his attention on myth, often in a startling, almost Levi-
Straussian structuralist fashion. Bachofen maintained that, from a
state of complete promiscuity which he terms "hetaerism," humankind
advanced to "Demetrian matriarchy" because women, "exhausted by
man's lusts," felt the need for "regulated conditions and a purer
ethic" (Ibid., 94). Despite this advance, society was still tied to
gross nature, and it was necessary for Apollonian principles to
conquer Demetrian principles in order for civilization to develop
into its true, and current, form. Bachofen here clearly expressed
the male Victorian contradictory images of women as both morally
superior and sinful beings. The ancient matriarchies were not part
of a Golden Age but rather something which had to be destroyed in
order for civilization as patriarchy to exist. This change occurred
with the shift from Demetrian religion and the worship of the Great
Goddess to the worship of Apollo and the gods of light. It is thus
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a mystical change caused by the gods themselves. Bachofen's tone is
captured in this statement: "the triumph of paternity brings with
it the liberation of the spirit from the manifestations of nature, a
sublimation of human existence over the laws of material life"
(Ibid., 93).
In 1865, John McLennan published Primitive Marriage: An In-
quiry into the Origin of the Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies
and incorporated the concept of matriarchy in his evolutionary
scheme. McLennan was the originator of the terms "exogamy" and
"endogamy." The law of exogamy, he postulated, was the prime mover
of early humankind. McLennan also maintained that men, as hunters,
were responsible for the food and security of groups and are, thus,
more valuable than women; and that all groups were mutually hostile.
McLennan supported Bachofen's stages of hetaerism and matriarchy
with more literary examples and data from travelers' accounts. He
then went on to build an evolutionary sequence featuring alterna-
tions between homogeneous and heterogeneous groups mediated by bride
capture as its central characteristic. Bride capture initially
became necessary because female infanticide led to a shortage of
women. Various forms of polyandry evolved until smaller and smaller
numbers of sexual partners were acceptable. At the point when
patriarchy became certain, patrilineality was established and bride
capture again practiced because of the homogenizing nature of
patrilineality in the first generation after capture.
McLennan's explanation of the change in descent systems should
be examined closely because he is the first to connect the transi-
tion with property:
Paternity having become certain, a system of kinship
through males would arise with the growth of property,
and a practice of sons succeeding, as heirs direct,
to the estates of fathers; and descent through
females would--and chiefly under the influence of
property--die away (1876:98).
Plausible as this explanation is, and it has been taken up by many
notable thinkers, including Marx, it leaves questions still unan-
swered. Why are men the owners of property, especially in a system
that was formerly matrilineal? Why are sons the exclusive heirs?
Morgan's Ancient Society, published in 1877, postulates an
evolutionary model similar to that of McLennan. Morgan finds in the
evolution from the "consanguineal family" to the "monogamian" that
the guiding principle is a consistent limitation of the number of
acceptable sexual partners. Morgan's greatest contribution was his
theory that, although aspects of culture such as government-and the
family develop according to their own laws, these developments are
coordinated by changes in the "arts of subsistence." Thus Morgan
presents an essentially materialist analysis. He argues for a
relationship between property, monogamous marriage, and patriarchy:
"When property began to be created in masses and the desire for its
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transmission to children had changed descent from the female line to
the male, a real foundation for paternal power was for the first
time established" (1877:478). Morgan does nothing more than
McLennan, however, to explain why men are the owners of property or
why only sons are heirs. In a strictly monogamous family, a man's
offspring could just as well be guaranteed inheritance through the
female line in cases where all children inherited equally.
Engels, too, fails in this respect, although he is the first to
articulate the full implications of the change from matriarchy to
patriarchy. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State, he says: "The overthrow of mother right was the world his-
torical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home
also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became
the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of
children" (1954:50; original emphasis). Engels is also conscious of
the importance of explaining how this revolution took place:
Thus, on the one hand, in proportion as wealth
increased, it made the man's position in the
family more important than the women's and on the
other hand, created an impulse to exploit this
strengthened position in order to overthrow, in
favor of his children, the traditional order of
inheritance. This, however, was impossible so
long as descent was reckoned according to mother-
right. Mother-right, therefore, had to be
overthrown, and overthrown it was. This was by
no means so difficult as it looks to us today.
For this revolution one of the most decisive ever
experienced by humanity could take place without
disturbing a single one of the living members of
a gens. All could remain as they were. A simple
decree sufficed that in the future time the off-
spring of the male members should remain within
the gens, but that of the female should be
excluded by being transferred to the gens of
their father. The reckoning of descent in the
female line and the matriarchal law of inheri-
tance were thereby overthrown, and the male line
of descent and the paternal law of inheritance
were substituted for them (Ibid., 43).
Engels' assumption, shared by his predecessors and followers,
is that "According to the division of labor within the family at
that time, it was the man's part to obtain food and the instruments
of labor necessary for that purpose" (Ibid., 48). Why? Engels also
reveals his male bias when he claims that no member of the gens
would feel any disturbance as the revolution took place. Surely
mothers of female children would feel something at their disinheri-
tance and at the prospect of their marriage into alien gentes. The
position of women currently married would be significantly under-
mined. Engels also oversimplifies when he states that the change
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could be made by "simple decree."  Issuing decrees is one thing;
enforcing them is quite another.
This was how the concept of matriarchy had developed by the end
of the nineteenth century. Robert Briffault made a further contri-
bution in 1927, when this subject was no longer popular. His book,
The Mothers, has accordingly received little attention. Yet this
work questions old assumptions about property in a way which permits
development of a new approach. Briffault joins in the consensus
that it was the rise of property acquisition which led to patriarchy:
"It is the development of private property and the desire of the
male to possess it which is the commonest cause of the change from
matriarchy to patriarchy, the other frequent motive being the desire
for a monopoly of certain magical powers" (1959:95). Briffault
maintains that the domestication of animals formerly associated with
hunters accounts for the male monopoly of property. He also consid-
ers why hunters were predominantly male, since it is possible to
cite many instances of female hunting. First, Briffault suggests
hunting became a male prerogative because of the necessity for women
to take care of offspring. Then, after listing examples of soci-
eties where childcare, including suckling, is communal and pointing
out that women are in no way physically unfit for hunting, Briffault
is forced to suggest that, "In short, the primitive division of
labour has become established more by a spirit of professional
exclusiveness than by a difference in aptitude" (Ibid., 99).
With Briffault we have come full circle in our search for an
answer to the question: why patriarchy? "Professional exclusive-
ness" comes very close to the "human nature" explanation provided by
Westermarck and his colleagues. By now, the pun in the title of
this paper must be obvious since, although many pages have been
written on this topic, outside of the suggestion of "human nature"
no explanation has been provided for the establishment of universal
patriarchy. The nineteenth century provided no comprehensive
explanations of this phenomenon. Briffault presents us with the
unsettling proposition that the explanation may lie in a human
psychological universal.
REFERENCES CITED
Bachofen, J. J.
1967   Myth, Religion, and Mother Right.   (First ed. 1861)
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Briffault, Robert
1959   The Mothers.   (First ed. 1927)  London:  Ruskin House.
Engels, Frederick
1964   The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.
(First ed. 1884) New York: International Publishers.
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MacLennan, John
1970   Primitive Marriage:   An Inquiry into the
Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Origin of the
(First ed. 1876)
Morgan, Lewis
1877   Ancient Society.   Chicago:  Charles H. Kerr.