IN DEFENSE OF PATRIARCHY

A Dawsonian View
of Patriarchy
R.V. Young

atriarchy is a word that has almost ceased to communicate a

definable meaning in contemporary discourse. Feminist theory deploys the term
so loosely that it may be applied to any
institution or instance in which men
dominate women or are perceived to do
so. Most feminist criticism, Heather
Jones avers, tends to represent the family as the main legacy of this male advantage and therefore as patriarchys primary model and institution. Consequently patriarchy has been defined in
this context as a general organizing structure apparent in most social, cultural,
and economic practices world-wide, a
structure that is considered to promote
and perpetuate, in all facets of human
existence, the empowerment of men and
the disempowerment of women. Patriarchy, according to this familiar view, is
thus the rule of the Law-of-the-Father(s),
which brings about the existence of the
family, which is in turn the model for
every oppressive masculine structure in
all facets of human existence. Nevertheless, although patriarchy arises in prehistory and pervades every niche of society throughout the world, Much AngloAmerican feminist criticismattempts

R. V. YOUNG will become the new editor of

Modern Age in 2008. He is Professor of English
at North Carolina State University.
Modern Age

to make patriarchal strategies visible, to

reveal that they are neither natural nor
necessary, and thus to enable women and
other feminized groups to empower themselves.1 Patriarchy thus becomes, like
fascism, merely a term of abuse, applied
to almost anything that certain fashionable intellectuals and academics find reprehensible according to the goals of their
political agenda. This loss of meaning is
regrettable, because an accurate understanding of patriarchy as a specific cultural institution provides genuine insight
into the history of the interaction of family and society and the crisis now confronting Western civilization.
In an essay first published in 1933, The
Patriarchal Family in History, Christopher Dawson provides an accurate historical sketch of patriarchy, showing both
its crucial rle in the development of
higher civilizations and the threat it faces
when those civilizations become excessively sophisticated and decadent. Most
remarkable perhaps is Dawsons explanation of the way in which the rise of Christianity transformed the patriarchal family into something more egalitarian and
more spiritual in both its social and sexual
dimensions without losing the cultural
order and energy that patriarchy had provided. Finally, Dawson considers the implications of the decline in Europe and
North America not only of patriarchy but
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also of its spiritually enhanced form in

Christian marriage. Writing more than
seven decades ago, he manifests remarkable prescience in foreseeing the disastrous effect of the wholesale rejection of
traditional norms of marriage and family
life that had swept across what had once
been Christendom by the beginning of
the twenty-first century.
Dawson begins by arguing that the
regulation of sexual activity and child-bearing is intrinsic to human social organization: it is a universal rule of every known
society that a woman before she bears a child must
be married to an individual
male partner.2 The socialist and, latterly, feminist
fantasy that there was a
time of unfettered sexual
promiscuity when women
reared their children without the intervention or
Christopher
even interest of absent,
anonymous fathers is, Dawson maintains,
untenable, as well as the correlative notion that the family is a device for the
subjection of women and children that
arose with private property and patriarchy. Attempts to explainor explain
awaythe family as a sinister imposition
on complete freedom from restraint provoked by economic developments are a
romantic myth:
It is impossible to go back behind the
family and find a state of society in which the
sexual relations are in a pre-social stage, for
the regulation of sexual relations is an essential pre-requisite of any kind of culture.
The family is not a product of culture; it is,
as Malinowski shows, the starting point of
all human organization and the cradle of
nascent culture.3

Dawsons point is that to be human is

to live in a society and to be subject to
cultural norms. The instinct for sexual
418

reproduction is a merely biological trait

shared with the beasts. Marriage and family organization are an integral part of our
distinctive humanity, which necessarily
clashes with what is only animal in us:
The institution of the family inevitably
creates a vital tension which is creative as
well as painful. For human culture is not
instinctive. It has to be conquered by a
continuous moral effort, which involves the
repression of natural instinct
and the subordination and sacrifice of the individual impulse
to social purpose.4

One might sum this up

aphoristically by saying
that human nature is naturally estranged in some
measure from nature; that
is, we are self-conscious
creatures capable of free
choices, which perforce
are a source of anxiety, frustration, and uncertainty.
Dawson
In Dawsons view, the
emergence of patriarchy marks an elevation of what is distinctively human and
rational in culture and makes possible a
more complex and sophisticated form of
civilization. If women are held to chastity and self sacrifice and children to
obedience and discipline, men are likewise required to assume the burden of
responsibility for the welfare of the entire
family and its tradition. It is precisely
because patriarchy places higher demands on each member of the family that
it is a much more efficient organ of cultural life. It is no longer limited to its
primary sexual and reproductive functions. It becomes the dynamic principle
of society and the source of social continuity.5 Dawson maintains that the additional severity that patriarchy imposed
upon the looser matrilinear family structures of prehistory bore fruit not only in
greater human productivity and hence
comfort, but also in the enhanced sense
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of human excellence:
This religious exaltation of the family profoundly affects mens attitude to marriage
and the sexual aspect of life in general. It is
not limited, as is often supposed, to the
idealization of the possessive male as father
and head of the household; it equally transforms the conception of womanhood. It was
the patriarchal family which created those
spiritual ideals of motherhood and virginity
which have had so deep an influence on the
moral development of culture.6

It is hardly a sign of the superiority of

contemporary culture that the spiritual
ideals of motherhood and virginity are
an object of derision in most contemporary academic circles and among the intellectual elite generally. The cherishing
of both motherhood and virginity by the
same society is a tribute to the integrity of
women as women and provides a counterweight to the advantage men enjoy in
sheer brute strength and in being exempt
from pregnancy and lactation. It is the
idealization of these specifically feminine
virtues that distinguishes human beings
from mere mammals. As Dawson further
observes, the insistence upon these distinctive feminine qualities made possible
the social stability necessary for real civilization, and their abandonment is ominous: It is the fundamental error of the
modern hedonist to believe that man can
abandon moral effort and throw off every
repression and spiritual discipline and
yet preserve all the achievements of culture.7
The patriarchal family is not, however,
the last word in the social ordering of
Western civilization. Indeed, patriarchy
lost its grip at a crucial moment in the
history of ancient Greece and Rome and
failed to adopt itself to the urban conditions of Hellenistic civilization:
Conditions of life both in the Greek city state
and in the Roman Empire favoured the man
without a family who could devote his whole
energies to the duties and pleasures of
public life. Late marriages and small families
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became the rule, and men satisfied their

sexual instincts by homosexuality or by
relations with slaves and prostitutes. This
aversion to marriage and the deliberate
restriction of the family by the practice of
infanticide and abortion was undoubtedly
the main cause of the decline of ancient
Greece, as Polybius pointed out in the second century B.C.8

Polybius recounts (among other things)

how a decadent Greece succumbed to a
vigorous and confident Rome, but within
a century or so of the events that he
narrates Rome itself is beginning to succumb to the same degenerate tendencies.
The decadence, as it developed in
Rome, may be illustrated by poetry.
Catullus (84-54 B.C.?) is best known for a
series of brilliant poems describing a torrid yet tawdry affair with a woman he calls
Lesbia, who scorns his desire for tenderness and fidelity. Most revealing, however, is the epithalamion, or wedding
hymn, he wrote, possibly for the Manlius
Torquatus who would become Consul in
49 B.C. Allowing for an element of bawdy
joking at the grooms expense, these lines
are still rather shocking to modern sensibilities, at least until very recently:
It is said, anointed bridegroom, that
you
Can hardly keep away from your hairless slave boys,
But keep away.
We are aware that what is known to you
Are only permitted pleasures, but these
same things
Are not permitted to husbands.9
The joke would have no point were the
conduct not at least imaginable. This is
Dawsons point: marriage and family come
to be regarded as an onerous duty and
expense. The groom must be exhorted to
pay sufficient attention to his bride in
order to sire children, because it is unfitting for so old a name to be without chil419

dren (ll. 205-07: non decet / tam uetus

sine liberis / nomen esse). A warning is
given that suggests how easily distracted
a Roman husband might be:
Bride, you also must beware of denying
What your husband demands lest he
Go to someone else for what he seeks.10
While the sentiment has not been unknown in more recent times (it turns up in
The Waste Land, for instance), it is difficult to imagine such advice being given
as part of a celebration of Christian marriage.
Propertius and Ovid also furnish evidence of a social decadence in which
marriage and the responsibilities of children are held up to ridicule. Propertius,
rejoicing over the repeal of a law that
would have separated him from his mistress, pours forth his defiance of any government policy that would restrict his
erotic license for the sake of social norms
and interests:
Yet mighty is Caesar. Yes but Caesar
is mighty in arms:
Conquered nations avail nothing in
love.
Now I would sooner let my head to be
severed from this neck
Than I could quench this torch at the
humor of a bride
Or, as a husband, pass by your closed
door,
Glancing back with streaming eyes at
what I had betrayed.
Ah, my flute would sing such slumbers
for you then,
A flute sadder than a funeral trumpet!
How would I furnish children for national triumphs?
There will be no soldier from my blood.11
A mistress is better than a wife who has
rights unconnected with passionate infatuation. Most revealing is the scorn of
patriotismof the social regulation of
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sexual activity in the interests of the common good of the nation. For his part Ovid
openly ridicules the idea of patriotic activity in numerous poems and undermines
military virtue by equating sexual pursuit
with the hardships of army life. Horace
had extolled the youth hardened in military service and proclaimed it sweet
and fitting to die for ones homeland.12
Ovid observes that while the soldiers
duty is a long road, send his girlfriend
ahead, and the vigorous lover will follow
without ceasing.13
These themes are not mere poetic fiction. The Emperor Augustus banished
Ovid to the shores of the Black Sea and
attempted to reform Roman morals and
restore the sanctity of marriage and the
honor of begetting and rearing children,
but to no avail. Augustus revived some
laws and certain things he dealt with
anew, writes Suetonius, such as extravagance and adultery, chastity, bribery, and
the regulation of marriage. The last law,
since he had reframed it somewhat more
severely than the others, he was unable to
carry out in the face of a throng of dissidents, except by the removal or mitigation at last of some of the penalties [for
not marrying], a three-year interval for
marrying again, and increased rewards
[for marrying and having children].14 Likewise Tacitus observes that Augustus
sought to relax the Papia Poppaea, which
forbade marriages between classes, to
increase the penalties on celibacy and
augment the treasury, but marriage and
the rearing of children was not increased
thereby, so attractive was childlessness.15 Of course, Augustus could not
even control his own family: both his
daughter Julia, and grand daughter, also
Julia, were notoriously promiscuous, and
he eventually banished them both.16
Not at all an exaggeration, then,
Dawsons portrayal of the dire state of
Roman society at the dawn of the Christian era is fully warranted by the historical record. His account of the effect of
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Christianity on this world is likewise compelling. His distinctive perception is that

Christianity succeeded in revitalizing the
society of the Western world not by following the lead of the Emperor Augustus,
who simply attempted, as Tacitus and
Suetonius note, to impose once again the
mos maiorumthe stern customs of their
Republican ancestorson decadent,
pleasure-loving Romans. Christianity did
not, in contrast, simply revive the patriarchal culture of the ancient Hebrews. Christian marriage is a refinement of the patriarchal family, first in social terms:
The reconstitution of Western civilization was due to the coming of Christianity
and the re-establishment of the family on a
new basis. Though the Christian ideal owes
much to the patriarchal tradition which
finds such a complete expression in the Old
Testament, it was in several respects a new
creation that differed essentially from anything that had previously existed. While the
patriarchal family in its original form was an
aristocratic institution which was the privilege of a ruling race or a patrician class, the
Christian family was common to every class,
even to the slaves.17

A form of marriage that offers both the

dynamism and the stability of the patriarchal family and yet permeates all classes
is obviously a more powerful engine for
transforming and reviving society. It is
the genius of the Church to be catholic;
that is, universal. Christian marriage is
thus a more democratic or egalitarian
institution than patriarchy insofar as it
puts everyone on the same footing in
terms of sexual relations and child-bearing. Hence it enhances the morale of the
entire community.
But Christian marriage is also more
democratic on an intimate, personal
level:
Still more important was the fact that the
Church insisted for the first time on the
mutual and bilateral character of sexual
obligations. The husband belonged to the
wife as exclusively as the wife to the husModern Age

band. This rendered marriage a more personal and individual relation than it had
been under the patriarchal system. The
family was no longer a subsidiary member
of a larger unity the kindred or gens. It
was an autonomous self-contained unit
which owed nothing to any power outside
itself.18

We do not often enough reflect upon

the significance of the social revolution
that Dawson here adumbrates. Contemporary feminists, for example, who complain of the unequal relation between
husbands and wives in Christian marriage
ought to answer the question, Compared
to what other form of marriage before the
twentieth century? St. Paul, the great
villain of modern feminism indeed says,
Let women be subject to their husbands,
but he also says, Husbands, love your
wives, as Christ also loved the church and
delivered himself up for it; and he calls
marriage a great sacrament that figures
the relationship between Christ and the
Church.19 The husband is called upon not
only to be responsible for his wife as a
good patriarch, not only to love her, but to
deliver himself up for her as Christ sacrificed himself for the Church.
St. Paul wrote this letter to his Ephesian
converts a few decades after the Augustan
reform, designed to strengthen marriage
in the Roman Empire, gave both a husband and his father-in-law the right to kill
an adulterer caught in the act with his
wife (or daughter) in his own home. Adultery was considered especially heinous if
a well-born Roman matron were involved
with a lover of lower classa gladiator,
actor, freedman, slave, or any man of lower
status.20 It goes without saying that Roman wives (and mothers-in-law!) enjoyed
no reciprocal right to do away with her
husbands mistresses, and it was generally taken for granted that even married
men were free to trifle with slaves, prostitutes, and other lower class womenor
boys. If Christian marriage, as expounded
by St. Paul and practiced by the early
421

Church was hierarchical rather than egalitarian in the modern sense, nevertheless,
wives were regarded as equally human
partners in an institution that was spiritual and sacramental, and a husbands
obligations to his wife went beyond the
fulfillment of the material provisions of a
contract. He owed himself to his wife as
completely as she owed herself to him.
An additional element of Christian
marriage that transcended Old Testament
patriarchy, as well as the deteriorating
situation in ancient Greece and Rome,
was the element of choice. When St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century
quotes St. John Chrysostum of the fourth,
Sexual intercourse does not make marriage, but the will, he is declaring what is
by then the teaching of the Church.21 The
further implication of the necessity of
consent is that slaves must not be constrained to obey their masters, nor children their parents, in the contracting of
matrimony or the keeping of virginity or
anything else of this kind.22 Dawson
points out that the alternative of virginity
further qualifies the sway of the patriarchal family under the Christian dispensation:

can be no doubt that the resultant type of

monogamous and indissoluble marriage
has been the foundation of European
society and has conditioned the whole
development of our civilization.24 Already in 1933 Dawson perceives threats
to the European tradition of Christian
marriage and wonders if Western civilization can survive the rejection of its fundamental social and religious institution. In
the physical sciences, the predictive
power of a theory is a powerful measure of
its validity. Judged in these terms,
Dawsons analysis of the rle of patriarchy in the development of European civilization, especially as it has been enhanced by the Christian exaltation of
marriage, is a powerful theory indeed.
The last two or three pages of his essay
amount to a survey of many of the family
pathologies in embryonic form that conservative commentators have remarked
in contemporary European and American society, and that are increasingly
confirmed by sociological research.
First, Dawson notes that while families
still live in households of traditional appearance, their real purpose has been
drained away:

For in a Catholic civilization the patriarchal ideal is counterbalanced by the ideal of

virginity. The family for all its importance
does not control the whole existence of its
members. The spiritual side of life belongs
to a spiritual society in which all authority is
reserved to a celibate class. Thus in one of
the most important aspects of life the sexual
relation is transcended, and husband and
wife stand on an equal footing.23

The home is no longer a centre of social

activity; it has become merely a sleeping
place for a number of independent wageearners. The functions which were formerly
fulfilled by the head of the family are now
being taken over by the state, which educates the children and takes the responsibility for their maintenance and health. Consequently, the father no longer holds a vital
position in the family.25

Dawson thus sees patriarchy in relation to the Christian family in a way analogous to the relationship between the Old
and New Testaments. The former is fulfilled and spiritually transfigured in the
latter.
Modern critics of Christian sexual
moralityDawson mentions Bertrand
Russellfail to acknowledge that there

This is a fairly accurate prediction of

the welfare state, the family that never
shares a meal, and latch-key children.
Moreover, Dawson anticipated the way
that alternative forms of household life
would exert intolerable pressure on the
exclusive claims of marriage, once it had
lost its integrity and social function: But
if we accept the principles of the new

422

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morality, this last safeguard will be destroyed and the forces of dissolution will
be allowed to operate unchecked.26 After decades of rampant divorce, cohabitation, and illegitimacy, the looming prospect of gay marriage throughout Europe and North America seems to bear
out Dawsons worst fears.
Europe and America, he predicted, will
come to look increasingly like ancient
Greece and Rome in their decadence:
Marriage will lose all attractions for the
young and the pleasure-loving and the
poor and the ambitious. The energy of
youth will be devoted to contraceptive
love and only when men and women have
become prosperous and middle-aged will
they think seriously of settling down to
rear a strictly limited family.27 Dawson
also recognized 75 years ago the demographic effects of the dissolution of the
family, which, then as now, were willfully
ignored by the intellectual and social
elites who dominated all the organs of
respectable, liberal opinion: The advocates of birth-control can hardly fail to
realize the consequences of a progressive decline of the population in a society
in which it is already almost stationary,
but all their propaganda is entirely directed towards a further diminution of
the birth rate.28 Dawsons essay closes
with a prediction that makes Mark Steyn,29
the self-proclaimed demography bore,
look like an easy-going optimist: The

peoples who allow the natural bases of

society to be destroyed by the artificial
conditions of the new urban civilization
will gradually disappear and their place
will be taken by those populations which
live under simpler conditions and preserve the traditional forms of the family.30
Christopher Dawson knew the limitations of patriarchy in its traditional forms,
but he also knew that it was an essential
element in the rise of civilizationnot
just a particular civilization, but any civilization at all. Finally, and most important, he recognized that the only alternative to patriarchy that could support a
progressive, generous civilization was the
transformation of patriarchy in the form
of the Christian familythe social institution that has provided the basis for the
most magnanimous and abundant society the world has ever known. Dawson
recognized early in the twentieth century
that our civilization could not long survive the abandonment of its Christian
roots by peoples wishing to enjoy the
benefits without assuming responsibility for its maintenance. His prophetic vision anticipated the grotesque irony of
radical feminists, beneficiaries of Christian culture, denigrating it as an oppressive patriarchy and thus rendering it more
vulnerable to radical Islamwhich really
is a patriarchy in its ugliest and most
oppressive form.

1. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory :

Approaches, Scholars, Terms, ed. Irena R. Makaryk
(Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1993), s.v. Patriarchy. 2. The Patriarchal Family in History, ed.
John J. Mulloy (LaSalle, IL, 1978), 157. 3. Ibid., 15758. 4. Ibid., 158-59. Dawson does not mention it, but
there is an obvious resemblance to Freuds thesis
in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). 5. Ibid.,
159. 6. Ibid., 159-60. 7. Ibid., 159. 8. Ibid., 161.
Dawson cites Polybius, Histories XXXVI.17, XX.6. 9.
Catullus, The Poems, ed. Kenneth Quinn, 2nd ed.
(Houndmills and London, 1973), Carmen LXI.13436, 139-41: diceris male te a tuis / unguentate
glabris marite / abstinere, sed abstine. scimus

haec tibi quae licent / sola cognita, sed marito /

ista non eadem licent. For information on the
supposed historical model for Lesbia, Clodia
Metelli, sister of P. Clodius Pulcher and wife of Q.
Caecilius Metellus Celer, see Quinns Introduction, xv-xix and Ciceros Pro Caelio. 10. Ibid., ll.
144-46: nupta, tu quoque quae tuus / uir petet
caue ne neges, / ni petitum aliunde eat. 11. The
Latin text is from Propertius, ed. and trans. H.E.
Butler (Cambridge, MA, 1976), II.vii.5-14: At
magnus Caesar. sed magnus Caesar in armis: /
devictae gentes nil in amore valent. / nam citius
paterer caput hoc discedere collo / quam possem
nuptae perdere more faces, / aut ego transirem

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tua limina clausa maritus, / respiciens udis prodita

luminibus. / a mea tum quales caneret tibi tibia
somnos, / tibia, funesta tristior illa tuba! / unde
mihi patriis natos praebere triumphis? / nullus de
nostro sanguine miles erit.12. Q. Horati Flacci,
Opera, ed. Edward C. Wickham, 2nd ed. H.W.
Garrod (Oxford, 1912), Odes III.ii.1-3, 13:
Angustam amice pauperiem pati / robustus acri
militia puer / condiscat [.] dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori. 13. The Latin text is taken from
Ovid, Amores and Heroides, ed. and trans. Grant
Showerman (Cambridge, MA, 1977), Amores I.ix.910: militis officium longa est via; mitte puellam,
/ strenuuus exempto fine sequetur amans. 14.
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, ed. Carolus
Ludovicus Roth (Lipsiae, 1904), Divus Augusus 34:
Leges retractavit et quasdam ex integro sanxit,
ut sumptuariam et de adulteries et de pudicitia,
de ambitu, de maritandis ordinibus. Hanc cum
aliquanto severius quam ceteras emendasset,
prae tumultu recusantium perferre non potuit,
nisi adempta demum lenitave parte poenarum et
vacatione trienni data auctisque praemiis. 15.
Annales, ed. Carolus Halm (Lipsiae, 1869), III. 25:
Relatum deinde de moderanda Papia Poppaea,
quam senior Augustus post Iulias rogationes
incitandis caelibum poenis et augendo aerario
sanxerat. nec ideo coniugia et educationes liberum
frequentabantur, praevalida orbitate. 16.
Suetonius, Divus Augustus 65. For Ovids fortunes
and the Emperors futile campaign of moral reform, see Sara Mack, Ovid (New Haven and London, 1988), 36-37. 17. The Patriarchal Family in
History, 161-62. 18. Ibid., 162. 19. Ephesians 5.22,
25, 32. Sacramentum is the reading of the Vulgate,
sacrament of the Douai-Rheims translation,
which I have quoted. The Greek text reads and

424

most Protestant bibles translate mystery. Since

it is the term for sacrament in Eastern liturgies,
however, the difference is less significant than it
is sometimes presented. 20. The Julian Law on
Curbing Adultery, excerpted in Roman Civilization: Sourcebook II: The Empire, ed. Naphtali Lewis
and Meyer Reinhold (New York /Hagerstown / San
Francisco / London, 1966), 48-49. For the sharp
distinction between the norms of Christian marriage and the practices of the pagan world of the
early Roman Empire, see Francis Martin, Marriage in the New Testament Period, in Christian
Marriage: A Historical Study, ed. Glenn W. Olsen
(New York, 2001), 84-85; and Glenn W. Olsen,
Progeny, Faithfulness, and the Sacred Bond:
Marriage in the Age of Augustine, in Christian
Marriage, 106-09. 21. Summa Theologiae Suppl.
45.1: Matrimonium non facit coitus, sed voluntas
[] Ergo consensus in matrimonium est causa.
See Theresa Olsen Pierre, Marriage, Body, and
Sacrament in the Age of Hugh of St. Victor, in
Christian Marriage, 217-22. 22. Summa Theologiae
2-2.104.5: Unde non tenentur nec servi dominis,
nec filii parentibus obedire de matrimonio
contrahendo vel virginatate servanda, aut aliquo
alio huiusmodi. 23. The Patriarchal Family,
162-63. In this context Dawson is severe on the
Reformation, to which he ascribes a new
patriarchalism, resulting from its Old Testament
emphasis, that made the family the religious as
well as the social basis of society; and which he
sees, ironically, as the source of Industrialism,
the new economic order which now threatens to
destroy the family (163). 24. Ibid., 162. 25. Ibid.,
164. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 165. 28. Ibid. 29. See America
Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (Washington, DC, 2006). 30. The Patriarchal Family, 166.

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