The Feminist Appropriation of Matriarchal Myth in the 19th and 20th Centuries (original) (raw)
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This article surveys literature on history, archaeology, and ethnography, from Lafitau, Morgan, Marx and Engels to Matilda Joslyn Gage and Barbara Mann, Bachofen to Jacquetta Hawkes. It also proposes that patriarchy is a historical development, questions functionalist interpretations of myths (or oral histories) of male takeovers. It looks at the furor over the work of Marija Gimbutas, Eller's charges of "essentialism" and "goddess monotheism," and theories about whether patriarchal social organization originated among foragers or agriculturalists. All the heated rhetoric about "matriarchy" avoids the real issue, which is the existence of cultures that did not enforce a patriarchal double standard or make females legal minors ruled by fathers, brothers, and husbands. Matricultures still exist today in some parts of the world, albeit under threat as all Indigenous cultures are. Whatever terminology we choose to use for them is not the point; it is that they existed and have existed in the past.
DO THE IDEAS OF THE ‘MYTHS OF MATRIARCHY’ PREVAIL IN THE MODERN WORLD?
Hossain, D. M. (2013), Do the Ideas of the ‘Myths of Matriarchy’ Prevail in the Modern World?, Journal of Arts, Science and Commerce, Vol. IV, No. 2, pp. 115-120. (India)
Myths about women exist in the society. In many cases, these myths depict women as mysterious, deceptive and instigators of sins. This article concentrates on whether these ideas about women portrayed in the prehistoric myths still exist in the modern world. In order to fulfill this objective, the article takes Joan Bamberger's (1974) discussions on the myths of matriarchy in different tribes of South American Indians. The common characteristics of these myths were identified and the modern situations were analysed on the basis of those characteristics. The article concludes that though these myths represent the prehistoric world, some of these ideas are still prevailing in the world.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2013
Johann Jakob Bachofen, author of Das Mutterrecht (Das Mutterrecht: Eine Untersuchung der die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer relgiösen und rechtlichen Natur. Basel, Switzerland: Benno Schwabe, 1861) and modern inventor of the idea that prehistoric societies were matriarchal and goddess-worshipping, had little impact on the Anglo-American world, but he was tremendously influential in the German-speaking world. In the first decades of the twentieth century, his works were revived and provided much of the groundwork for fascist understandings of myth and symbol in Germany. Impressively, Bachofen’s ideas about matriarchy found champions even among the Nazi leadership, in spite of the Third Reich’s overall celebration of Aryan manliness. The ability of matriarchal myth to function on both the political left (as among communists and feminists from the 1880s to the present) and the political right (from Bachofen through National Socialist Germany) raises interesting questions about the political uses of matriarchal myth in particular, and also about myth in general.
Throughout the historical process, in many of the different civilizations, a gender-oriented approach, such as the lack of housing of women or girls in social life, has led to ideas that transform women into nothingness in everyday life. However, for the first time in the public sphere, women's influence in the social sphere with the realization of the industrial revolution did not prevent the woman from being placed in a secondary position. The feminist movement, which advocates the denied rights of women in male-dominated societies, fills an intellectually important gap in the social sphere. On the other hand, the common goal of the feminist movements that come together to prevent women from being pushed to the second plan within the social structure is to restore the honor and pride of the oppressed woman. Especially, even though the different feminist movements that emerged after the industrial revolution tried different ways in terms of practice and method, the goal they wanted to reach was to carry the power of the woman to the public sphere with her hand. This research focuses on women's participation in the public sphere as well as their private sphere, and examines the role of women in society in the context of feminist theories with historical and contemporary headings.
Sons of the Mother: Victorian Anthropologists and the Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory
Gender & History, 2006
More than a century before many American feminists embraced the idea that prehistoric societies were woman-centered, if not woman-ruled, this theory was an all but universally-accepted history of humanity laid out by prominent anthropologists, especially in Great Britain. Caught in the wave of the emerging doctrine of evolutionism, Victorian anthropologists began in the 1860s and 1870s to examine “primitives” for evidence of their own prehistoric cultural development. Differences among peoples that had previously been placed on a geographic map of cultural diffusion became data used to form a chronological timeline of human cultural development. This article explores some of the variants of the matriarchal thesis set forth by Victorian-era anthropologists, and asks what social factors led to the widespread acceptance of the theory of matriarchal prehistory in late-nineteenth century England and its abandonment beginning at the turn of the twentieth century.