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‘God Hath Ordained to Man a Helper’: Hobbes, Patriarchy and Conjugal Right

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Carole Pateman
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Extract

There are two conflicting and equally misleading interpretations of Hobbes: either he is a patri-archalist like Filmer – but the premise of Hobbes's theory is that political right originates in maternal not paternal lordship; or he is an anti-patriarchalist – but he endorses the subjection of wives to husbands in civil society. To appreciate how Hobbes turns mother right into a specifically modern, non-paternal form of patriarchy, an understanding is required of his peculiar view of the family as a protective association of master and servants that originates in conquest (contract). Secondly, a conjectural history of the defeat of women by men in the natural condition and their incorporation into ‘families’ has to be provided. The overthrow of mother right enables men to enter the original contract, to create Leviathan in their own image, and to secure the fruits of their conquest by establishing patriarchal political right, exercised in large part as conjugal right.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 445 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

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3 Contemporary feminist arguments about patriarchy are discussed in Pateman, Carole, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), chap. 2.Google Scholar

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38 I am grateful to Peter Morriss for raising the question of generations and for other helpful criticisms.

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