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November 9, 2003
REVIEWS: Inciting the first labour strike
Marilyn French’s definition of feminism is “the belief that women matter as much as men do”. In her book, From Eve to Dawn, she set out to find a non-patriarchal past to prove her point. Her three-volume work is a worldwide history of women. Marilyn French devoted fifteen years of her life researching it. She worked with numerous researchers who took on the monumental task of sifting through sources in history, archaeology, anthropology, and paleontology for information on women’s lives and activities in different civilizations and societies.
Volume I, Origins, covers the earliest period to the Dark Ages; Volume II, The Masculine Mystique, deals with the role of women from feudal times to the French Revolution; Volume III, Infernos and Paradises, traces the role of women in the 19th and the 20th centuries.
Her thesis is that earlier societies were matrilineal. Women played a central role, they did most of the work, and they supported men. They were respected and revered especially for their reproductive capability.
About ten or twelve thousand years ago, men rose in rebellion against women to protect paternity. The structure of the state was devised to incarnate patriarchy. Patriarchy was spread and strengthened by religion. Over time, transcendent religion in every civilization became a major tool in propagating and maintaining patriarchy.
Marilyn French traces the origin of prostitution, private property and slavery to religion. The practice of prostitution originated in Sumer. Priests prostituted female captives and slaves to draw men and money to temples. The first reference to private property is also found in the temple records of Sumer. Temple officials bought women as labourers. So the first slaves were women.
In India, Aryans were patrilineal, but their set-up was not entirely male dominated. They used the word “Vispatni” for female head of a clan. The Law of Manu emphasized chastity, required young girls to be married to older men. It ruled that a woman should never do anything independently. She should be thrifty, fulfil her domestic duties and worship her husband as god even if he has no good points at all. These expectations still linger on in India and Pakistan.
In patriarchal societies rules were devised by the state to give men the ownership of their children and to control women. In Assyria and other cultures, infanticide was legal and widespread. Virginity was an absolute requirement for women. Adultery was a crime only for women.
In the chapter on Islam, Marilyn French highlights the contribution of women in spreading Islam. Muslim men may not like her saying that the prophet of Islam helped his wives with housework, but, for some reason, this piece of knowledge did not become a precedent for later Muslims.
Neither will Marilyn French be popular with some Jewish and Christian men. Yahweh of Exodus is not male but patriarchal, she writes. When Moses married an Ethiopian woman, directly violating his god’s law, God punished Miriam, not Moses for breaking his rule. The story teaches that women may not challenge men, she asserts. Christian women, says Marilyn French, have been active far longer than any feminist movement. When Jesus was crucified, his male followers fled, but women remained praying at his cross, arranging his burial, and returned to find his tomb empty. After the resurrection, he revealed himself to a woman ...Mary of Magdala.
Most men will not agree with her that, naming children after the father is intrinsically an act of force: it reverses natural mother-right. Before DNA testing fatherhood could not be assured. Mitochondrial DNA is passed on only by the women. Researchers have traced the origin of the human race to one woman who lived in Africa 285,000 to 143,000 years ago. Therefore, whatever the colour of our skin maybe and in spite of the differences in our facial features, we are all siblings.
The first volume, Origins, of this three volume work is the most interesting. It has some innovative interpretations from the feminist perspectives. According to French, women may have been behind the artisans’ refusal to work during the reign of Ramses III. Women are thus credited for inciting the first labour strike in history. The chapter on the history of feminism in the third volume contains some definitive assertions such as, “Feminist acts are immersed in real life” or “Feminism is a global revolution, the most important revolution in philosophical and political thought since patriarchy emerged.”
There are many fascinating claims of women’s contribution. It is thought that women devised calendars and measurements by timing their menstrual period with phases of the moon or that women were the first horticulturist and pottery makers or women may have invented the container. Such statements are not backed up by documentary evidence.
Comments such as Muslim attitudes towards women hardened simultaneously in Judaism and in Christianity dangle in the middle of a paragraph without any comparative analysis to elaborate upon the reasons for the simultaneous occurrence of this change.
Marilyn French has not come up with any earth-shaking revelations. Instead of finding a non-patriarchal past, her trilogy is really a record of the subjugation of women. She had already put forward the central argument of From Eve to Dawn in her book Beyond Power in 1982.
The style of writing is mundane, but easy to read and comprehend. The coverage is unbalanced. It varies from a long chapter on a topic to merely a page. Sometimes, the transition from one situation or period to another is abrupt. The bibliography is impressive. The glossary is very selective and tailored to the needs of the Western readers. Burqa is defined, Buddhism is explained, but there is no mention of Greek mythological figures. There is no index in volume I which makes referring back to the text impossible. The many tidbits of historical information are enjoyable.
Marilyn French is a leading and influential feminist. She is also a novelist and a literary critic. She is best known for her novel, Women’s Room, which appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for almost a year. Her novels have been translated into twenty languages. From Eve to Dawn is amongst her books on feminist theory. It is the most ambitious project she ever took on. It is really a hotchpotch of history, anthropology, sociology.
The book reiterates the known fact that there were matrilineal societies in which women were revered and held important positions. Lineage was derived from the mother’s side. Matriarchy, institutionalized the domination of women over men, which would have been as undesirable as patriarchy, if it had never existed.
From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women
Volume 1: Origins (2002)
ISBN: 1-55278-268-9. 322pp
Volume II: The Masculine Mystique (2002)
ISBN: 1-55278-323-5. 462pp
Volume III: Infernos and Paradises (2003)
ISBN: 1-55278-346-4. 967pp
By Marilyn French
McArthur & Company, Toronto
$24.95 (for each volume)
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