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This essay argues that in order to develop an understanding of patriarchy as a dynamic historical force, we need to think about it as a social formation which, like capitalism, both shapes and is shaped by other aspects of society. Also like capitalism, patriarchy embodies numerous contradictions. Those contradictions provide space for female agency, as well as possibilities of change. The ability of patriarchy to change and adapt, by moving through various contradictions, helps us understand the process by which patriarchal equilibrium is maintained. The contradictions are illustrated by an examination of two sets of failures of patriarchy in early modern England, unruly wives and failed patriarchs. Both men and women failed in the performance of patriarchy, but the ways they did so shed light on the specific ways patriarchy functions at any particular time.

Revisionism’s rise to prominence in the 1970s coincided with the emergence of feminist history. Yet the two shared little, and revisionism’s insistence on the autonomy of politics was at odds with the feminist analysis of power and politics in household and community relations; as feminist historians sought to expand the conception of the political, revisionists sought to narrow it. Yet revisionism had much in common with a strain of social history that focused on the particular and local as against broad narratives of change, and emphasized stability and consensus rather than conflict. However, both the social and political history of early modern England have to be able to account for the conflict that emerged in the mid-seventeenth century. This essay shows how gender, and particularly gendered inversion, provides a way to pull together social, political and gender history.

I was intrigued by the references to Thomas Hardy's sister's experience at the Salisbury Training College for School Mistresses ('Life Behind the Gates', April 3). My late sister-in-law attended that [...]

Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy By Frances E. Dolan Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008 Frances E. Dolan's Marriage and Violence provides a provocative and convincing analysis of [...]