434 Book Reviews
order and disorder in the new republic. Boston: Little,
Brown and Company.
Ryan, Mary. (1981). Cradle of the middle class: 7hefamily in
Oneida County, New York, 1759-1863. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Sklar, Katbryn Kish. (1976). C%rthrineBeecher: A study in
American domesdciity. New York: W. W. Norton.
Smith-Rosenberg. Carroll. (1971). Beauty, the beast and the mil-
itant woman: A case study of sex roles and social stress in
Jacksonian America. American Quarferly, 23,562-S&4.
DANCEOFTHESPUUT: THE SEVENSTEPSOF WOMENS
SPIRITUALITY, by Maria Harris. 223 pages. Bantam
Books, New York. 1991. Softcover. USS10.00: hard-
bound; USS17.95.
How do we get in touch with our center, with our bro-
kenness and blessedness? How do we work through the
ups and downs of every day life in such a way that we
can grow and meet the next day more fully human? Ma-
ria l&is has some suggestions in her book Dunce ofthe
Spirit: The Seven Steps c?fWomens Spirituality. Very
simply, she says we &~learn to tak; the t&e to bk
quiet and examine what is going on in our lives and allow
our individual spirituality to develop.
Maria Ha& teach& at Fordh& University in the
Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education
and at New York University in the Program in Religious
Studies, as well as being a member of the core faculty at
Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. She is the
author of many books and articles on teaching.
Harris has seven steps in the dance: Awakening, Dis-
covering, Creating. Dwelling, Nourishing, Traditioning,
and Transforming. At the beginning of each step she
asks us to pause and center ourselves with the theme;
then there is the input; and at the end there are exercises
to help the reader move more deeply into the concept be-
ing discussed.
Those who have been involved with searching for
their spiritual center might find the book rather slow
moving, especially at thebeginning, andmay be tempted
to say, I have done all of that. But as the book goes
on, there seems to be a greater depth as the dam&s
become more proficient in the dance. Dunce of the
Spirit is both very similar and very different from other
books on women and spirituality. While there is nothing
in this book that cannot be found in other places, the
practices at the end of each chapter help to integrate
many of the issues in a unique way. It is not a radical
book; rather it deals with many of the simple issues of
living and being the fullest person each is called to be. It
can be used by all age groups and traditions, drawing on
all the major religions, except Islam.
Harris encourages the reader to use the suggested
practices in the order and form which are most useful.
She also stresses the importance of taking 15 to 20 min-
utes a day to be in touch with the inner self. In general,
it is helpful to follow the practices through in the order
presented, at least for the first time. Many will find some
practices appeal more than others and will probably
want to repeat them.
The practices are designed to be done alone or with a
group. Several toward the end are group activities. How-
ever you choose to do them, there is a pattern for growth
and deepening. The steps of traditioning (handing on to
others) and transforming are definitely steps that call us
out of ourselves and towards others. As in all real spiri-
tuality we are encouraged to move inward then outward
and then forward.
This book can easily be reread, redanced, more than
once.
BARBARAJOSEPHLAMMERS
UNIVERSITYOFSOUTHCAROLINA
COLUMBIA,%, USA
THE CREATION OF PATRLUCHY, by Gerda Lemer,
1984. Oxford University Press, England.
Gerda Lemers explanation of female subordination is
probably not the right explanation, and it is far less radi-
cally feminist than the writer would have us believe.
Nevertheless, The Creation of Patricrrchy is an impor-
tant book. Its author is an important historian, it asks
important questions, and it has won an important prize.
But it is also a dangerous book, and has been attacked
for the wrong reasons while its real defects and dangers
go unchallenged and unexposed.
A case in pointis the early review by Sarah Pomeroy
(1986), who accuses Lemer of reading her sources in
translation, of taking myth as literal truth, and of con-
flating the four societies whose law codes she studies.
These are noncrimes-the first because no outsider
could be expected to learn all of the ancient languages
involved here; and the second and third because Lemer
is innocent of them. It might indeed have been useful for
Lerner to know the languages, so as to interpret the texts
independently. On the other hand, the value of outsider-
hood for gaining perspective shouId never be underesti-
mated; and surely we can rely to some degree on the fine
orientalists who have spent decades translating these an-
cient texts. Moreover, Lerner makes no secret of using
translations. She is meticulous about citing her sources,
so that specialists can check any doubtful readings for
themselves.
Nor does Lemer, as I read the book, take myth as
history or literal truth. What she does say (p. ll), and
the point is an important one, is: By tracing the changes
in metaphor or images, it should be possible to trace the
underlying historical developments in society, even in
the absence of other historical evidence (emphasis
added).
Finally, Lerner is well aware of the uniqueness of the
four societies in question, for she says (p. 101):
Looking at these law codes, which represent four dif-
ferent societies over . . . a thousand years, we might
despair of . . . deriving any solid insights into the so-
cieties concerned, if it were not for the fact that there
seems to have been a continuity of legal concepts and
common law practice among them.
She then goes on as always to specify her sources and
Ironically, however, as Lemer told a Berkshire
Womens History Conference audience in 1987, she had
been turned down for every grant she applied for since
the book appeared.
 Book Reviews
give examples of these continuities. Later (p. 134). she
says, Assyriologists generally assume that a common
body of legal concepts prevailed in the region for nearly
two thousand years.
Sarah Pomeroys parting shot at Lerner is to caution
her and other feminist historians against lavishing their
energies on synthetic views of prehistory. Prehistory
may be the playground of the intellectual, in other
words. but Lemer is not allowed to play.
Whats really going on here, of course, as Jean
Bethke Elshtain points out in her 1987 review, is simply
that Pomeroy takes one side and Lemer the other of the
particular&/generalist controversy in the conduct of
history. The particularists allow no one to speak of the
forest until every tree is known right down to its DNA
map; the generalists insist that the forest is too important
to ignore in the meantime, and boldly proffer theories
and overviews for the particularists to test. In the best of
all possible worlds, or even just in a better world than
ours, the two views would enrich each other. As it is, ad-
herents waste energy attacking each other and-as with
Lemers book-the smoke of battle obscures more seri-
ous causes for concern.
My objections to the book are quite different. Cre-
ation has several genuine and major flaws, which need
to be squarely addressed.
A fundamental flaw is methodological, specifically
Lerners choice of material for analysis. There is nothing
inherently wrong with taking law codes spanning a thou-
sand years as a reflection of social change in general and
of the status of women in particular over that millen-
nium. But if the change in question happened over 700
years before the earliest law code mentioned-and prob-
ably more than 1,308 years before the first code exam-
ined in detail, then a severe problem arises. Indeed, if
men had always exchanged women, and sexual/repro-
ductive oppression were indeed primary and paradigma-
tic, then the whole question of the book would seem to
become moot.
Second, and in the long run perhaps even more seri-
ous, Lemer promises us a feminist analysis. (As she ex-
plained in her eloquent response to three comments on
Creation at the 1987 Berkshire Womens History Con-
ference, she wrote the book because she suddenly real-
ized that all the accepted world views were male, and she
wanted to change that situation.) Then she proceeds to
rely more or less uncritically on the work of male think-
ers such as Claude Levi-Strauss, who is convinced of the
universal subordination of women. Levi-Strausss view
that men have always exchanged women, in fact, under-
lies Lemers entire argument in the book; yet Lemer
never reconstructs for us Levi-Strausss evidence or his
2Lemer does criticize Levi-Strauss for seeing women
as victims, or passive entities in the creation of history
and culture (p. 25): We should note that in Levi-
Strausss theory men are the actors who impose a set of
structures and relations on women. Such an explanation
cannot be considered adequate. Then she asks, How
did this happen? but never really answers her own ques-
tion. What she does not seem to see is that if men have
always exchanged women, then women are just ob-
jects or victims, and it is Levi-Strauss and not Lerner
who is consistent in his explanation.
435
argument, as surely she must in a non-specialists book.
How, for example, did society move from the situation
Calm Tumbull(l981) describes for the Mbuti in the fol-
lowing passage-or any situation imaginable in early
matrilineal societies-to males exchanging females?:
The young girls during the celebration of the elima
puberty rite have authority (Turnbulls word) over the
young men. The girls all stay in the elima hut, which then
becomes the courtship arena. Youths from nearby hunt-
ing bands gather outside every afternoon. Aside from
deliberately keeping the boys waiting. the girls have
an even more telling way of showing their power, for
to be invited into the elima hut, . . . one has to be
chosen by a girl, who issues the invitation by deliver-
ing a sound whipping to the boy of her choice with a
long, supple sapling. Even that did not give us instant
access. There were the elima songs to be sung, a joint
endeavor, in which the boys had the subordinate role
of providing a background chorus. When the girls re-
tired back into their hut, those who had been
whipped could follow, but . . . [t]he moment the
girls retired, the mothers all gathered in front of the
hut, armed with sticks and stones, some with bows
with which they fired small missiles. No one entered
unscathed, and the mothers wereperfectly capable of
preventing any undcrirable from entering whether he
had been whipped or not. The little authority we
male youths could exercise during the molimo made,
real though it was, paled &fore this show of physical
and psychological power. Even when walking
through the forest, boys were likely to be ambushed
by the elimo girls and soundly thrashed [emphasis
mine].
This does not sound to me like males exchanging fe-
males. Indeed, one wonders how the males can be so
masochistic as to put up with this kind of treatment.
If we are to have a feminist analysis, why not follow
Eleanor Leacocks brilliant examination (1980) of sex-
egalitarianism in pre-tribal societies. or Ruby Rohrlichs
landmark work (1980) on state formation and the rise of
patriarchy in Crete and Sumer? (Lerner seems in fact si-
lently to rely on Rohrlichs work even though dismissing
it in her text.)
Lemer also departs seriously from a feminist stance
in her acceptance of hoary androcentric terms and defi-
nitions that have long distorted our concept of our past.
For example, though aware of the relative importance of
gathering and hunting in prehistory. she always speaks
of hunting-gathering rather than gathering-hunting soci-
eties, which would be more accurate, or foraging socie-
ties, which would be neutral. Lerner accepts the conven-
tional (male) definition of civilization as beginning with
recorded history, or writing as we know it, in the 4th mil-
lennium BC, whereas the work of Marija Gimbutas
(1982). James Mellaart (1%7);and others clearly shows
that this is several millennia too late. After an initial pro-
test, she lapses into speaking of temple or sacred prosti-
tutes, rather than sexualcelebrants or any nonpejorative
term. And she repeatedly uses cult rather than religion to
describe Goddess-worship persisting after the rise of
male monotheism.
In this great flaw lies also the major danger of the
book. which is that it may be accepted as a truly radical
feminist analysis.
436 Book Reviews
A third serious flaw in The Creation of Patriarchy
arises from one of the books greatest strengths: Lerners
insistence that women were and are actors in history and
culture, not just objects or victims, and consequently
that we must ask how and why they could be induced to
acquiesce and even participate in their own sexual and
reproductive oppression. Indeed we must ask, for the
question is central, not only to an understanding of fe-
male subordination in our culture, but to a proper un-
derstanding of what was really happening in the Bronze
Age Near East. It is equally crucial whether one postu-
lates a previous matriarchy or considers that -archy us
we know it arose in proto-Western cultures with patriar-
chy and kingship/monarchy.3 Particularly is it crucial
for feminists because the alternative is to see woman as
victim, and thus ultimately dehumanized. Unfortu-
nately, Lerner fails to give a satisfactory answer to her
own question.
Lerners explanation, that women were co-opted or
kept in line by force, economic dependency on the male
family head, class privileges, and a divide-and-conquer
strategy consisting of separating women into respectable
and nonrespectable, veiled and unveiled, simply is not
convincing. She fails to show us how force became
thinkable against a prima inter pares who alone could
give birth and moreover was the same sex as the main
deity. When and how did women become strikingly
weaker (physically) than men, when womens workload
and the unequal division of labor, both in gathering-
hunting times and in the early agrovillages as Elise Boul-
ding describes them in The Underside of History (1976),
probably meant that the women would be very strong in-
deed? How and when did a male rather than a female
become head of the family, and economically dominant?
If sexual subordination preceded the development of
class and of private property, as Lerner argues, how can
class and property-related factors be used to explain sex-
ual subordination?
It seems far from clear to me that sexual subordina-
tion came first. At the very least, the evidence from ar-
chaeology and anthropology (e.g., Dahlberg, 1981)
needs to be examined. According to Marek Zvelebil
(1986) there is archaeological evidence of distinctions in
wealth and status and arguably even in class as early as
the Mesolithic in Northern Europe. Social stratifica-
tion is reported from Beidha in the Levant in the very
early Neolithic (Boulding 1976. 117). Seals and seal im-
pressions from Central Mesopotamia imply not only
personal property but perhaps some form of central re-
distributive agency as early as the 6th Millennium BC
(Sherratt, 1980, p. 112), and Ruby Rohrlich (1980) sees
Proponents of the latter view postulate a more con-
sensual society governed by councils of female and male
elders, with generally egalitarian relationships between
the sexes based on complementary but mutually neces-
sary work and mutual respect. Women were priestesses
to a dominant female deity in a land where religion was
vital and integral to life and where high priestesses came
as near to rulers as existed. Women were scribes and op-
erated scribal schools. Women played important eco-
nomic roles from farming to trading; and women were
in charge of their own sexual and reproductive lives.
a merchant class arising very early in the Sumerian
cities, well before Lerners period of analysis. In fact,
Lerners neglect of archaeology may be far more signifi-
cant than her inability to read Sumerian.
And why, to return to Lerners theory, did women
stand for such a division among them?
There are missing factors in Lerners analysis, and
important among them is economics. Womens power
and status were high when women dominated agricul-
ture, and agriculture began to dominate the economy.
As James Mellaart discovered at Catal Htiytik, represen-
tations of the male god declined when agriculture tri-
umphed (about 5800/5600 BC), and eventually disap-
peared altogether (Mellaart 1%7). Barley was money in
Mesopotamia, and the Sumerian rulers title at one time
meant Administrator of the ploughed fields. Con-
versely, it seems reasonable to suggest that womens
power and status declined when they no longer domi-
nated agriculture-when sustenance was no longer in a
woman, but, as the Sumerian Farmers Almanac of the
third millennium BC maintained, in a plough (presum-
ably guided by a man; see Kramer, 1963, 104ff, 340).
Women lost control of their children when they no
longer fed those children with their own labor, and no
longer determined the disposition of the crops they
raised.
The population factor must also be considered. The
post-agricultural population curve has been hotly de-
bated: Was it explosion or steady increase? Good figures
are hard to come by, but Marvin Harris estimates that
the population of the Near East increased sixtyfold be-
tween 7000 BC and 2000 BC (Hams, 1974, p. 44). The
question is still being debated, but either an explosion or
a steady increase affects women more severely than men.
and thus must form part of a feminist analysis of events
in the Bronze Age Near East. Looking at the question
from a feminist point of view, moreover, we can reason-
ably postulate that changes in diet (more fat, more estro-
gen) and exercise (reduced levels), plus a tendency to
supplement breast milk with other infant food and thus
stop nursing sooner, would not only bring earlier pu-
berty and more regular ovulation, but reduce the effec-
tiveness of nursing as a contraceptive, dramatically in-
creasing fertility.
Thus whatever else happened, there may have been a
birth explosion, resulting in more frequent discommod-
ing periods of late pregnancy and early lactation in a
womans working life. Also, more newborns might be al-
lowed to survive beyond birth in a non-nomadic culture,
but live just long enough to demand maximum care, dy-
ing in early childhood. Grain-based weaning foods are
less nourishing than breast milk, and infectious disease
becomes more prevalent in crowded, permanent dwell-
ings. Thus the childbearing workload for women would
increase quite disproportionately to the numbers of chil-
dren reaching reproductive age. In short, women could
suffer all the effects of a population explosion-with the
added agony of repeated child deaths-while demogra-
phers saw only a steady moderate increase.
The important point for our analysis here is the dif-
ference between childcare done as an integral part of
womans overall work and childcare as a significant bur-
den or share of work in itseu. If this threshold were
reached at approximately the same time as agriculture
reached an analogous threshold-becoming something a
 Book Reviews
woman could no longer learn from her mother and do as
part of her daily work, but a profession or a full-time
job in itself-the results would be disastrous for wom-
ens economic role and status in the society.
Population is also important to the question raised
earlier, how women could have accepted curtailment of
their sexual and reproductive freedom. From earliest
times, individual women decided how many children to
have, guided by local custom, their mothers and mid-
wives, their wishes for sexual freedom balanced by their
love of children, their health or strength, and their own
economic capacity to feed their offspring. When they de-
cided their family was complete, they used abortion, in-
fanticide, and available contraceptive measures to keep
their family at that size.
But suppose that at some point, about 3000 BC-
perhaps for the first time in human history-a whole so-
ciety began to be aware of overpopulation. This could
have happened not only because of cumulative popula-
tion increase following upon sedentism and intensive
agriculture, but because of immigration by nomads de-
prived of their winter grazing grounds by that very agri-
culture, or-and here is the new factor-attracted by the
lure of the new cities. For the first time in human history,
groups of people may not have wished to move on when
an area became crowded.
At least one strand of mythological evidence sup-
ports this idea of a societal consciousness of
overpopulation.
In the Atrahasis version of the Flood Myth. unlike
the version preserved in the Hebrew Bible, the gods de-
cide to kill earthlings not because they are evil, but be-
cause they are too numerous and noisy. And when the
other gods learn that Atrahasis and his family have sur-
vived their Final Solution because of Enkis warning,
they decide to kill this last family, too. The compromise
Enki negotiates to save them-and thus humankind-is
in part a birth-control compromise. At least two classes
of priestesses shah bear no children, and among the peo-
ple at large there shah be bearing women and barren
women.
This myth, though not written down till the mid-
second millennium BC, is probably considerably older.
If a myth could portray divine regulation of fertility,
perhaps population had reached the point where state
regulation was becoming thinkable. Presumably this
consciousness would have affected women as well as
men. And it might have seemed more fitting and closer
to ancient custom-both to women and to men, whether
mythmakers, decisionmakers, or those abiding by the
decisions-to apply the new rules to women. In other
words, women might have seen the compromise not as
discriminatory against them, but as continuous with
their ancient rights and responsibilities for controlling
their own fertility. Moreover, it may be that the priest-
esses were not to be totally celibate, but that they were to
bear no children to their earthly husbanak They might
1 am indebted for this idea to Anne Draffkorn Ril-
mer of the Near Eastern Studies Department at the Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley. See her paper, The Mes-
opotamian Concept of Overpopulation and Its Solution
As Reflected in the Mythology, Orientalia 41 (n.s..
fast. 2). 1972: 160-77.
431
still have children as the result of sexual rites in the
temples.
Jewish tradition, too, hints of a division between
bearing women and barren women. The Genesis Rabbah
contains a tale whereby at the time of the Flood men
used to have two wives, one for childbearing, and one
for pleasure. The latter drank a cup of roots so as not
to bear children.
And so, perhaps, it began, as a more or less willing
compliance with a perceived social necessity; perceived,
that is, by both women and men.
Finally, Lerners apparent lack of familiarity with
important recent work in anthropology causes her to op-
erate from faulty premises. For example, it is not true.
as Lerner says on p. 29, that a [gathering] woman needs
a hunter. Except in the Arctic (and perhaps in the perig-
lacial cultures of the Ice Age), females could survive on
what they gather, especially since gathering often in-
cludes small animals and other good sources of protein
such as nuts and grubs. Men, however, could not survive
on what they hunt, especially since the hunt is often un-
successful. Thus it would be more accurate to say that a
hunter needs a gatherer. Moreover, women do hunt in
some cultures, as for instance the Agta women of the
Philippines and the Tiwi women of Melville Island near
Australia (Estioko-Griffin 1987, Goodale 1971), though
this factor has been underreported in anthropological
studies up to now. Nor is meat everywhere considered
the most valued food. Diane Bell points out, for exam-
ple, in Daughters ofthe Dreaming (1984) that aboriginal
Australian women do not feel this way at all. The pro-
meat attitude does seem to be widespread, but is not uni-
versal, and has probably been over-reported for the same
reason womens hunting and males economic depen-
dence on females have been underreported: Western and
androcentric bias among anthropologists.
The Creation of Patriarchy contains some minor
flaws worth mentioning as well, since they could be cor-
rected in future editions:
First and foremost, for her nonspecialist audience
Lerner needs to provide (1) a chronology of her study pe-
riod with the variant datings in parentheses or otherwise
clarified (perhaps on an endpaper for easy reference),
and (2) an appendii giving the full translated texts of the
law codes she analyzes. As the book now stands, it seems
to contradict itself several times on dates. In fairness,
Lerner herself acknowledges this at the beginning, but
her note on the subject is not sufficient to save the reader
from confusion. Another minor problem, deplorable in
an important book from a quality publisher, is the num-
ber of typos and small errors of other sorts.
When all this is said, however, Gerda Lemer deserves
kudos for Creation of Patriarchy on at least three
grounds: (1) for reminding us what is arguably the most
significant question in modern thought, the how and
why of womens subordination; (2) her brilliant opening
metaphor, drawn from the theatre (p. 12), for that sub-
ordination; and (3) her insistence on women as actors
rather than victims in our own destiny. Indeed, had she
titled her book The Codification of Patriarchy. she
might have been safe from major criticism.
Let us hope that more reviewers follow Elshtains
lead, and examine the book on its real merits and de-
fects. On quite another level. let us hope that a distin-
guished parade of specialists and nonspecialists now fol-
438 Book Reviews

low Gerda Lerners lead in exploring one of the central Goodale, Jane. (1971). Tiwi wives: A study of the women of
mysteries of Western civilization. Melville Island, North Austrotia. Seattle: University of
AUTUMNSTANLEY Washington Press.
Harris, Marvin. (1984). Cows,pigs, worsund witches. NY: Ran-
INDEPENDENTSCHOLAR
dom House.
INSTITUTEFORHISTORICALSTUDY Kilmer, Anne D. (1972). The Mesopotamian concept of overpo-
CALIFORNIA,USA pulation and its solution as reflected in the mythology, Ori-
entolio 41 (n.s., fast. 2), 160-177.
Kramer, Samuel. The Sumerians: Their htstoty, culture, ond
REFERENCES character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Leacock, Eleanor. (1980). Myihr of mole dominance
Bell,Diane. (1984).
Daughters of the dreaming. London: Allen . . . . New York: Monthly Review Press.
Unwin. Mellaart, James. (1967). Catal Hiiyiik: A neolithic town in Ana-
Boulding, Elise. (1976). The underside ofhistory. Boulder, CO: tolia. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Westview Press. Pomeroy, Sarah. (1986). When no one wore the pants. New
Dahlberg, Frances (Ed.). (1981). Woman thegatherer. New Ha- York Times Book Review, 12.
ven, CT: Yale University Press. Rohrlich, Ruby. (Spring, 1980). State formation in Sumer and
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. (1987). In the grand manner, Womens the subjugation of women, Feminist Studies 6,76-102.
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Estioko-Griffin, Agnes, 8r Bion Griffin, P. Woman the hunter: ology.New York: Crown/Cambridge.
The agta. In Frances Dahlberg (Ed.), Womun the gutherer. Turnbull, Colin. (1981). Mbuti womanhood. In Frances Dahlb-
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. erg (Ed.), Woman the gutherer, New Haven, CT: Yale Unl-
Gimbutas, Marija. (1982). The goddess@ and gods of old Eu- versity Press.
rope. 6500-3500 BC: Myths and cult images. London: Zvelebll, Marek. (1988). Postglacial foraging in the forests of
Thames & Hudson. Europe, Scientific American 2545). 104-l IS.