Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-1900

343 Pages·2011·2.87 MB·English

by  Cynthia Eller

Gentlemen and Amazons
Gentlemen and Amazons
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861–1900

Cynthia Eller
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
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Epigraphs: Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New
York: Viking, 1979), 22. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Matriarchate or Mother-Age,” address of Mrs.
Stanton before the National Council of Women, February 1891.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2011 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eller, Cynthia, 1958–
Gentlemen and Amazons: the myth of matriarchal prehistory,
1861–1900 / Cynthia Eller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-24859-5 (cloth: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-520-26676-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Women, Prehistoric. 2. Religion, Prehistoric. 3. Matriarchy.
4. Matrilineal kinship. 5. Patriarchy. 6. Feminist theory
I. Title.
GN799.W66.E487 2011
306.85′9—dc22 2010038919
Manufactured in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on 50# Enterprise, a 30% post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber and
processed chlorine free. It is acid-free and meets all ANSI/NISO (z 39.48) requirements.
For Teresa M. Shaw,
my favorite historian
People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The
future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager
to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only
reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are
fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and
biographies and histories rewritten.
—MILAN KUNDERA
The period of woman’s supremacy lasted through many centuries—undisputed,
accepted as natural and proper wherever it existed, and was called the
matriarchate, or mother-age.
—ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

1. The Travels and Travails of Matriarchal Myth

2. Amazons Everywhere: Matriarchal Myth before Bachofen

3. On the Launching Pad: J. J. Bachofen and Das Mutterrecht

4. The Matriarchal Explosion: Anthropology Finds Mother Right (and
Itself)

5. Making Matriarchal Myth Work: Communists and Feminists
Discover the Mother Age

6. Mother Right on the Continent

7. Struggling to Stay Alive: Anthropology and Matriarchal Myth

8. Matriarchal Myth in the Late Nineteenth Century: Why Then? Why
Not Before?

Notes

Bibliography

Index
ILLUSTRATIONS

1. A fifteenth-century depiction of Amazons from The Nuremberg
Chronicle, by Hartmann Schedel
2. A classical representation of Achilles and Penthesilea, late fifth
century B.C.E.
3. François Marie Charles Fourier, French utopian socialist
4. Johann Jakob Bachofen as a young man
5. Johann Jakob Bachofen, author of Das Mutterrecht
6. Henry Sumner Maine, English jurist
7. John Ferguson McLennan, Scottish attorney
8. John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), British banker and amateur
archaeologist
9. Herbert Spencer, British popularizer of social Darwinism
10. Lewis Henry Morgan, American anthropologist
11. William Robertson Smith, Scottish philologist
12. Edward Burnett Tylor, British anthropologist
13. Karl Kautsky, Czech popularizer of Marxist theory
14. Friedrich Engels, longtime collaborator with Karl Marx
15. Karl Marx, German philosopher and economist
16. August Bebel, German labor leader
17. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American feminist activist
18. Eliza Burt Gamble, American suffragist
19. Matilda Joslyn Gage, American suffragist
20. Adolf Bastian, German ethnologist
21. Julius Lippert, Czech historian
22. Josef Kohler, German jurist and amateur ethnologist
23. Ferdinand Tönnies, German sociologist
24. Eleanor Marx-Aveling, socialist activist and daughter of Karl Marx
25. Clara Zetkin, German socialist and feminist activist
26. Edward Westermarck, Finnish anthropologist
27. Franz Boas, German American anthropologist