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PARTISAN REVIEW
but it hardly does so for women in purdah." "Ultimately the line is
drawn," as it is drawn, albeit differently, in every culture.
Nor does patriarchy imply a direct survival of the father's power
over the son, although this power relationship was once culturally
unquestioned, as for example under feudalism, or in the Victorian
family. The German psychoanalyst Alexander Mitscherlich traces the
decline of this father-son relationship under the pressures of industri–
alization, mass production, and the specialization of labor: as "work"
moves outside the home and society becomes more complex and frag–
mented, the father becomes a figure largely absent from the family,
one who has lost the "substance" of his old practical authority. Yet,
as Mitscherlich points out, "the patriarchal structural components in
our society are closely associated with magical thought .
It
assumes the
omnipotence-impotence relationship between father and son, God
and man, ruler and ruled, to be the natural principle of social organi–
zation." This omnipotence-impotence relationship exists above all
between men and women; and education, social organization, and
our own "magical thought" still bear the imprint of that paternal–
istic image.
The power of the fathers has been difficult to grasp because it
saturates everything, even the language in which we try to describe it.
It
is diffuse and concrete, symbolic and literal, universal and ex–
pressed with local variations which may obscure its universality.
Under patriarchy, I may live in
purdah
or drive a truck; I may raise
my children on a
kibbutz
or be the sole breadwinner for
a
fatherless
family or participate in a demonstration against abortion legislation
with my baby on my back; I may work as a "barefoot doctor" in a
village commune in the People's Republic of China or make my life
on a lesbian commune in New England; I may become a hereditary or
elected head of state or wash the underwear of a millionaire's wife; I
may serve my husband his early-morning coffee within the clay walls
of a Burbar village or march in an academic procession; whatever my
status or situation, my derived economic class, whatever my sexual
preference or lifestyle, I live under the power of the fathers, and I
have access only to so much of privilege or influence as the patriarchy
is willing to accede to me and only for so long as I will pay the price
for male approval. And this power goes much further than laws and
customs; in the words of Brigitte Berger, "until now a primarily
