Part IV — Wifepower — In the Nest of His Own Matriarch
9. The Facade of Patriarchy
My husband may be the head of the house; I am the neck that turns the head.
Many mammal societies once thought to be run by a dominant male are now known to be matriarchies. Elephants are a good example. Because the big bull — the Alpha male — is always the most noticeable and the most threatening, he was always mistakenly thought to be the leader. But the true herd ruler is the Alpha female, who has swiftly and quietly led the group away to safety. She is the one who takes all the decisions.53 Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op.cit., p.117.
Contrary to feminist propaganda, which alleges that most human societies are, and have been, patriarchies, human societies are no exception to the rule of matriarchies operating covertly behind a facade of patriarchy. Indeed, patriarchy is a facade, most soothing to the male ego, for wife rule. That this is so is confirmed by women from some of the most dissimilar cultures in the world. Take what an American housewife told me during a wedding reception on a boat in Boston Harbour, quoted above, about the neck that turns the head. And take what a Saudi Arabian woman professor said on the BBC World Service:54 BBC World Service, September 23, 1982. “The traditional Saudi wife runs her family and runs her husband.”
It may be tempting to say that even if patriarchy is a facade for matriarchy in the home, it couldn’t be so in public life, which is almost exclusively a male turf. But alas, whether in the home or the public arena, matriarchy is the law of life. This proposition may be demonstrated by first looking at some societies where matriarchy is not entirely covert, but operates, in part, through formal, public institutions.
In many traditional African societies, men and women have long had parallel organizations and complementary institutional powers. It is usual for the king, the queen (who, by the way, is not the wife of the king but the head of the women’s parallel branch of public organization), the war marshal and the queen mother, with their respective councils and officials, to exercise separate and countervailing powers. Viewed from that world, much of Western political practices can be quite puzzling. Zulu Sofola, a Nigerian playwright and researcher into African traditions, once retold the following conversation which had taken place between herself and her mother. It occurred at a time when Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Britain, was embroiled in one of her political battles. Zulu Sofola’s mother, who lives in the traditional Igbo milieu, asked her:
‘Everybody is talking ill of Margaret Thatcher. Why doesn’t she use her powers to stop them?’
‘She has no powers other than those of men,’ Zulu replied.
‘But where is their Otu-Omu (the council of women)? The Omu should take the matter up and set these men right. Who do they think they are?’ demanded Zulu’s mother.
‘White people don’t have Omu,’ Zulu explained.
‘Ah! Who speaks for the women?’ her mother wondered.
‘In the white man’s world, nobody speaks for women,’ Zulu told her.
As part of the intricate system of checks and balances in some traditional African societies, women exercise the most effective sanction against misrule. When a king becomes intolerable to his subjects, a procession of grandmothers will march naked to his palace. No ruler survives this final and dramatic repudiation by the mothers of his subjects. Usually, the threat of this march is enough to bring erring dictatorial rulers to heel.
In the West, where parallel male and female public institutions are not the norm, women nevertheless operate a covert matriarchy. As society matrons, Western elite women control political parties from behind the scenes, from places where they are safe from political shrapnel. Those very few (like Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meir) who insist on savouring the risks of political combat, have run the men around them like nannies run their packs of little boys. For example, here is how Margaret Thatcher, by manipulating men’s fear of women, manages the male politicians and civil servants around her. According to Anthony King, Professor of Government at Essex University:
Mrs Thatcher is, in her personal dealings, a considerate person. She has no trouble in winning the affection and loyalty of those in her immediate circle, principally at No. 10 Downing Street. Nevertheless, in her relations with her fellow ministers, civil servants and Conservative MPs, her distinctive weapon — far more than in the cases of men like Churchill, Macmillan or Wilson — is fear… In Mrs Thatcher’s case, the use of fear as a political weapon does not imply the use of the chopping block or of the garrotte. On the contrary, those who Mrs Thatcher politically executes can look forward to a knighthood if they are lucky, to a life peerage if they are luckier. Rather, Mrs Thatcher uses fear in two less malign ways that are nevertheless equally effective. The first is by means of face-to-face fear: ‘fear at first hand’. Mrs Thatcher has a formidable personality, and she is capable of hectoring, cajoling, threatening, wrong-footing, bullying, embarrassing and even humiliating her Ministers and officials… She puts the fear of God into people, and they usually respond well. Of course, there is no need to use this particular weapon very often: fear of being on the receiving end of a Prime Ministerial tongue-lashing — or even merely of Prime Ministerial froideur — is usually adequate to the purpose.
One specific aspect of her use of face-to-face fear is worth mentioning. Mrs Thatcher long ago observed that most well-brought-up Englishmen — especially, though not only, if they went to a public school — have no idea what to do with a strong, assertive woman. Not only are they brought up not to be rude to women: they find it very difficult in general to deal with women in the same matter-of-fact, direct way that they deal with men.
Women to them are mothers or nannies to be feared or sisters to be bullied (or, alternatively, adored). The average Englishman of the middle and upper classes simply quails in the presence of a formidable female personality, torn between the desire to strike and the desire to sulk, not knowing what an appropriate response would be. Mrs Thatcher long ago noticed that such Englishmen found it hard to stand up to her — and conceived a considerable contempt for the whole tribe. As one of her former Ministers, Sir John Nott, said in a recent television interview, she thinks all men are ‘wimps.‘55 Anthony King, "Mrs Thatcher: Matching Up to Princely Standards", in The Daily Telegraph (London), October 6, 1988, p.12.
While the Maggie Thatchers are very few, it is more usual for ruling class matriarchs to run ruling class patriarchs who run the affairs of the world. Recall the case of Mary Cunningham of the USA. In the late 1970s, she had used what Nigerians would call “bottom power” to rocket to Vice-president for Strategy at Bendix Corporation, and to become its effective second-in-command. In speaking about her controversial relationship with William Agee, the Chairman of Bendix (whom she later married), she noted:
The indirect ways are more powerful… I’m building the chairman’s faith in me so I can sit at his shoulder and influence him for the good of society.56 Gail Sheehy, "The Bendix Furor — Woman's Untold Story", The San Francisco Chronicle, October 13, 1980, p.6.
Yes, of course! Only for the good of society!
Perhaps the best recent example of how grand matriarchs run the grand patriarchs is that of Winston Churchill, the great 20th century war leader of the British. A woman neighbour of mine in London once claimed that men were babies. In disbelief, I asked her if she thought that even leaders like Churchill were babies. “Churchill was the biggest baby of all,” she replied. Not long after, I read Mary Soames’ biography of her mother, Lady Clementine Churchill, and had to agree that Winston, if not quite a baby, was a standard patriarch — outwardly strong, dominating and masterly, but in fact a champion coached and managed by none other than his wife!
On the jacket blurb of the biography, I read:
Clementine Churchill was the perfect wife for Winston. For 57 years she supported him through the triumphs, disasters and tensions which ruled his public and private life… Always Winston trusted her completely and she became a valuable counsellor and companion. He invariably wanted her opinion — but did not always take her advice. She believed in him passionately, and in his destiny — standing beside him in public seemingly serene, cool and detached.57 Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill, London: Cassell, 1979, jacket blurb.
Now, that passage could easily describe any famous manager-athlete relationship, like the famous Angelo Dundee-Muhammed Ali combination. Of course, as Winston’s coach-manager, Clementine, her coaching done, would sit by the ringside and look on, cool and detached, or even stay away from the bloody fight, while her ward battled it out in the political ring. For Clementine, coaching and managing Winston was a conscious and dedicated career. Here is how their daughter, Mary, puts it:
Winston was to be Clementine’s lifework. Her concentration on him and his career consumed the cream of her thought and energy.58 Ibid., p.236.
One should therefore not be surprised at Clementine’s summative remark the night after Winston’s funeral. By Mary’s own report, before she went to bed that night, Clementine turned to her and said: “You know, Mary, it wasn’t a funeral — it was a Triumph.”59 Ibid., p.498. Well, whose Triumph? Clementine’s of course! She had managed Winston for 57 years, and at his death the world came to pay tribute, ostensibly to him, but as far as she was concerned, to her success as wife-coach-manager of his successful career.
Now that we have an inkling into women’s true role in the management of the world, it should be a sobering realization for men that our official bosses and leaders, even the greatest among them, whom we all look up to as the masters of the world, are each under the guiding thumb of some woman or other, usually his wife. Whenever we gaze in awe at a head of state, or at a head of household, we should gaze in even greater awe at the little lady by his side who controls him like a puppeteer does a puppet. Appearances should not be allowed to mislead us as to where the balance of power lies between them.
We have seen how matriarchs rule men in public life — the Otu Omu, the naked grandmothers, Maggie Thatcher, Mary Cunningham, Clementine Churchill. But how do wives generally use the patriarchal facade to control and exploit their husbands at home? Just consider some of the tasks a wife is able to shift over to her husband by appealing to his ego as patriarch or official head of her household.
“O husband mine!” she tacitly says: “You are the official head of this house; you are my leader, my lawgiver. You are the strong one. Won’t you feed and protect me and our little child? Won’t you see to it that our child is well behaved?” In this way, she deftly assigns him the job of nest provisioner; the job of nest protector; and the job of ogre or disciplinarian of the nest. If he fails to provision the nest to her satisfaction, he suffers her contempt, as well as his own, for not living up to his macho expectations. If thieves attack her nest and he cannot fight them off, he suffers her contempt, as well as his own, for not carrying out his macho duties. If he dies defending her nest, she weeps for a day or a week, and sets about recruiting another nest guard. She can discipline the child in his name, or frighten it with his image as bogeyman (“Wait till your daddy comes home!”), without herself earning the child’s resentment. By directing its resentment towards its bogeyman father, she can retain the child’s image of her as the “sweet mother”. If he declines to act as the disciplinarian and ogre; if he prefers to earn the image of “sweet father”, she resents it. As one wife, Natalie Rogers, complained:
My husband preferred the role of playmate to the kids when they were young, rather than accept his share of the disciplining. I felt like the ogre.60 Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op.cit., p.45.
If the wife became the overt head of her own nest, she would have to do all that for herself; and she would have to do far more. There is an Igbo “Widow’s Lament,” based on farming life, which details the six occasions when a widow recalls the death of her husband and cries uncontrollably. The first three are when she needs him for farm labour (planting, tending and harvesting), for each of which she now has to hire and pay labourers. The fourth is when there is a meeting of the kindred: with her husband dead, “who will inform the widow of the deliberations?” The fifth is when there is a festival, and she has to buy her own fowl to cook for the feast. The sixth “is the day she is drenched in her unrepaired thatched house; that day she knows nothing is as painful as losing a husband.”61 Isidore Okpewho, ed., The Heritage of African Poetry, London: Longman, 1985, p.162.
Let us consider the fourth job listed in that lament: his job as her political emissary to the arena of public affairs. It entails much more than reporting back what transpires in the assembly. As the ostensible head of her nest, he participates in politics in order to protect her and her nest from those dangers, social and natural, which her society combats through public measures. When it becomes necessary to protect the society by violent means, he goes to battle and even dies that she may live on in safety. As her voice in public affairs he contributes to deliberations which make laws that serve her interest.
In Western societies in the days of male franchise, the husband, as voter, was his wife’s political emissary. He used his vote to elect male lawmakers who passed laws in his wife’s interest, laws which often punished the natural inclinations and delights of men, and helped to trap men in nest slavery. Some of these laws, passed by all-male legislatures, are monuments to female rascality and misandry. For example, long before women got the vote in the USA, there were laws against prostitution, a service which men needed to lessen the tyranny of frigid or sex-striking wives. Also, there has long been an anti-husband bias in the marriage and divorce rules of the Western World, a bias which, in some cases, gave the family house, custody of the children, etc. preferentially to the woman. Women did not have to have the vote, did not have to become the majority of lawmakers, for such misandrous laws to be passed. They were passed by male lawmakers, who were elected by male voters, all of whom acted as instructed by their wives and mothers! Oh yes! How readily a man will sacrifice men’s interests for women’s once his patriarch’s ego has been puffed, or his penis has been twisted!
But why does the average woman prefer covert to overt matriarchy? Just consider the matter from her standpoint. Overt leadership would give a woman duties which expose her to too many pressures and risks. As she well knows, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. She therefore concedes that onerous role to the patriarch, and saves herself a lot of hassles. She makes him the formal leader of her nest, and shifts unto his shoulders the burdens of decision-making, the anxieties of wielding authority, the dangers of defending her honour and her life through fights, lawsuits and wars. When she declares that she is weak, and lays her head on his chest and weeps to prove it, and lets him make the decisions, she simultaneously massages his ego and exploits him. She offloads high-pressure and high-risk jobs unto the patriarch, and takes for herself the superior but safer position of the power behind the throne. Thus, behind the patriarch stands his matriarch: she runs her world by running the man who runs the world for her.
Under this arrangement, a woman has everything to gain and nothing to lose, except little vanities. Being far more down to earth, she prefers the substance to the shadow, the power to the glory, the rewards to the exertion.
Behold the matriarch, the great queen bee, in all her power. Hers is the power to manipulate from hidden and protected places. She is the back seat driver, giving instructions from the owner’s corner. She is the supreme executive, excellent at delegating the most burdensome and dangerous jobs to her chief lieutenant, alias the patriarch.
And the patriarch? He is simply her foreman, a glorified foreman, who oversees the work in the fields. With his ego well massaged by the trappings of nominal leadership, he gladly supplies his matriarch, to the best of his abilities, with wealth, honour, status, and fame. Each day he spends eighteen hours or more as her agent in the great, wide, rough-and-tumble world; for an hour in the morning, and an hour and a half at night, she inspires and instructs him to make forays into the world for her. And while he is in his office, working up hypertension or a coronary, she lounges at her sauna or her hairdresser’s; or she enjoys herself shopping, spending his money, or nattering away with her fellow queen bees at the bridge table. His are the risks and hardships; hers the leisured enjoyment of the rewards. Her motto, in effect, is this:
O patriarch, O husband mine! Suffer the burdens of leadership, But hand me its choicest fruits.
Should he ever tire of being a figurehead, or should he, horror of horrors, threaten to quit his job, the little wife has fine ways of intimidating her huge, figurehead leader. In a letter to her daughter, one British wife demonstrated just how easily a wife can quell a rebellion by her husband should he even hint at it. Writing to her daughter Kate, she told the following story:
On that evening your Dad leaped out of his chair at 8 o’clock, collected his wee bag full of empty Coke bottles and I thought Oh Christ — here we go again — lemonade, big spender. I said I didn’t want any — that did it, he said he would get pissed by himself and for three hours the air was blue. I got the usual old guff about how the daughters I loved have spent years pleading with him to leave me — owing to me being sick in the mind, but he couldn’t leave me because A) he is the loyal type and he made up his mind to make the best of me and B) he was worried about leaving his children in my care. He was roaring with laughter telling me he had put in his resignation and was leaving his job on December 31st and once he got that gratuity in his hands, life was going to be all women and gambling, I would get nothing out of it. All the people I think are my good friends, he said, have all advised him to leave me. I thought it all over for two days — not having said one word that evening — on Sunday night I said to him very quietly — ‘You are not going to do what you said you would with your gratuity and savings — I sweated blood all those years for you, to save and see that you never went without anything.’ I said, ‘you just try it mate and I’ll get a heavy mob (Kate’s feminist friends) on to you, that will leave you so that you won’t look in a mirror for the next twenty years and you tell me just one more time that I’m sick in the mind and I’ll kick your teeth so far down your throat that they will come out the other end.’ I banged the table saying ‘do you understand?’ He was literally shaking like a jelly. Since then he has been very nice and I’m almost certain his shouts about leaving the job (my fault) were a come-on to get his own way. Anyway as I said, everything is now very pleasant.62 Karen Payne, op.cit., p.234.
Yes! When this nest-slave threatened to abscond with some of the proceeds of his life-long toil (the gratuity and savings), he was brought to heel by his owner. So much for the notion of the husband as boss to his wife!
But why do men settle for a patriarchy that is, alas, a mere facade? The answer is quite simple. A facade is the most that their rulers will allow them; and a facade is the least that will make the male ego feel good enough to endure the burdens of his allotted role. Furthermore, should men try to subvert matriarchy in order to substitute a genuine patriarchy, women will thwart them. Men, therefore, settle for a figurehead patriarchy simply because they must.