On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century

by Kenneth A. Lockridge

"A brilliant . . . analysis of the fragile hegemony and identities of colonial Virginia's elite men. . . . On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage compellingly illuminates the ragged edge where masculinity and colonial identity meet. . . . [the book] will undoubtedly send Jefferson scholars scurrying back to their notes. . . . Most significant, by being among the first to tackle the subject of masculinity in early America, Lockridge forces colonial scholars to reexamine the lives of men they thought they already knew too well."
— William and Mary Quarterly
Two of the greatest of Virginia gentlemen, William Byrd II and Thomas Jefferson, each kept a commonplace book--in effect, a journal where men were to collect wisdom in the form of anecdotes and quotations from their readings with a sense of detachment and scholarship. Writing in these books, each assembled a prolonged series of observations laden with fear and hatred of women. Combining ignorance with myth and misogyny, Byrd's and Jefferson's books reveal their deep ambivalence about women, telling of women's lascivious nature and The Female Creed and invoking the fallible, repulsive, and implicitly corruptible female body as a central metaphor for all tales of social and political corruption.
Were these private outbursts meaningless and isolated incidents, attributable primarily to individual pathology, or are they written revelations of the forces working on these men to maintain patriarchal control? Their hatred for women draws upon a kind of misogynistic reserve found in the continental and English intellectual traditions, but it also twists and recontextualizes less misogynistic excerpts to intensified effect. From this interplay of intellectual traditions and the circumstances of each man's life and later behavior arises the possibility one or more specific politics of misogyny is at work here.
Kenneth Lockridge's work, replete with excerpts from the books themselves, leads us through these texts, exploring the structures, contexts, and significance of these writings in the wider historical context of gender and power. His book convincingly illustrates the ferocity of early American patriarchal rage; its various meanings, however suggestively explored here, must remain contestable.

Genres: History, 18th Century

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Avi · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage is a unique little book about important men. Principally, it is an ingenious exegetical exercise, demonstrating how a collage of literary excerpts can constitute a tirade (in this case, against women). The genre of the commonplace book was a collection of quotations often kept by literate gentlemen in the wake of the Renaissance – the idea was to maintain a store of literary, moral, and rhetorical gems by which to sharpen your own rhetoric and moral knowledge. The selection of excerpts and their timing, in the commonplace books of two of the Founding Fathers, gives our author the material needed for a quarry into the composers’ inner lives.
It’s pretty clear how this book project got started – which I like! Lockridge was reading through the commonplace books of Byrd and Jefferson, presumably as part of a larger research project, and was stopped in his tracks by the misogynist themes of these unassuming collections. So this short book is a kind of working-through of his disturbed feelings. He offers us a few chapters of textual interpretation which I would say is quite clever and convincing, and includes some truly lurid hatred of women. The last two chapters attempt to bring it all together into a broad synthesis which merits the book’s eye-catching title. The argument, in very condensed form, is that intense misogynist rage is the product of the failure of patriarchal expectations. Both Byrd and Jefferson rage against women when their ambitions are blocked by women who retain some power over household or property. This chapter gave me new insight into the psychology of the colonial Virginia gentry, and the southern aristocrat in general, whose position (essentially mimetic – imitating the old world gentry) was vulnerable to mockery from above (Europe), and below (the free yeomen). As Lockridge argues, this “narcissistic rage” directed at women was “seated in a fear of loss of identity and social chaos.”
Where the book wobbles is on the difficult synthesis of general and particular. Only these two men, prominent though they were, wrote misogynist commonplace books in quite this way. Thus the challenge is to stay close to the particulars of their biography and psychology while grounding the book’s conclusions in a broader theory of patriarchy and misogyny. So there are plenty of hedges like “The more broadly this behavior proves to be descriptive of eighteenth-century male behavior, the more we shall have to say that patriarchal rage was rage aimed by the failed patriarch at himself.”
The goal of historical monographs like this one is, as Lockridge puts it: “It is not enough simply to say that men were misogynistic. We must see how misogyny arose, functioned, and was shaped in particular historical settings.” Ultimately, misogyny in all its historical forms is united by (sometimes deadly) hatred of women. It can hardly be solace that such rage is the product of women’s “agency”, or that while in danger for their lives, their tormentor is truly tormenting himself.
Anyway, great book. Jefferson was truly a little freak who hated his mother, I can tell you that.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book looking at two Virginians, William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson, and their Commonplace books. The book looks at the misogyny in their writing and places it in the context of the men's private lives and the shifting social landscape of pre-revolutionary America. A pretty interesting book that gives some new insight on the place of gender and patriarchy in early America.

[Matthew Barlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of writings from some of America's founding father's. The glance into their psyches is interesting and informative.