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From Eve to Dawn #2
From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World Volume II: The Masculine Mystique from Feudalism to the French Revolution
Analyzing feudalism in Europe and Japan and European expropriation of lands and peoples across the globe, Marilyn French poses a provocative question: how and why did women, with no power or independence, nourish and preserve the family unit and their own culture?
Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room crystallized the issues that ignited the women’s movement and was translated into twenty languages. She received her PhD from Harvard and taught English at Hofstra University, Harvard University, and Holy Cross College.
Internationally acclaimed author and critic Margaret Atwood is the author of numerous works of fiction, including The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin.
496 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2003
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549 people want to read
About the author
Marilyn French
49 books280 followersShe attended Hofstra University (then Hofstra College) where she also received a master's degree in English in 1964. She married Robert M. French Jr. in 1950; the couple divorced in 1967. She later attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D in 1972. Years later she became an instructor at Hofstra University.
In her work, French asserted that women's oppression is an intrinsic part of the male-dominated global culture. Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (1985) is a historical examination of the effects of patriarchy on the world.
French's 1977 novel, The Women's Room, follows the lives of Mira and her friends in 1950s and 1960s America, including Val, a militant radical feminist. The novel portrays the details of the lives of women at this time and also the feminist movement of this era in the United States. At one point in the book the character Val says "all men are rapists". This quote has often been incorrectly attributed to Marilyn French herself. French's first book was a thesis on James Joyce.
French was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1992. This experience was the basis for her book A Season in Hell: A Memoir (1998).
She was also mentioned in the 1982 ABBA song, "The Day Before You Came". The lyrics that mentioned French were: "I must have read a while, the latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style".
French died from heart failure at age 79 on May 2, 2009 in Manhattan, New York City. She is survived by her son Robert and daughter Jamie.
In her work, French asserted that women's oppression is an intrinsic part of the male-dominated global culture. Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (1985) is a historical examination of the effects of patriarchy on the world.
French's 1977 novel, The Women's Room, follows the lives of Mira and her friends in 1950s and 1960s America, including Val, a militant radical feminist. The novel portrays the details of the lives of women at this time and also the feminist movement of this era in the United States. At one point in the book the character Val says "all men are rapists". This quote has often been incorrectly attributed to Marilyn French herself. French's first book was a thesis on James Joyce.
French was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1992. This experience was the basis for her book A Season in Hell: A Memoir (1998).
She was also mentioned in the 1982 ABBA song, "The Day Before You Came". The lyrics that mentioned French were: "I must have read a while, the latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style".
French died from heart failure at age 79 on May 2, 2009 in Manhattan, New York City. She is survived by her son Robert and daughter Jamie.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 21, 2013
3.5
While I found this volume to be just as rewarding to read as the first, I had some problems. They are listed below.
1. I don't understand the implication that King Phillip's War has the highest death total on American soil. The Civil War had more dead. I will admit that one can advocate that the effects, especially in terms of Native American population, were more far reaching. This section could have been a little clearer about what terms French was using in talking about the war.
2. The section on North America is confined largely to the US, both pre and post independence. There are two sentences about Canada in particular. I learned more about women in Canada by reading about and going to Notre Dame de Bon Secour in Montreal. It is just as interesting and important as US women's history.
3. Slave women and Native American women do not tempt to escape their white captors in great numbers because they do not leave their children. White women, however, who are captured or taken by Native Americans, do not wish to leave because they might enjoy the sexual freedom. So they want to leave children? I'm sorry I don't buy that, especially the two stories that French tells us. Perhaps, the women were also frightened of being branded whores. By simply tying it to freedom to love, French unintentionally backs up the then current (and still currently held by some) that women were uncontrolled messes when it came to desires.
4. French implies that there was no rape in Native American cultures. (She says there was not a word for it). I'm sorry. I can't buy the implication, have you read any folklore?)
Still worth reading because of the amount of detail in terms of Central and South America as well as how male and female slaves everywhere were treated differently.
While I found this volume to be just as rewarding to read as the first, I had some problems. They are listed below.
1. I don't understand the implication that King Phillip's War has the highest death total on American soil. The Civil War had more dead. I will admit that one can advocate that the effects, especially in terms of Native American population, were more far reaching. This section could have been a little clearer about what terms French was using in talking about the war.
2. The section on North America is confined largely to the US, both pre and post independence. There are two sentences about Canada in particular. I learned more about women in Canada by reading about and going to Notre Dame de Bon Secour in Montreal. It is just as interesting and important as US women's history.
3. Slave women and Native American women do not tempt to escape their white captors in great numbers because they do not leave their children. White women, however, who are captured or taken by Native Americans, do not wish to leave because they might enjoy the sexual freedom. So they want to leave children? I'm sorry I don't buy that, especially the two stories that French tells us. Perhaps, the women were also frightened of being branded whores. By simply tying it to freedom to love, French unintentionally backs up the then current (and still currently held by some) that women were uncontrolled messes when it came to desires.
4. French implies that there was no rape in Native American cultures. (She says there was not a word for it). I'm sorry. I can't buy the implication, have you read any folklore?)
Still worth reading because of the amount of detail in terms of Central and South America as well as how male and female slaves everywhere were treated differently.
August 4, 2025
THE SECOND VOLUME OF A FOUR-VOLUME SERIES
Author Marilyn French (1929-2009) is probably best known for her feminist novel, ‘The Women’s Room.’ But her most ‘important’ work is certainly her 4-volume history of women.
She begins Part One, “A major problem with patriarchy is that, because it values and rewards competitiveness and aggressiveness, male-dominated societies are often at war. Constant war was a problem in two places on the globe at roughly the same time: Europe and Japan. These cultures found a partial solution, a political organization called feudalism, which involves mutually binding obligations and rewards on all classes of society… by fixing everyone in rigid relationships and placing both obligations and rewards on each class… it allowed society to endure the constant upheavals.” (Pg. 17)
During medieval times, “Women also bore and raised children, educating them in religion, foreign languages, and basic skills. A smaller household, or fewer of them, meant less staff to worry about, but more labor. Yet women read and collected books… and endowed monasteries, and hospitals. Throughout this period women took almost all the responsibility for tending the poor and the sick… Medieval romances depict ladies entertaining heroes with [songs] and fables, inspecting their fighting gear, and tending their horses.” (Pg. 28-29)
She reports, “Most of the women who went on the first crusade were killed or enslaved by the Muslims. Almost everyone on Peter the Hermit’s later crusade of poor people and children died or were enslaved. Yet when the crusades became professional military expeditions, women went as pilgrims: the armies contained almost as many women as men. The women were needed to set up campfires, collect fuel, cook and serve food… They dug trenches... They were prostitutes, a major business for townswomen as well. Prostitute was the only occupation in which women earned more than men.” (Pg. 43)
She argues, “Oppression creates backlash. As the church excluded women and rejected faith in favor of dogma, people (especially women) moved towards mysticism and an emotional experience of the godhead, creating the cult of Mary. Jesus’ mother did not attract much attention before the 12th century, but later, she was everywhere… Although not god, she could intercede with god, providing a route to forgiveness that the mysterious trinity did not. Marianism became a powerful movement within Catholicism, remaining so to this day.” (Pg. 61-62)
She recounts, “Medieval Europeans, even the rich, lived in considerable discomfort… but now a new economic force intruded on them. Men transformed the old system of markets and created vast new ones… Perhaps most important was the psychological explosion, the bursting of some psychic restraint or bond to family, community, deity, church, or even to the earth itself… This explosion, at once material, intellectual, and moral, was an expression of what I call the ‘masculine mystique’… [which is] the false image of men as motivated by a drive for power more important to them than life itself. To live by a mystique is to live in bad faith, to live a false life. For both sexes, trying to live out an image makes life miserable.” (Pg. 98-99)
She records, “the witch hunts began. It is natural for people to hate and fear their oppressors… But oppressors… also hate and fear those they oppress and impute their negative emotion to their victims.’ (Pg. 120) Later, she adds, “Estimates of how many were killed by Protestant authorities start at 100,000, but many regions have not been studied. The witch trials began in Austria--- Austria and southern Germany, Bavaria and Switzerland burned more women than anywhere else.” (Pg. 124)
She explains, “As men in the Early Modern Period shut women up in men’s houses and denied them political and economic power, more women asserted the power of the pen. Both Enlightenment and Protestant men insisted that women be confined within the home: but Protestantism granted them the right to basic literacy, and the Enlightenment granted them to power to benefit their children. Women did the rest. Women, not men, extended Enlightenment individualism and human rights to women. But they had to deal with an intellectual world polarized by gender, in which only men were productive, reasonable individuals with rights; despite the extraordinary busyness of women in all areas, only men were deemed capable of accomplishment. Women now had to struggle against not just economic constriction and prejudice but an intellectual structure defining them as an alien species.” (Pg. 136)
She acknowledges, “We do not know why stratification arose in Africa. A society that produced a surplus could permit occupations other than farming, but all members would still work… Stratification ranks groups hierarchically, so that an elite can live parasitically without working. In most of the world, one group would force others to support it; in Africa, this behavior would violate traditions millennia old. In most of the world, a priesthood seems to have exalted itself… The creation of stratification in most African communities occurred otherwise. What triggered the idea of superiority in this egalitarian world? The idea of superiority may have arisen in secret societies and hunting cults, probably always all-male groups… Despite the existence of women chiefs, there was no divine kingship.” (Pg. 142-143)
She observes, “Revolutions win other men the right to own land---but no revolution until the feminist movement ever won women the right to own land.” (Pg. 177) She points out, “Quakerism profoundly affected later generations of American women whose ideas and confidence helped create the feminist movement.” (Pg. 298)
She reports, “The European witch craze found fertile soil in a New England alert to female dissent, and between 1647 and 1700, 234 people were tried for witchcraft and 38 were executed… The victims came from every socioeconomic level; the only trait they shared was some personal eccentricity, flaw, or calling that distinguished them in the rigidly conformist Puritan society… But when accusers began naming the colony’s most distinguished men as witches, the governor disbanded the court and pardoned the remaining accused.” (Pg. 300-301)
She adds, “The 1690s witch hunt climaxed a history of male Puritan fear of female revolt… Men began to abandon religion after the witch hunt, turning their energies to more rewarding commerce.” (Pg. 303) She reports, “Preachers focused sermons on their mainly female congregations… Ministers introduced domestic imagery into sermons, speaking of piety, tenderness, and love as exclusively female traits, rigidifying gender roles. More and more, society expected men to be ignorant of religion and women to uphold it. The ‘feminization’ of religion in America had begun…” (Pg. 304)
She states, “By the late 18th century, colonial men had settled into complacency about women. American women could no longer transfer property, sue or be sued, or give evidence against husbands… he, not she, was responsible for her. Disciplines were professionalized and licensed only after special training, which barred women. Women could not even do business in the community. Except during the Revolutionary War, woman’s place was in the home: but home was no longer a center of production.” (Pg. 332)
She concludes, “The fact is that European and American women were more powerless in the 19th century than they had ever been throughout history… For most women, life was hard to impossible, since they lacked economic rights. Planners of utopias tried to ameliorate women’s lives in their schemes, but… the only utopian communities that gave women political power were those founded by women. Consequently, women found that they had to start a movement of their own. Earlier women’s movements had focused primarily on religion, the abolition of slavery, temperance, or socialism infused with women’s passion for their own liberation, but in 1848 some American women decided to slough off other causes and fight for themselves. They were followed by movements in England, Germany, and eventually, in the later 20th century, the entire world.” (Pg. 403)
This series will be of great interest to anyone wanting a woman-focused interpretation of history
Author Marilyn French (1929-2009) is probably best known for her feminist novel, ‘The Women’s Room.’ But her most ‘important’ work is certainly her 4-volume history of women.
She begins Part One, “A major problem with patriarchy is that, because it values and rewards competitiveness and aggressiveness, male-dominated societies are often at war. Constant war was a problem in two places on the globe at roughly the same time: Europe and Japan. These cultures found a partial solution, a political organization called feudalism, which involves mutually binding obligations and rewards on all classes of society… by fixing everyone in rigid relationships and placing both obligations and rewards on each class… it allowed society to endure the constant upheavals.” (Pg. 17)
During medieval times, “Women also bore and raised children, educating them in religion, foreign languages, and basic skills. A smaller household, or fewer of them, meant less staff to worry about, but more labor. Yet women read and collected books… and endowed monasteries, and hospitals. Throughout this period women took almost all the responsibility for tending the poor and the sick… Medieval romances depict ladies entertaining heroes with [songs] and fables, inspecting their fighting gear, and tending their horses.” (Pg. 28-29)
She reports, “Most of the women who went on the first crusade were killed or enslaved by the Muslims. Almost everyone on Peter the Hermit’s later crusade of poor people and children died or were enslaved. Yet when the crusades became professional military expeditions, women went as pilgrims: the armies contained almost as many women as men. The women were needed to set up campfires, collect fuel, cook and serve food… They dug trenches... They were prostitutes, a major business for townswomen as well. Prostitute was the only occupation in which women earned more than men.” (Pg. 43)
She argues, “Oppression creates backlash. As the church excluded women and rejected faith in favor of dogma, people (especially women) moved towards mysticism and an emotional experience of the godhead, creating the cult of Mary. Jesus’ mother did not attract much attention before the 12th century, but later, she was everywhere… Although not god, she could intercede with god, providing a route to forgiveness that the mysterious trinity did not. Marianism became a powerful movement within Catholicism, remaining so to this day.” (Pg. 61-62)
She recounts, “Medieval Europeans, even the rich, lived in considerable discomfort… but now a new economic force intruded on them. Men transformed the old system of markets and created vast new ones… Perhaps most important was the psychological explosion, the bursting of some psychic restraint or bond to family, community, deity, church, or even to the earth itself… This explosion, at once material, intellectual, and moral, was an expression of what I call the ‘masculine mystique’… [which is] the false image of men as motivated by a drive for power more important to them than life itself. To live by a mystique is to live in bad faith, to live a false life. For both sexes, trying to live out an image makes life miserable.” (Pg. 98-99)
She records, “the witch hunts began. It is natural for people to hate and fear their oppressors… But oppressors… also hate and fear those they oppress and impute their negative emotion to their victims.’ (Pg. 120) Later, she adds, “Estimates of how many were killed by Protestant authorities start at 100,000, but many regions have not been studied. The witch trials began in Austria--- Austria and southern Germany, Bavaria and Switzerland burned more women than anywhere else.” (Pg. 124)
She explains, “As men in the Early Modern Period shut women up in men’s houses and denied them political and economic power, more women asserted the power of the pen. Both Enlightenment and Protestant men insisted that women be confined within the home: but Protestantism granted them the right to basic literacy, and the Enlightenment granted them to power to benefit their children. Women did the rest. Women, not men, extended Enlightenment individualism and human rights to women. But they had to deal with an intellectual world polarized by gender, in which only men were productive, reasonable individuals with rights; despite the extraordinary busyness of women in all areas, only men were deemed capable of accomplishment. Women now had to struggle against not just economic constriction and prejudice but an intellectual structure defining them as an alien species.” (Pg. 136)
She acknowledges, “We do not know why stratification arose in Africa. A society that produced a surplus could permit occupations other than farming, but all members would still work… Stratification ranks groups hierarchically, so that an elite can live parasitically without working. In most of the world, one group would force others to support it; in Africa, this behavior would violate traditions millennia old. In most of the world, a priesthood seems to have exalted itself… The creation of stratification in most African communities occurred otherwise. What triggered the idea of superiority in this egalitarian world? The idea of superiority may have arisen in secret societies and hunting cults, probably always all-male groups… Despite the existence of women chiefs, there was no divine kingship.” (Pg. 142-143)
She observes, “Revolutions win other men the right to own land---but no revolution until the feminist movement ever won women the right to own land.” (Pg. 177) She points out, “Quakerism profoundly affected later generations of American women whose ideas and confidence helped create the feminist movement.” (Pg. 298)
She reports, “The European witch craze found fertile soil in a New England alert to female dissent, and between 1647 and 1700, 234 people were tried for witchcraft and 38 were executed… The victims came from every socioeconomic level; the only trait they shared was some personal eccentricity, flaw, or calling that distinguished them in the rigidly conformist Puritan society… But when accusers began naming the colony’s most distinguished men as witches, the governor disbanded the court and pardoned the remaining accused.” (Pg. 300-301)
She adds, “The 1690s witch hunt climaxed a history of male Puritan fear of female revolt… Men began to abandon religion after the witch hunt, turning their energies to more rewarding commerce.” (Pg. 303) She reports, “Preachers focused sermons on their mainly female congregations… Ministers introduced domestic imagery into sermons, speaking of piety, tenderness, and love as exclusively female traits, rigidifying gender roles. More and more, society expected men to be ignorant of religion and women to uphold it. The ‘feminization’ of religion in America had begun…” (Pg. 304)
She states, “By the late 18th century, colonial men had settled into complacency about women. American women could no longer transfer property, sue or be sued, or give evidence against husbands… he, not she, was responsible for her. Disciplines were professionalized and licensed only after special training, which barred women. Women could not even do business in the community. Except during the Revolutionary War, woman’s place was in the home: but home was no longer a center of production.” (Pg. 332)
She concludes, “The fact is that European and American women were more powerless in the 19th century than they had ever been throughout history… For most women, life was hard to impossible, since they lacked economic rights. Planners of utopias tried to ameliorate women’s lives in their schemes, but… the only utopian communities that gave women political power were those founded by women. Consequently, women found that they had to start a movement of their own. Earlier women’s movements had focused primarily on religion, the abolition of slavery, temperance, or socialism infused with women’s passion for their own liberation, but in 1848 some American women decided to slough off other causes and fight for themselves. They were followed by movements in England, Germany, and eventually, in the later 20th century, the entire world.” (Pg. 403)
This series will be of great interest to anyone wanting a woman-focused interpretation of history
January 2, 2021
Very well-researched and heartbreaking, it is nevertheless dry as a desert and focuses too much on the US. A practically endless 100+ pages compared to only 16 on the French revolution.
September 2, 2016
In the second volume of this four volume series about women in history, French discusses feudalism in Europe and Japan and the European invasion of Africa and the Americas, thoroughly accounting the genocide and enslavement of indigenous populations in Latin America and the importation of enslaved men and women from Africa to the American continent. All the while, of course, focusing on the situation of women in each society.
To me, what left the deepest impression was the frank description of the horrors carried out by the European invaders of the Americas. While aware of the history, every account I had until now come across was substantially attenuated.
French’s in-depth portrayal of the lives of women in this period gives the reader a wholly new perspective into the history, one that has been repeatedly erased, ignored and forgotten. Her effort in bringing these issues back up in a complete and accessible way are truly remarkable.
The only thing missing from this book was a thorough final revision before publishing. It felt like some paragraphs were repetitive or that they needed to be repositioned here and there. Also, some minor inconsistencies in the writing, such as the Igbo people being sometimes spelled Igbo and other times Ibo, give the reader the impression that the book needed a few corrections.
Despite this criticism, this book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in history and gender-issues. Ideally, a revised and condensed version of these four volumes would be a required reading in every high school.
To me, what left the deepest impression was the frank description of the horrors carried out by the European invaders of the Americas. While aware of the history, every account I had until now come across was substantially attenuated.
French’s in-depth portrayal of the lives of women in this period gives the reader a wholly new perspective into the history, one that has been repeatedly erased, ignored and forgotten. Her effort in bringing these issues back up in a complete and accessible way are truly remarkable.
The only thing missing from this book was a thorough final revision before publishing. It felt like some paragraphs were repetitive or that they needed to be repositioned here and there. Also, some minor inconsistencies in the writing, such as the Igbo people being sometimes spelled Igbo and other times Ibo, give the reader the impression that the book needed a few corrections.
Despite this criticism, this book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in history and gender-issues. Ideally, a revised and condensed version of these four volumes would be a required reading in every high school.
December 24, 2012
While interesting and well researched with lots of references & notes, this was still a bit dry and really just beat into one's head all the ways that women have been oppressed over this time period. There's a lot of information about the colonization of the "new world" including Mexico and central America, as well as how slavery affected both female slaves and the white women.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews