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book reviews WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GANDER Linda-Anne Rebhun Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory 1861-1900 By Cynthia Eller University of California Press BLAME CHARLES DARWIN AND HIS theory of evolution for igniting the myth that women once ruled the world. If the world and its inhabitants were not created 6,000 years ago, as biblical scholars had cal- culated, then there was suddenly a vast human prehistory about which to speculate. Armchair anthropologists of the day, using reports from missionaries and explor- ers as their evidence, imagined stages of evo- lution through which all human societies passed. Among those stages, they believed, was a “universal” matriarchy, woman was the boss. Friedrich Engels, co-author of The Communist Manifesto, certainly fanned the flames. His 1884 book, The Origin of the Family, Private Prop- erty and the State, incorporated the idea that women must have taken charge of early human societies be- cause patriarchy wasn’t feasible until people figured out the role of the male in sexual reproduction. Engels’ thinking profoundly influenced 19th- and early-20th-century feminists, and the concept that matriarchy was once universal became a part of leftist political thought. Unfortunately for those who take heart in the belief that once upon a time women wrote the rules, the myth is undeniably fictitious, as Cynthia Eller showed in her 2001 book, The Myth of Matriarchal Pre- www.msmagazine.com history: Why an Invented Past Won’t Give Women a Future. Though women have had varying degrees of power or influence in many soci- eties, no society has ever been found in which women have held political and legal power and men have not. In her new book, Gentlemen and Amazons, she traces the fictitious be- lief from its origins in Greek myth about Amazon warriors through the speculations of 19th-century histori- ans and anthropologists, and the lasting effect of those speculations. Thinkers such as the Swiss lawyer and philologist J.J. Bachofen claimed that at an early stage of hu- man prehistory women controlled property and ruled by “mother right” —until men wrested away their power and imposed chastity, which permitted paternity to be reliably determined and property to be in- herited through sons. Scholars of the time de- in which bated the details of how these female- dominated societies were organized, how the males took control and what all this said about the innate charac- teristics of men and women. Almost no scholars doubted the truth of this gender- reversal story. But what made the myth so entic- ing? And why did it at- tract so much support, especially in societies as sexist as those of 19th- century Europe? As Eller suggests, the myth may have been an effort “to make sense of the painful ambiguities of sex inequality.” Not surprisingly, the idea that uni- versal matriarchy existed remains a powerful theme in popular culture and neo-pagan religion, as well as in some leftist and feminist circles. Per- haps imagining that women once ruled over men helps defend against the fear that the opposite will always be true. As Eller notes, “Feminists have found in matriarchal myth li- cense to hope that just as male domi- nance had a beginning in ancient times, it can have an end too.” LINDA-ANNE REBHUN is an associate professor of anthropology at the Univer- sity of California at Merced. TOO-MODERN HISTORY Karen Joy Fowler Caleb’s Crossing By Geraldine Brooks Viking IN CALEB’S CROSSING, GERALDINE Brooks once again shows her prodi- gious gift for the vivid evocation of times long past. Fans of her earlier work, Year of Wonders (set in a 17th- century plague-town), People of the Book (about the Sarajevo Haggaddah) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning March (a story of the Civil War, inspired by Alcott’s Little Women), will find the same acuity and narra- tive power here. This new novel takes place in the mid- 1660s, partly on the island we know now as Martha’s Vineyard and partly at the college in Newtowne known now as Harvard. In one type of histor- ical fiction, the writer tells a familiar story, only with better re- search or perhaps a revisionist angle, and the line between fiction and nonfiction is subtle. In another, the surviving data for a story is scant and the telling must be primarily a work of imagination. Caleb’s Crossing SPRING 2011 | 55