Women Wolf, Margery. Uterine Families

Women

Wolf, Margery. "Uterine Families and the Women's Community." Chapter 23 Questions

According to Wolf, a uterine society is a society characterized by a patriarchal system of linage, whereby authority is passed down from father to son. Women are subsumed within the identity of a family upon marriage, and are primarily valued for their childbearing function, specifically their ability to bear sons. Women exist as placeholders in such a world, of continued male identity, rather than as legitimate beings themselves of value because they pose no practical, long-lasting value to their parental families, only to families they marry into as the bearers of sons.

Thus, producing children is extremely important to women in uterine societies. In such a system of lineage, the only status and identity is conferred upon the females in question by society is in terms of their abilities to produce sons in the village schema of values. Moreover, all women lose their previous, albeit lower and tangential status as a member of a kinship structure as a daughter when they marry. Their marital alliance thus forms their only social status -- there is no safety network for them to fall back on, if they fail in the uterine society's requirements to produce sons, and have little sense of self-worth, as the family has no incentive to connect with daughters emotionally, or to put much financial effort into their physical worth, other than to pass them on as a wife and a bearer of sons to another family.

Question 3 woman's relationship is entirely dependant in her new family, on her ability to produce sons, given that daughters are no more valued in this new family than they were in her old familial structure. Even her mother in law, the new, main female figure in her life, makes such demands upon her. A woman who has yet to make a son is the lowest of the low, far beneath her mother-in-law. Once she produces a male heir, she increases her status in the family, in her husband's eyes, and as the mother of the father's child, thus reducing the status of the mother in law and her power over the girl as well. Before, her own mother only spoke of the future without her, in her brother's terms, and only when married does she have a future -- but with a past door of her childhood "slamming shut."(243)

Question

This creates a fragmented household, pitting woman against woman, all eyes turned to the husband for authority. And before, in a house with daughters, no "matter how fond of his daughter the father may be" she is a temporary member of his household, with no ties to him, and she will not protect him in his own old age." (242) Sons and daughters are bifurcated in their relationship, as are daughters and fathers, but even girls are alienated from their mothers, as they possess less practical worth than their brothers to the existing kinship structure.