Patriarchal Attitudes] is an enlightening, entertaining and sensible historical survey of male supremacy. Eva Figes discusses both the real conditions of women through the ages, and also the ideologies (e.g. Judaism, Christianity, Romanticism, Puritanism, Freudianism) that justified those conditions. It is a convincing description of how all kinds of widely differing economic and social systems have been carefully organized by men to preserve their power over women.

The book is full of very interesting observations. She shows, for example, how taboos and social customs have largely replaced physical force in controlling women….

Miss Figes shows also that men, recognizing sex as the main area in which they are vulnerable to women (that is, sex is the main leverage a woman has with a man) have created all sorts of rules designed to protect themselves…. She argues that the whole notion of sex in our culture as something...