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Going Against the Grain: Hobbes's Case for Original Maternal Dominion

When read in his historical context, Hobbes emerges as an enigmatic Þgure who, although an advocate for absolute power, went against the grain of his male and female contemporaries in laying the foundation for a thorough critique of the notion of natural inequality between the sexes. In positing the Þrst political right to be that of mothers over children--original maternal dominion--and in using tales of Amazons and historical queens to suggest the legitimacy of female rule as well as the consensual basis of all relationships, Hobbes opened a space in which gender relations might be radically, albeit brieþy, reconceived. Hobbes's argument, although purely instrumental, constituted a more direct political attack on the theory of patriarchalism than even female religious activists of the English Civil War were able to mount. While accepting feminist political theorist Carole Pateman's conclusion that Hobbes ultimately reconÞrmed modern patriarchy, this article challenges her use of the story of the sexual contract to Þll in the gaps of Hobbes's provocative narrative and argues that there is more to Hobbes than his apparent exclusion of women from the social contract