History 248 Reading Guide

The Patriarchal Family in England and Europe

  • Frederick Engels, from The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (1978), 734-751.  (e-reserve)
  • Lawrence Stone, “The Rise of the Nuclear Family in Early Modern England: The Patriarchal Stage,” in Charles E. Rosenberg, The Family in History (1975), 13-57.  (e-reserve)
    Note:  focus on his argument; skim the discussion of the evidence.

Questions:

  • NOTE: Engels’s 1884 text gives us an opportunity to read a historical analysis (a secondary text) as well as a historical text (a primary document), and to learn about the past.
  • What questions did his argument raise for you? What struck you or surprised you about his questions, his presentation of the evidence, his analysis and conclusions? Did you get stumped by any part of his argument? If so, how did you get past that?
  • How did Engels describe the evolution of the family?
  • What did he propose as the causes of change in the family (as it shifted from matrilineal to patriarchal)?
  • What evidence did he present to support his theories (and the theories of his contemporaries)?
  • What purposes did Engels' description and assessment of the evolution of marriage serve for him and his arguments about the organization of society?
  • What can we learn from this nineteenth-century analysis?
  • Lawrence Stone begins his article by proposing a process of evolution in English family structure that took place in two ways.  He further proposes that those changes were the product of three larger changes that took place in English society, polity, and religion, which also led to a third change in the relationships within the family.  He argues that, taken together, the evidence of change both within and without the family suggests a gradual progression of change between three overlapping models of family from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.
  • What evidence does he present to support his argument about the decline of kinship?  What caused that decline?  What were the implications of these changes in kinship connections for the family?
  • According to Stone, what were the main causes of the concurrent rise of the nuclear family?  How did a nuclear family orientation support developments that were occurring beyond the family in early modern England?
  • How and why did these changes in the English family and English society lead to, and as Stone argues, reinforce an increase in patriarchal authority within the family?