Early modern English canonical sources and sermons often urge the subordination of women. InĀ Household Politics, Don Herzog argues that these sources were blatherānot that they were irrelevant, but that plenty of people rolled their eyes at them. Indeed many held that a man had to be an idiot or a buffoon to try to act on their hoary āwisdom.ā Households didnāt bask serenely in naturalized or essentialized patriarchy. Instead, husbands, wives, and servants struggled endlessly over authority. Nor did some insidiously gendered public/private distinction make the political subordination of women invisible. Conflict, Herzog argues, doesn't corrode social order: it's what social order usually consists in. He uses the argument to impeach conservatives and their radical critics for sharing confused alternatives. The social world Herzog brings vibrantly alive is much richerāand much pricklierāthan many imagine.
Don HerzogĀ is a professorĀ at the University of Michigan Law School.Ā He is the author of four previously published books.