ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s theory of the family. It looks at the theory partly as a conversation between Hegel and other theorists, and as a reflection on family relations in Victorian England. The chapter explores Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel’s delineation of the characteristics of women and men, his “ingenious reinterpretation” of the Edenic myth, and his analysis of German and Roman family law and deals with the place of Antigone in Hegel’s theory. It suggests that Hegel’s interpretation of Sophocles’s tragedy throws an unexpected light on his own conception of the character of women and men, and their domestic roles. The chapter focuses on Hegel’s concept of love, and the contradictions involved in this most intense and intimate relationship. The family is rational, but immediate; universal, but grounded on the arbitrary will of the male head; it is a general form that finds its archetypal expression in one social class.
