ABSTRACT
According to the Elaine Feinstein biography, D. H. Lawrence's obsession with sexual domination arose out of his childhood puzzlement at the discrepancy between the fact that women did everything and knew everything, and the orthodoxy that God was a man. The practicalities of female centrality and competence are constantly breaking through the shallow illusions of men's supremacy; and the concept of matriarchy. Safely projected to another place and time, is a contrary model, maybe only embryonic and half-articulated, though perhaps nearing the status of a subcultural alternative among some groups, which helps to explain these awkward and irreverent phenomena. Any caring community is a church in a broad sense for rationalizing and mediating support between different family groups and networks. Family ties constitute the most enduring and compelling threads running through a community; and it is by helping each other to meet their family obligations that women are able to support each other most effectively.
