ABSTRACT
Contemporary feminist scholars have examined the expression of the belief indifferent societies, using the word patriarchy to describe the hierarchical ordering of society based on male supremacy. The concept of patriarchy explains the lack of reciprocity in these situations because, in a society bound to a system of male domination, men, irrespective of their economic roles, are accorded higher status than women. Nonetheless, the Victorian age was one of change in the roles of men and women. For the next generation, the ideal was less appealing; it had not been formulated by them, and some of them saw that its demands were formidable. Throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries the possibility of a revolution of relations between the sexes has generated arguments for and against it, which have varied with the intellectual fashion of the time. A few men and women, but only a few, claimed that the ideal was undesirable.
