ABSTRACT
Marxist ideology has underplayed the importance of Confucianism on the level of macro society, finding greater usefulness in Buddhism, which through its institution of priesthood and ritual-making, maintains a clearly defined separate ideology from Marxism. The metaphor of the 'male' in macro society, however, permeates family intersexual relationships, engendering the family system further. Submissiveness was usually thought of in terms of specific periods in a woman's life. The most commonly acquired commodity for this kind of female protective investment is jewellery, preferably in unalloyed gold or with recognisable gems. Young girls quietly watch their mothers' elaborate systems of boxes, jars, purses, hidden floor boards, furtive containers of every kind and dimension, never opened in the father's presence – they observe and they learn. Obviously a modus vivendi had to be arrived at, one involving a sort of two-tiered layering of external male domination and internal female primacy.
