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patriarchal marriage requirements in stories from different times and places.
How can we explain the acceptance of traditional spouse roles in life and in stories despite the modern insistence on women's liberation? Recent assessment of the results of the Women's Rights Movement can provide some insights.
Many believe that the initial goals of the Women's Movement of the 1960's have been accomplished. The struggle was to open educational and work opportunities to women, and according to Carol Gilligan, "Those changes have been made, and they really are extraordinary."
Some feminist writers now are concerned with what is called the second stage. The major issues are: the ideological support of women who choose to remain at home in the roles of wife and mother; and assistance to relieve women's double burden of career and home responsibilities. Current efforts concentrate on public policy issues, such as abortion rights, quality day care, and leave for family caretaking.
Important as these issues are, they do not address the fundamental status imbalance between spouses. The need for equality between wives and husbands has not yet been raised to a rallying cry.
Furthermore, as long as there remains tacit acceptance of unequal traditional domestic roles, efforts at eradicating wife abuse are likely to be unsuccessful. Although there is growing recognition of the widespread dangers of domestic violence to women, this issue has received scant political action.
Perhaps a third stage in women's activism is needed, that of finally addressing the most basic evidence of gender inequality, the relationship between husbands and wives. In this third stage, the message of the folkstories can be of value.
People seriously interested in moving toward egalitarian relationships can recognize in the traditional marriages of the folkstories, the legacy of limitations placed on spouse behavior: the distortion of the communication process, the combative postures, the need to win rather than to care, and the men's resort to physical violence - all consequences of status imbalance. The most unwholesome aspects of the marriage relationship - male dominance and physical violence - are shown to have created strife and distorted personalities from ancient times to the present.
Several scholars have pointed to striking similarities between folkstory messages and those contained in the modern media.
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