Questions about the content, scope, and nature of Hobbes’ patriarchalism, while still not mainstream, have come more to the forefront of historical feminist theory and Hobbes scholarship in recent decades. Chief among the debates on this topic is the one carried out between Carole Pateman and Joanne Wright, who take seemingly deeply incompatible stances on the patriarchalist nature of Hobbes’ work. Pateman argues that Hobbes, while evincing a departure from Filmer’s ‘classic patriarchalism,’ is nonetheless a patriarchalist, albeit of a more modern stripe. While Hobbes departs from Filmer with this declaration of initial mother-right, Pateman suggests that he has only succeeded in altering the details of a still fundamentally patriarchalist viewpoint. On Wright’s account, however, Hobbe’s insistence of the right of mothers over children is far too radical to be considered simply a rehashing of old patriarchal ideas. Wright therefore presents Hobbes still as a patriarchalist, but as one whose work marks a watershed moment away from subjugation-as-natural and towards subjugation-as-conventional.

The central contention of this paper is that the conflict between these interpretations of Hobbes comes down to a confusion about the nature of conjugal right and its conflation with conjugal access. In this paper, I propose the value of distinguishing between ‘conjugal right’ and ‘conjugal access,’ and show how making a distinction of this kind can shed light on a potential compromise between these two opposing interpretations. The claims of this paper are threefold: (i) that conjugal right is distinguishable from conjugal access; (ii) that Hobbes intertwines conjugal right and paternal / political right, while leaving room for conjugal access to cleave from paternal / political right; and (iii) that conjugal right gives rise to a patriarchalist model on which women consent through necessity and are bound to transfer their maternal right, while conjugal access does not necessitate this patriarchalist model and does not require women to sacrifice their maternal right.

In this paper, I first explore the interplay between Pateman’s and Wright’s portraits of Hobbesian patriarchalism with a mind towards presenting their respective weakness. I then proceed to provide evidence for my three central claims, which, taken together, render Pateman’s and Wright’s models at least somewhat compatible. In this way, I attempt to show that Hobbes’ patriarchalism at once represents a significant departure from traditional patriarchalist viewpoints (per Wright), and is committed to the necessary relationship between conjugal right and political / paternal right (per Pateman).