Published in 2016 (first published 1984)
245 pages
Christine Delphy is a French writer, sociologist, and theorist. She cofounded Nouvelles questions féministes and is the author of Separate and Dominate and Close to Home. Described by Simone de Beauvoir as France’s most exciting feminist writer, Delphy is a central figure in French feminism and one of the first to focus on the structural importance of the family in understanding women’s oppression.
What is this book about?
Classic analysis of gender relations and patriarchy under capitalism
Close to Home is the classic study of family, patriarchal ideologies, and the politics and strategy of women’s liberation. On the table in this forceful and provocative debate are questions of whether men can be feminists, whether “bourgeois” and heterosexual women are retrogressive members of the women’s movement, and how best to struggle against the multiple oppressions women endure.
Rachel Hills’s foreword to this new edition explores how Christine Delphy’s analysis of marriage as the institution behind the exploitation of unpaid women’s labor is as radical and relevant today as it ever was.
