How has Patriarchy constructed pre-capitalist and capitalist society? What was the role of patriarchy in the transition from feudalism to capitalism? In this study unfolds Maggie O'Neill the relationship between patriarchy and class in the transition between feudalism to capitalism. Class and patriarchy are seen as particular expressions of the fundamental social relation of property which together they constitute. The author views Anglo Saxon, feudal and capitalist societies as having been constructed through patriarchal relations. At the heart of the transition from feudalism to capitalism was a funda mental shift in property relations: property relations which were patriarchally structured. Women's rights in and to property are explored in pre-capitalist and capitalist society. Exploring the links between kinship, property and patriarchy as symbiotic and fundamental to the development of the English state, the relationship between women, property and citizenship is seen as central to the 'Law of the Father' and the transition to a 'capitalist fraternity'. The book maintains a general link between property and the legal regulation of sexual behaviour. The author criticizes the view that women themselves have been property, arguing that it rests on a historically specific concept of history projected back in history, where no such concept existed and reflects changes in ways of thinking about property which emerged in the course of the transition from feudalism to capitalism.