Claude Levi-Strauss
Basically, there are only two characters in the essay and each is there a contributor of existing theory upon which the author constructs her thesis, outlines her argument and debates the evidence. The first is anthropologist Levi-Strauss and specially his formulation of something which came to be known as “alliance theory” and its underlying foundation of the incest taboo. Levi-Strauss assigns a value to women based on their scarcity in a market dominated by polygamous males. The author presents this theory for the purpose of undermining it as a satisfactory answer foundation of her own argument on the basis that Levi-Strauss commits the unpardonable sociological sin of assuming without analysis the concept that the very same conditions could equally be applied to valuation of men since both sexes are subject to the same basic conditions of scarcity.
Karl Marx
Having rejected the alliance theory of Levi-Strauss as a foundational basis for explaining why the conditions of society are based upon the exchange of women, the author turns to the economic theories of Marx. Instead of finding the starting point in anthropology, the text pursues a narrative that attaches Marxian commodification of women as property within a capitalist ethos to demonstrate how women have been assigned three historical roles (jobs) which set their value according to a patriarchal designation of use-value of the body which is available for exploitation according the function of each of those individual roles.
