Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #311627 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Synopsis
Available alongside five other Modern Classics first published by Flamingo in the 1970s, this is a re-issue of Germaine's Greer's feminist classic. Translated into many languages, "The Female Eunuch" is a landmark in the history of the women's movement. Drawing liberally from history, literature and popular culture, past and present, Germaine Greer's searing examination of women's oppression is at once an important social commentary and a passionately argued piece of polemic.

Customer Reviews

Very difficult to get on with
I found this book very difficult to get on with, as I just couldn't identify with a lot of what she was saying, I did try and imagine what it would be like in the 70s etc thinking about my mum but I just found her so-called wit was just irritating me. She spouted a lot of guff about everyone living in a commune or something at one point(I think that was what she was suggesting) and I just ended up thinking that living in a commune with people like her was my idea of hell. A lot of the time, I found she was just making rambling accusations at people (not necessarily men) left right and centre without coming up with any real solutions for anything, but perhaps the whole idea was just to make people think. The thing is, I work etc and would like to think of myself as emancipated but I find it very hard to get on with works by people who are so dislikeable. Sometimes I just felt she lives in cloud cuckoo land and was talking idealistically but with no practical examples of how people could live (eg the commune thing, there are so many people, we just don't have huge rambling commune facilities which would work in this country). She kept going on about sex and how she thought women should take their pleasure and I ended up wanting to ask her to bog off out of it and that I'll take my pleasure how I want it thank you very much without her telling me how I should be having it. All in all, I don' think it paints feminism in a very good light

Passion, Brains and Brilliance...
It's important to remember that this book was written in the 1970s when the workplace didn't look the way that it looks now. Women now may complain that they still don't have equal pay for doing equal jobs - but in the 1970s they didn't even expect equal pay. We didn't have girls doing better in schools than boys - it was a world where women genuinely saw themselves as second class citizens and many had a feeling of inferiority to men that was deeply ingrained. Young women leaving university in 2007 have very little trace of this and are aware that a woman's brain is in many ways and in many subjects better for many jobs than a man's is. It isn't that either is better - they are just different.

Germaine Greer wrote a book that influenced her generation and a stunningly written book it is too. She is erudite and full of passion and, much to my surprise - not really anti men at all. It was the status quo that Greer hated - the two up two down slavery that she saw enslaving women. (Wouldn't it be good to have someone whose job is to keep your house clean, bring up your children, have a meal ready when you get home and 'provide' sex whenever you want it. This book needs to be read in that context.. the alarming thing is that so much of what Greer attacks so brilliantly is still around us today. Despite her warnings - in some areas we have made very little progress.

This is a classic - read it. And you may need a dictionary. I did. :-)

A bit dissapointing
I had been looking forward to reading this book after hearing how Germaine Greer has influenced so many women throughout the years. I was, however, dissapointed. This book would have been something different when first published in 1970 but now her opinions are stale, bitter and unrealistic. I think that many of the points raised are thought provoking and the book is generally well written but not one for the modern day feminists among us.
An interesting read all the same though.