The Female Eunuch (Bobula Ida könyvtárából)

Fülszöveg

Armed with a shotgun style and a bullet-
proof mind, Germaine Greer takes aim at
the subject of women: their cultural his-
tory, their psychological development, and
their relationship to men. And what she
puts forward as her central thesis is the
original and provocative idea that as
wives, employees, mothers, and lovers,
women are not only still body and soul in
bondage to men, but are deformed by
them—made into eunuchs. It is not that
Miss Greer is against men (she likes them
very much), or that she thinks women
should take to violent action to secure
their rights, but rather that every woman
must come to know herself: her body and
her mind. Women must also learn, she
argues, their own histories and must learn
to share their experiences with one another
until they understand, identify, and ex-
plicitly come to terms with the many psy-
chological techniques of domination in and
out of the home.
"Ultimatelyshe concludes, "if wom-
en were to realize their... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Armed with a shotgun style and a bullet-
proof mind, Germaine Greer takes aim at
the subject of women: their cultural his-
tory, their psychological development, and
their relationship to men. And what she
puts forward as her central thesis is the
original and provocative idea that as
wives, employees, mothers, and lovers,
women are not only still body and soul in
bondage to men, but are deformed by
them—made into eunuchs. It is not that
Miss Greer is against men (she likes them
very much), or that she thinks women
should take to violent action to secure
their rights, but rather that every woman
must come to know herself: her body and
her mind. Women must also learn, she
argues, their own histories and must learn
to share their experiences with one another
until they understand, identify, and ex-
plicitly come to terms with the many psy-
chological techniques of domination in and
out of the home.
"Ultimatelyshe concludes, "if wom-
en were to realize their true potential as
independent persons and insist on con-
tributing their special talents towards
running the world—politics, business, tech-
nology as well as family life—civilization
might be led towards maturity instead of
annihilation
(continued on back flap)
(continued from front flap)
and the first significant discovery we
shall make as we racket along our female
road to freedom is that men are not free,
and they will seek to make this an argu-
ment why nobody should be free. We can
only reply that slaves enslave their
masters, and by securing our own manu-
mission we may show men the way that
they could follow when they jumped off
their own treadmill."
GERMAINE GREER was born in a bush
fire in Melbourne in January, 1939. At the
age of twelve she won a Junior Govern-
ment Scholarship to a convent in Mel-
bourne and subsequently a Senior
Government Scholarship to Melbourne
University, from which she graduated in
1959 with a combined English and French
degree. She did her M.A. at Sydney Uni-
versity with a First Class Honours degree
and then taught in a girls' high school—an
experience she values greatly, as the pupils
came from very underprivileged homes.
She then became a Senior Tutor in English
at the University until she came to England
in 1964 as a Commonwealth Scholar to
study at Cambridge, thus achieving an
ambition she had had since the age of
twelve. At Newnham she read for the
Tripos as an Affiliated Student but trans-
ferred to research and did her Ph.D. in
three years on Shakespeare. She then took
the first job she applied for at Warwick
University and combined teaching with
television and journalism. Among the tele-
vision programs she has appeared on
are Nice Time and Twice a Fortnight;
she writes regularly for Oz. The Female
Eunuch is her first book.
Jacket design by S. Neil Fujita
Photo by Paul Sanders Vissza