Germaine Greer Essay

GERMAIN GREER HAD NO FEARIn the early 1970s, a wo worldly concerns determination in society was still set by male expectations. While women were expected to work and be educated, it was considered more important that they marry and become housewives. Women were withal paid less than men for the same work, and denied numerous opportunities because they were women. In 1970, Australian-born author Germaine Greer wrote The Female Eunuch, a prevail that challenged a womans traditionalistic social function in society, and provided an important framework for the feminist movement of the 1970s. The Female Eunuch called on women to reject their traditional roles in the home, and explore ways to break out of the mould that society had imposed on them. It also encouraged women to question the power of traditional authority figures such as doctors, psychiatrists, priests and the police who at the date were not used to being questioned, and to explore their own sexuality Women have someh ow been cut false from their capacity for action. Its a process that sacrifices vigour for delicacy and succulence, and one thats got to be changed. Germaine Greer, youthful York Times, 22 March 1971SourceThere had been other volumes published on Womens Liberation close famously Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex and Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique but Greers book was written with a naughty sense of humour and a directness that the others lacked. This witty honesty made the book accessible to a very wide readership, and was perhaps the reason for the books enormous success. Greer hoped that her book would inspire women to see themselves as powerful when it came to their own roles and sexuality. In many ways she was successful. The Female Eunuchcertainly did pushing the Womens Liberation Movement forward, and it became one of the worlds most influential books on the subject.QUOTES BY GERMAINE HERSELF* The house wife is an unpaid employee in her husbands house in return for the protection of being a permanent employee. * Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever recognize how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how farshe could head or how fast she could run? * If a person loves only one other person, and is indifferent to his partner men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. * All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man no society will survive a shortage of women.By SHANNON JONES