The eunuch of the title is the woman who castrates herself . She sells herself into slavery (psychic or physical or both) to a man. She services him, their children and the home - a prison where she will serve her life-sentence.
By the time this book came out, in 1970, I had all the attributes that Germaine Greer most despised: husband, children, house. As a feminist my argument was a simple one: equal rights and opportunities - no less but also no more. Greer’s vision was of a free and child-free world of unrestricted love and sex . Her beliefs grew out of her own experience of being a woman. She was disgusted by marriage and despised domesticity.
There was no place for me in her world .
(Nor, incidentally, for the clever, nasty image on the book jacket. I’m rather shocked to remember myself as censor and vandal: I tore it off.)
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