The Whole Woman [Import] [Hardcover]

Germaine Greer (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 351 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday Books (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385600151
• ISBN-13: 978-0385600156
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,216,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who says you have to agree with everything?, June 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Whole Woman (Hardcover)

I love this book. It is amazing, and, it has to be said, very few people still write anything like this. I don't agree with everything Greer says, but then i don't have to: she is forty years older than me and if her book inspires someone of my generation to write the next 'Female Eunuch' then it will have served its purpose. When I read her first novel, the Female Eunuch, it wasn't so much as a piece of feminist literature as a primary historical source. Yet I feel I owe a debt to Greer and her contemporaries for writing such works and creating the workd in which I grew up.

Many criticisms of The Whole Woman have centred on Greer's discussion of 'Pantomine Dames' and supposed defence of female genital mutilation. Whether or not you agree with her conclusions, I think she raises some extremely valid points surrounding these topics, such as, do we construct the Female negatively (ie. by the omission of a male genitalia rather than the possession of female genitalia?) - and, of course, the post-colonial relationship between Western women and women in developing nations. Whilst I will support any woman, anywhere, in her struggle for recognition and emancipation, Greer points out that it isn't my job to tell her how to do it. The West has been doing that for far too long.

This isn't, to me, a book of answers. It's a book of questions which I haven't heard asked before. My greatest problem with Greer is that I still find her somewhat dismissive of men. After all, men are our lovers and our sons, and I think few women want that to change. But she reminds us that we have a long way to go in reconstructing our society and redefining the gender roles within it to improve life for men and women.

To all those twenty year olds out there: our mothers did a hell of a lot for us. We owe it to them to do a hell of a lot more!!!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo! The feminist Juvenal returns!, June 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Whole Woman (Hardcover)

Greer returns to tell the 'muddle crass' what a load of tripe and codswallop feminism has become in the nineties. Sure, its full of hyperbole, and short on coolly considered politically-correct solutions. She gives women's 'progress' the lie in stunning rhetorical form. She is a feminist Swift, or perhaps Wyndham Lewis(!!) quaranteed to piss off conventional wisdom of any ilk.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A MALE RESPONSE FROM THE UK, November 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Whole Woman (Hardcover)

I HAVE READ GG's BOOK; IT WAS DEFINATELY WORTH READING- WHATEVER STANDPOINT YOU MAY TAKE ON HER OWN OPINIONS AND RESEARCH- HER BOOK IS DEFINATELY THOUGHT PROVOKING- AND SHOULDN'T THAT BE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF WRITTEN TEXT?- THAT IT ANGERS; ENCOURAGES SYMAPTHY; ENLIGHTENS... THESE SHOULD BE ESSENTIALLY WHAT MATTERS IN ANY PIECE OF LITERATURE:

FOR A MALE'S OPINION; I THOUGHT MOST OF GGS POINTS DID INDEED RING TRUE IN THE SOCIETY AROUND ME: THE WHOLE IDEA OF CONSUMERISM AND IT'S TWISTED GOAL OF CONSTRUCTING MAN'S DESIRED IMAGE OF WOMAN; WHEREAS THE MALE POPULUS CAN SPEND IT'S TIME ON FEEL-GOOD BUYING- IE MUSIC

THE WHOLE IDEA OF THE CAREER MINDED POWER WOMAN HAS BEEN MASCULINISED SO AS TO DETRACT FROM MOST SENSE OF FEMININITY

HOWEVER; THERE WERE SOME IDEAS PROPOSED BY GG WHICH I WOULD NOT HAVE SUPPORTED; AND IN PARTICULAR HER UNDERSTANDING OF THE GAY COMMUNITY (which I prefer to label as a non-heterosexuality) IS FAIRLY INACCURATE:

BUT GREER IS RIGHT; I BELIEVE; IT SHOULD BE TIME TO GET ANGRY AGAIN; FEMINISM ITSELF HAS BEEN MASCULINISED OR DISTORTED INTO A FORM PALATABLE ENOUGH FOR OUR SOCIETY:

THIS WAS A BOOK I FOUND VERY HARD TO PUT DOWN- EVEN BY THE END OF THE LAST CHAPTER; I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO HAVE READ MORE OF THE BOOK