Hats Off - My Notes On 'The Whole Woman' by Germaine "genius" Greer

 Note: This is just something I wrote when I began to reread this book for the second time. It's brief, not detailed and probably not fit to be called a book review, but it's stuff I needed to get down on paper, because the book overwhelmed me so much.

There are books I read where I love what the writer is trying to say but I don’t quite like how he or she is saying it. Then there are books where the expression is beautifully articulate but the substance is just not there. There aren’t too many books however that have something meaningful to contribute to my thought process along with being literary beauties. This book is one of those.

‘The Whole Woman’ deals with feminism, with women, what they feel, what they think and also what they are made to feel and think. It talks about how they are pushed down, emotionally and physically by everything around them, by men and by other women, by society in general. Almost every idea in this book, every detail and issue the writer addresses is identifiable with, for me and probably for every woman whether she admits it or not.

Each chapter has a topic of its own and can be read independently of the rest of the book. The chapters are all aspects of a woman’s life, physical and mental – her body, her appearance, her health, her emotional well being, her self consciousness, her vanities, her extremes, her questions, the answers she gives to her own questions, the walls she puts up, the facade she builds for everyone around her, everything basically that allows her to live and grow in a world that is constantly being taken away from her.

All this, although very interesting and enlightening might seem quite prosaic. But the almost poetic ease, and the passion and conviction with which words flow from the writer, makes this intense, thought provoking work, widely readable, understandable and enjoyable.

The book does not fail to shock, it does not fail to hit the reader where it hurts (the mind I mean), it does not fail to teach, to warn, to encourage and to celebrate. It does everything feminist literature should do – all without being a preachy, moralistic, self pitying pile of crap, which such literature always runs the risk of turning into.