30 years after The Female Eunuch

In Chapter 2 we read the stories of Elisabeth Stanton, Simone Beauvoir and Betty Friedan and of how, ultimately, what they wanted for their own lives differed from the ideology they fought for. So, for interest sake, here is some of what was written of an interview with Australian Germaine Greer, whose ideas we have met along the way, 30 years after the publication of The Female Eunuch:

It was through letting one of her pregnant students stay in her flat in Leamington Spa, and allowing mother and child to stay, which gave her one of her life's happiest experiences. The baby, Ruby, "lit up my life in a way that nobody, certainly no lover, has ever done", she wrote. “I was not prepared for the incandescent sensuousness of this small child, the generosity of her innocent love.”

"I found her scrumptious, delicious, ineffable, adorable, and was astonished."

Greer herself never had a child; earlier this month she wrote about her efforts to conceive following injuries and infection she had suffered when using an early contraceptive device. Doctors had told her she would not be able to conceive; she terminated a later unexpected pregnancy because of fears for the child's health. But she went on to spend "enough money to buy a Picasso" on medical treatment in her efforts to have a child.

And elsewhere:

"I still have pregnancy dreams," she confessed movingly in the premier issue of the British magazine Aura, "waiting with vast joy and confidence for something that will never happen."

Taken mostly from this article in the BBC news, and this article from Washington Post, which you can view in part.