Two landmark books:
As International Women's Day approaches TOM PEARSON revisits two landmark books: Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch and Angela Davis' Women, Race & Class.

These two books were published a decade apart, Greer's in 1971 and 
Davis' in 1982. Though they have the same subject — women's rights — 
politically and philosophically they head off in different directions.

The Female Eunuch charts a passage to the conclusion that men will 
only be able to shrug off their sexual hang ups if they are liberated from 
their sexual prejudices, and that this can only happen if women free 
themselves from the confines of male domination.

On a first reading it is a stunning journey because there are many 
recognisable experiences along the way. Self-recognition stirs deep 
emotions. Like the listener at the concert in the song Killing Me 
Softly, I felt Greer had "found my letters and read each one out loud".

However, what I found troubling about The Female Eunuch was, having 
read the final page and put the book down, I was left wondering how to 
change things beyond correcting my own behaviour and attitudes. Perhaps 
this was strictly from my reading of it as a male; perhaps for women it is 
truly a guide to action.

I think its major drawback comes from it being based primarily on an 
incorrect premise, the male-female divide, with the result that the 
conclusions it draws are for the most part also incorrect.

For Greer, attitudes and impressions are all-important. 

This is summed up in a concise way in the final chapter, titled 
"Revolution", when the author speaks directly to the reader:

"At various stages in my life", she says, "I have lived with men of known 
violence, two of whom had convictions for Grievous Bodily Harm, and in no 
case was I ever offered any physical aggression, because it was abundantly 
clear from my attitude that I was not impressed by it."

Greer goes straight through, from start to finish, pointing a damning 
finger at romance novels, Hollywood, French farce, giving them all hell. 
Her list is long and eclectic because every institution, organisation and 
cultural manifestation has, in one way or another, undoubtedly contributed 
to the oppression of women. But, in the end, what are we to make out of it 
all?

Davis' book, unlike Greer's, is not linear; that is, it doesn't go from 
start to finish in a more or less straight line. Instead, Women, Race & 
Class has a structure that expands and deepens.

Beginning with an examination of the sharpest class division of all, 
slavery, and in particular the role of women slaves, it builds a picture of 
the historical development of the women's rights struggle, and so the class 
struggle, in the USA.

In the process Davis strips away the falsehoods of previous studies of the 
Black slaves in America, such as that the women were mostly cooks or maids, 
or mammies for the children in the "big house".

She recounts how women slaves were forced into the fields to labour 
alongside the men, how they "bore the terrible burden of equality in 
oppression" and "also asserted their equality aggressively in challenging 
the inhuman institution of slavery".

Like Greer, Davis gathers together the words and actions of the the 
outstanding individuals in their time. But what is missing in The Female 
Eunuch and prominent in Women, Race & Class are the masses who 
were the driving force of change.

We meet the likes of Sojourner Truth, the only Black woman attending an 
1851 women's convention in Akron, Ohio. When she spoke her words silenced 
the jeers and insults of hostile men at the meeting:

"I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns and no man could 
head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man 
— when I could get it — and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I 
have borne 13 children and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when 
I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a 
woman?"

Crucial difference

To know the essence of something, and so begin to know it in its entirety, 
we must understand its history from the perspective of the people who made 
that history. Here can be found the crucial philosophical difference 
between the two books.

The Female Eunuch, in the end, leaves it to the individual to act on 
her own behalf. Greer is at its centre — her cutting humour, her astute 
observations, her flaunting of conventions. This makes for an insightful, 
hard-hitting and sometimes wildly funny book. 

Women, Race & Class sets out to build its story acknowledging the 
individual while recognising the power of the collective. Based on this 
premise Davis puts her subject before herself.

This does not diminish her as an individual, and while we might guess at 
her personal opinions and inner-most feelings, we are left in no doubt as 
to the source of the problem and what is necessary to overcome it.