Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Thursday, 1 June 2017

She had a degree in biochemistry

- which meant that she changed the sheets,
cleaned out the fridge,
and emptied the pedal-bin in the kitchen.

How much has changed
since The Women's Room
was published in 1977 ?


4 comments:

Marcus Billson said...

A lot's changed. Have you read Marilyn French's book? I have. I read it in 1978.

Wofl said...

Of course I read it - otherwise I would not have mentioned it. There have been cosmetic and top-level improvements, but the lot of poorer women has not changed. As usual, it's all down to money and class.

Marcus Billson said...

You're right, of course. I do live in a most cosmetic and top-level world and, yes, country, too. I do live among and with a lot of women, so I see things as very different from 1978. But the poor in the 3rd world, yes, you're right, even though I saw drastic changes at all levels and castes during my two months in India, even among the unmarried women kept by Muslim men, one couple of which I got to know well. However, my wife could not wear tights that displayed her legs from ankle to thigh. She caused so much trouble on the streets of Calcutta we had to have a wardrobe of Indian clothes made for her.

But Marilyn French was not writing about the world of the poor, but the male chauvinist pig world of the American academic Ivy League. Her world has changed.

Auban, you never cease to amaze me. Marilyn French! But then, she did do her doctoral dissertation on Joyce's Finnegan's Wake at Harvard. But you are not a Joyce fan, right?

Wofl said...

Domestic abuse statistics from the US are not encouraging.
Of course I read Marilyn French, also Germaine Greer. I am currently reading Flannery O'Connor's devastating short stories - and another book in between each of them, so uncompromising are they.