My mother sagely commented that the busier I am with work, the more I blog. Or was she politely telling me off?
Anyway, I have been having a hell of a morning, so I shall write a post to cheer myself up/vent spleen.
As I've mentioned before, Andrew loves buying me books. Some women get jewellery and flowers. I get fiction and non-fiction.
A while back, he bought me Germaine Greer's Shakespeare's Wife. I have read nine chapters and I am not going to read any more. It's essentially a defence against the prevailing view of the 'bardolators' (as Greer calls them), who assume that because Will neglected his wife, this means that Ann was an illiterate wench who trapped/seduced him into an unhappy marriage.
Fair enough. What's not fair enough, though, is that Greer rants against the academics and Bard scholars who extrapolate all sorts nonsense about his marriage from his writings, with no historical evidence to validate their positions - and then does exactly the same thing herself. The fact that Ann gave birth to live twins is suddenly proof that she was a sensible woman who ate well. WHAT?
I get the feeling this could have been (and possibly already has been) an interesting essay. Instead, it's a meticulously researched (by underlings), hashed-together polemic that I suspect only got published (and well reviewed) because Greer is Greer.
On the last page (Andrew read it, not me!), she says 'There can be no doubt that Shakespeare neglected his wife, embarrassed her and even humiliated her, but attempting to justify his behaviour by vilifying her is puerile.' Indeed it is. But on the same page, she says 'The Shakespeare wallahs have succeeded in creating a Bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women ...' - so, Germaine, baseless criticism of AH is not ok, but a broad swipe at all male academics who study Shakespeare is just fine?
I read the Female Eunach when I was fifteen and it changed my view of the world. This just made me want to go and read something else.
1 comment:
Germaine Greer drives me up the wall. Her all too frequent non sensical mutterings about absolutely anything that she's not qualified enough to comment on drives me insane! Why anyone ever asks her to comment on anything astounds me. A bigger hypocrite I have not known. And yes, I agree with Wendy, you do blog more when you have more work on. Let's hope you always have lots of work on!
Oh BTW, in case you haven't been on Facebook lately, I had the baby on April 10th. His name is Blake and there are lots of pics on Facebook.
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