The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer Page B

origins of their ideas, came about in the same way. 5 The descriptions of the condition are vivid, and although
    some of them incorporate symptoms arising from other causes generally we can observe the same hypochondriacal syndromes that are put down to hysteria these days: epilepsy, asthma, breathlessness, flatulence, sensus globi in abdomine se volventis , lassitude, convulsions, painful menstruation. Some doctors really believed that est femineo generi pars una uterus omnium morborum , ‘the womb is a part of every illness of the female sex’. Women were assumed to be by nature subject to the tyranny of the insatiate womb, and to suffer symptoms
    from which men only suffered if they indulged in excessive self-ab- use. 6 Although the repression mechanism was described in various
    ways, the reaction to that mechanism was taken (as it usually is) to be a ground for continuing it. Women were too weak, too vulnerable to irrational influences to be allowed to control their own lives. When one of my students

    collapsed in her final examination with cramps and bitter uncontrol- lable sobbing, the cause was officially recorded as hysteria : the aeti- ology of her case was particularly important but the word hysteria seemed to supply all the answers.
    Although we do not believe in green-sickness any more, since maidens became an essential, if menial, part of the work force, we do believe that old maidens are apt to be consumed and wasted by frustration. Only recently have the other terrifying functions of the womb been publicized and accepted. Husbands are allowed to participate in the mysteries of birth, which need no longer be carried out in a coven of females. Women do not have to be purified or churched after childbearing any more. Attempts are being made to reduce the impression that childbirth is a kind of punishment for women, and to re-educate them in breeding, while the more sinister companions of childbed—puerperal fever and sudden haemor- rhage—have been brought under control. Although few men have still to watch in horror while their wives breed themselves through miscarriage and prolapse helplessly to death, we still have not come to terms with the sinister womb. The most pervasive and significant manifestation of that atavistic fear surviving is in the common atti- tude to menstruation.
    Women who adhere to the Moslem, Hindu or Mosaic faiths must regard themselves as unclean in their time of menstruation and se- clude themselves for a period. Medieval Catholicism made the stipulation that menstruating women were not to come into the church. Although enlightenment is creeping into this field at its usual pace, we still have a marked revulsion for menstruation, principally evinced by our efforts to keep it secret. The success of the tampon is partly due to the fact that it is hidden. The arrival of the menarche is more significant than any birthday, but in the Anglo- Saxon households it is ignored and carefully concealed from general awareness. For six months while I was waiting for my first menstru- ation I toted a paper bag with diapers and pins

    in my school satchel. When it finally came, I suffered agonies lest anyone should guess or smell it or anything. My diapers were made of harsh towelling, and I used to creep into the laundry and crouch over a bucket of foul clouts, hoping that my brother would not catch me at my revolting labours. It is not surprising that well-bred, dainty little girls find it difficult to adapt to menstruation, when our society does no more than explain it and leave them to get on with it. Among the aborigines who lived along the Pennefather river in Queensland the little girl used to be buried up to her waist in warm sand to aid the first contractions, and fed and cared for by her mother in a sacred place, to be led in triumph to the camp where she joined a feast to
    celebrate her entry into the company of marriageable maidens, it seems likely that menstruation was much less