The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.
Germaine GreerLoneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.
Germaine GreerWomen live lives of continual apology. They are born and raised to take the blame for other people's behavior. If they are treated without respect, they tell themselves that they have failed to earn respect. If their husbands do not fancy them, it is because they are unattractive.
Germaine GreerWhat we ought to see in the agonies of puberty is the result of the conditioning that maims the female personality in creating the feminine.
Germaine GreerThe only perfect love to be found on earth is not sexual love, which is riddled with hostility and insecurity, but the wordless commitment of families, which takes as its model mother-love. This is not to say that fathers have no place, for father-love, with its driving for self-improvement and discipline, is also essential to survival, but that uncorrected father-love, father-love as it were practiced by both parents, is a way to annihilation.
Germaine Greer