I have not read any of Greer's other books including The Female Eunuch, which made her quite well known in the 70's but I'm interested in Tudor and Elizabethan times and I'm always interested in reading about women in the past because there is so little information available.
I found this book quite fascinating, not so much because she has answers, but because she has new suppositions and theories. I'd not realized that Greer was such an academic and she has done a lot of research and she poses what ifs that are not usually posed or are considered ridiculous. Like what if Shakespeare didn't really despise his wife, there could have been other reasons they lived apart for many years. She documents that many women including upper class women spent long periods away from their husbands. Another what if is, suppose Anne Shakespeare was not the economic leech she has been presented to be, what if she had a viable way of making or supplementing the family income. Greer documents some of the occupations or home industries that were available to common women at that time and that some did rather well. Greer also plays devil advocate for some other accepted Shakespeare facts like he was a wealthy man. She presents data that might indicate that was not the case. Overall, I enjoyed the book and learned more about what at least some women were doing during this time period and that is always of interest to me.
