SOURCE: “Her Own Thing,” in New Statesman, November 21, 1986, pp. 29-30.

In the following review, Maitland offers unfavorable assessment of The Madwoman's Underclothes.

When I was an undergraduate I heard Germaine Greer speak: she was indeed weird and wonderful and, as it turned out, the evening transformed my life. A short while later I bought a copy of The Female Eunuch and pored over it—alone and with others—and thus she was the instrument, if the image may be so pressed, of my birthing into feminism. I owe her a debt of gratitude which I suspect is shared by many women, even though I am sure that if I read the book again I would be appalled by its contents and amazed at the impact that it had on me.

I relate all this anecdotal stuff only because it explains how I come to approach The Madwoman's Underclothes...