The Change

Germaine Greer, the Australian feminist writer best known for The Female Eunuch, turns her attention to menopause and ageing in this nonfiction study. She looks at how doctors, historians, anthropologists and writers have described the change over roughly the past two centuries, and at what has shifted in those accounts and what has stayed the same. Her central claim is that medical knowledge about the menopause remains far thinner than its confident tone suggests.

Greer argues that a woman's understanding of her own body and experience can be more valuable than the verdicts of outside experts. She urges readers to examine the authorities who set the accepted truths about their health and to take charge of their own decisions. A large part of the book weighs the available treatments, especially estrogen replacement therapy, and questions the optimistic claims that doctors and drug companies have made for it. She also surveys less publicised traditional and alternative approaches that fall outside conventional medicine.

The book covers the wide range of emotional and physical changes that come with menopause. Greer proposes an "art" of ageing built on accepting one's own experience and altered desires, rather than on the stereotypes that have constrained older women's sexuality and social lives. Her tone is combative and urgent, aimed at encouraging women to find freedom and steadiness in midlife rather than dread.