How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"It was a male. Whenever there was a b**** in the vicinity it would get excited and unmanageable, and with Pavlovian regularity the owners would beat it. This went on until the poor dog didn't know what to do. At the smell of a b**** it would chase around the garden with its ears flat and its tail between its legs, whining, trying to hide. […] There was something so ignoble in the spectacle that I despaired. One can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offence like chewing a slipper. […] But desire is another story. No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts." (11. 22)
David compares his own sexual instincts as a man to those of a dog and tells a story of a dog who was beaten for going after the b****es he liked. This is a long-winded way of him saying, "I'm a guy. I couldn't help it, so don't blame me."
Quote #2
But neither he nor she can put aside what has happened. The two little boys become presences between them, playing quiet as shadows in a corner of the room where their mother and the strange man couple. In Soraya's arms he becomes, fleetingly, their father: foster-father, step-father, shadow-father. Leaving her bed afterwards, he feels their eyes flicker over him covertly, curiously. (1.32)
Here's something that David doesn't seem to have thought about very much up until this point: the connection between sex and fatherhood. This is an aspect of his manhood he hasn't connected to his relationship with Soraya but that now haunts the bedroom when they're having sex.
Quote #3
"No, I have not sought counseling nor do I intend to seek it. I am a grown man. I am not receptive to being counseled. I am beyond the reach of counseling." (6.31)
David doesn't just seem averse to the idea of being counseled; he seems outright insulted by the suggestion. His retort? "I'm a grown man." The thought of being counseled is framed in part as an affront to his masculinity.
Quote #4
Abuse: he was waiting for the word. Spoken in a voice quivering with righteousness. What does she see, when she looks at him, that keeps her at such a pitch of anger? A shark among the helpless little fishies? Or does she have another vision: of a great thick-boned male bearing down on a girl-child, a huge hand stifling her cries? How absurd! Then he remembers: they were gathered here yesterday in this same room, and she was before them, Melanie, who barely comes to his shoulder. Unequal: how can he deny that? (6.70)
OK, so just to get things straight, here we get David thinking about a woman thinking about things from his male perspective. Got it? Good. This moment is revealing of gender-guided biases from both sexes. David thinks that it is ridiculous for a woman to play on any pre-conceived notions of what men do to women in a situation like this – that is, until he realizes that Melanie has spoken to them already. What is interesting about this scene is the way he envisions Farodia picturing him as a "shark" among "fishies" – a ruthless, powerful predator that goes after someone small, helpless, and weak.
Quote #5
"I thought I would indulge myself. But there is more to it than that. One wants to leave something behind. Or at least a man wants to leave something behind. It's easier for a woman."
"Why is it easier for a woman?"
"Easier, I mean, to produce something with a life of its own."
"Doesn't being a father count?"
"Being a father…I can't help feeling that, by comparison with being a mother, being a father is a rather abstract business." (7.37-41)
What David seems to be trying to say is, men pretty much go around spreading their seed, while women carry a child. Being a father, from his point of view, is as simple as having sex; mothers get more credit for producing "something with a life of its own." It seems that David wants to produce his opera as a way of creating and carrying something to term that he can call his own – something that he nurtured every step of the way.
Quote #6
The men will watch the newspapers, listen to the gossip. They will read that they are being sought for robbery and assault and nothing else. It will dawn on them that over the body of the woman silence is being drawn like a blanket. Too ashamed, they will say to each other, too ashamed to tell, and they will chuckle luxuriously, recollecting their exploit. Is Lucy prepared to concede them that victory? (13.38)
Here's another example of the way that male/female oppositions play out in Disgrace. David imagines the satisfaction that the intruders will get from not being charged with rape – and also from beating Lucy into a silent, shameful submission.
Quote #7
"Can I guess?" he says. "Are you trying to remind me of something?"
"Am I trying to remind you of what?"
"Of what women undergo at the hands of men." (13.53-55)
After Lucy is raped, he wonders if his relationship with Melanie can be considered to be the same kind of violation as Lucy's rape. Here, we get the hint that he's insecure about the way Lucy sees him now that she has been a victim of sexual assault.
Quote #8
"In October," Petrus intervenes. "The baby is coming in October. We hope he will be a boy."
"Oh. What have you got against girls?"
"We are praying for a boy," says Petrus. "Always it is best if the first one is a boy. Then he can show his sisters—show them how to behave." (15.83-85)
Through the course of the novel, David learns a lot about negative attitudes toward women. Back in the city, though, misogyny was more unspoken. Out here in the country, though, you can say things like this out loud. Here, Petrus reveals his attitude towards women: they should be submissive to men, and men are responsible for showing them what's what.
Quote #9
You weren't there. You don't know what happened. He is baffled. Where, according to Bev Shaw, according to Lucy, was he not? In the room where the intruders were committing their outrages? Do they think he does not know what rape is? Do they think he has not suffered with his daughter? What more could he have witness than he is capable of imagining? Or do they think that, where rape is concerned, no man can be where the woman is? Whatever the answer, he is outraged, outraged at being treated like an outsider. (16.54)
From David's perspective, it seems like Bev and Lucy are somehow bonded in a girls-only club that he can't join, and it's frustrating. It's tough for him to be an outsider, but then again, do you think it's possible for him to truly commiserate with Lucy without knowing what it is like to be a woman during sex?
Quote #10
"You don't understand, you weren't there," says Bev Shaw. Well, she is mistaken. Lucy's intuition is right after all: he does understand; he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be there, be the men inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself. The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman? (18.114)
There's a lot going on right here. Sure, David can picture the moment. He knows what it is like to be attacked. He knows what it is like to have sex. And, disturbingly enough, he even knows what it is like to have sex with a woman who might not want to have sex with him. He has to try, however, to really know what it is like from Lucy's perspective. He can be one of the men in the situation (which is kind of weird when you think about it, but we're not touching that one right now), but adopting a woman's perspective isn't something with which he has much experience.
Quote #11
He pauses. The pen continues its dance. A sudden little adventure. Men of a certain kind. Does the man behind the desk have adventures? The more he sees of him the more he doubts it. He would not be surprised if Isaacs were something in the church, a deacon or a server, whatever a server is. (19.40)
This part is really interesting because it shows us that there isn't one straightforward masculine "type." David is a different kind of man that Mr. Isaacs is, and so while David might follow certain sexual instincts, it doesn't mean that every man does. It sort of throws any possible arguments about male nature out the window, doesn't it?