How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Demand. She means command. Her shrillness surprises him: There has been no intimation of it before. But then, what should a predator expect when he intrudes into the vixen's nest, into the home of her cubs? (1.57)
Up until now, Soraya has been warm and inviting towards David. Then, all of a sudden, he sees her children and she becomes super defensive. By comparing Soraya to a vixen (a female fox) whose cubs are threatened, the narrator shows that the impulse to protect one's children is instinctual for women. For Soraya, this feminine instinct apparently surpasses her desire to earn money from having sex with David ever again.
Quote #2
She gets up, strolls around the room picking up her cloths, as little bashful as if she were alone. He is used to women more self-conscious in their dressing and undressing. But the women he is used to are not as young, as perfectly formed. (4.14)
Melanie is unlike any other woman that David has slept with in the past. Here, we see Melanie as the idealized youthful mistress, comfortable in her sexuality and comfortable with her body.
Quote #3
"In this chorus of goodwill," he says, "I hear no female voice."
There is silence. (6.59-60)
During David's hearing there is a pretty clear line drawn between the people root for him and the people who are against him – and that line divides the men in the room from the women in the room. Do you think this is unfair, or do you think it's inevitable that in a case of sexual assault, other women would feel defensive?
Quote #4
A solid woman, embedded in her new life. Good! If this is to be what he leaves behind—this daughter, this woman—then he does not have to be ashamed. (7.32)
David seems to think that having a sturdy, hardworking, earthy woman for a daughter is a noble thing, deserving of respect. Does this say anything about the sleek, cosmopolitan women that he generally finds himself attracted to?
Quote #5
Sharing a bed, sharing a bathtub, baking gingerbread cookies, trying on each other's clothes. Sapphic love: an excuse for putting on weight. (10.57)
It's interesting to see that David's ideas about the experiences of lesbians are so caught up in hyper-feminine and childlike examples. It's as though he pictures two eight-year-old girls at a sleepover, when really it is clear that Lucy was in a serious, adult relationship with another woman.
Quote #6
Bev Shaw responds only with a terse shake of the head. Not your business, she seems to be saying. Menstruation, childbirth, violation and its aftermath: blood-matters; a woman's burden, women's preserve. (12.44)
Here is one of the first instances after Lucy is raped that we see David feeling marginalized as a man. Do you think it is possible for him to commiserate? Do you think that Bev can do a better job of relating to Lucy solely on the grounds that they are both women?
Quote #7
Not for the first time, he wonders whether women would not be happier living in communities of women, accepting visits from men only when they choose. Perhaps he is wrong to think of Lucy as homosexual. Perhaps she simply prefers female company. Or perhaps that is all that lesbians are: women who have no need of men. (12.45)
What catches our attention here is the idea that David has already considered whether or not women are better off without men. How does this reflect on his own actions?
Quote #8
No wonder they were so vehement against rape, she and Helen. Rape, god of chaos and mixture, violator of seclusions. Raping a lesbian worse than raping a virgin: more of a blow. Did they know what they were up to, those men? Had the word got around? (12.46)
David, via the narrator, brings up an interesting argument here: rape is undoubtedly an unwanted sexual act in any case, but is it possible that the rape of a lesbian is an especially horrific and unwanted act, making it more of a violation? Is it fair to say that it is worse than raping a virgin? Is it OK for him to be making these comparisons at all?
Quote #9
Like a stain the story is spreading across the district. Not her story to spread but theirs: they are its owners. How they put her in her place, how they showed her what a woman was for. (14.22)
Once more, we get a hypothetical vision of the perspectives of characters we don't actually talk to. Here, David imagines the rapists taking pleasure in the fact that they put Lucy in her place, who was then too ashamed to get help. This is a great example of David's growing awareness of other men's negative attitudes towards women. Perspectives like these reinforce David's growing sense of feminism as the novel progresses.
Quote #10
"No, a boy is better. Except your daughter. Your daughter is different. Your daughter is as good as a boy. Almost!" He laughs at his sally. "Hey, Lucy!"
Lucy smiles, but he knows she is embarrassed. (15.88-89)
Here, Petrus makes an association between Lucy's sexual orientation and her gender. Because she's a lesbian, he argues, she's pretty much as good as a boy. But not quite. Because in case it wasn't clear already, in Petrus's eyes women are inferior to men. And the jerk award goes to…
Quote #11
Yet she too will have to leave, in the long run. As a woman alone on a farm she has no future, that is clear. Even the days of Ettinger, with his guns and barbed wire and alarm systems, are numbered. If Lucy has any sense she will quit before a fate befalls her worse than a fate worse than death. But of course she will not. She is stubborn, and immersed, too, in the life she has chosen. (15.128)
Lucy has already been a victim of sexual assault, and as a woman who lives alone there is no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again. David is now also aware of this danger, and knowing how vulnerable women are in the country makes it hard for him to stop worrying about what might happen to her.