How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[…] Florence was a girl, and would by and by be married, and have children of her own, and all the duties of a woman; and this being so, her life in the cabin was the best possible preparation for her future life. But Gabriel was a man; he would go out one day into the world to do a man's work, and he needed, therefore, meat, when there was any in the house, and clothes, whenever clothes could be bought, and the strong indulgence of his womenfolk […]. (2.1.24)
Florence and Gabriel are siblings, but that's about all they have in common. As soon as Gabriel is born, all of Florence's wishes and dreams are erased, all because she's a girl and he's a boy. Their mother sees her job as preparing them for the future, and so they have to get used to the idea early that men are privileged in society.
Quote #2
In their eyes lived perpetually a lewd, uneasy wonder concerning the night that she had been taken in the fields. That night had robbed her of the right to be considered a woman. (2.1.25)
Deborah was raped by a group of white men when she was a teenager, and this experience basically takes away her gender. She doesn't have "the right to be considered a woman" in the sense that no one considers her as an option for sex or marriage. It's like she's not a girl anymore, because her innocence has been taken away, but she's not a woman either; she's trapped in that traumatic moment.
Quote #3
Again, there was her legend, her history, which would have been enough, even had she not been so wholly unattractive, to put her forever beyond the gates of any honorable man's desire. (2.2.19)
In this quote, we see it isn't just Deborah's past that takes her out of the man/woman equation. She is "so wholly unattractive," which tells us that one of a woman's principle objectives in life should be to attract men. Because Deborah doesn't do that, she can't be an "honorable man's" partner.
Quote #4
He jokingly suggested, to repay her a little for her contention that he was the best preacher of the revival, that she was the best cook among the women. She timidly suggested that he was here at a flattering disadvantage, for she had heard all of the preachers, but he had not, for a very long time, eaten another woman's cooking. (2.2.74)
Deborah and Gabriel compliment each other by saying they are good at what a woman and man should be good at, respectively. Imagine if Deborah were to compliment Gabriel's cooking, or he were to compliment her preaching. That might be normal today, but it was unthinkable during their time.
Quote #5
Deborah was one of the serving-women, and though she did not speak, and despite his discomfort, he nearly burst each time she entered the room, with the pride he knew she felt to see him sitting there, so serene and manly, among all these celebrated others, in the severe black and white that was his uniform. (2.2.76)
Gabriel feels like a man because of the position he's in. He's upstairs, being served food by women, and he's surrounded by other men. It's more the relationship to his surroundings, to the other men, that makes him manly, than he himself. His uniform, for example, props him up, like a neon sign blazing "man."
Quote #6
"You be careful," said Esther, "how you talk to me. I ain't the first girl's been ruined by a holy man, neither."
"Ruined?" he cried. "You? How you going to be ruined? When you been walking through this town just like a harlot, and a-kicking up your heels all over the pasture?" (2.2.241-42)
Let's be clear. Gabriel and Esther committed the same sin, at the same time, together. They had sex without being married. In fact, Gabriel is married, but to someone else, so his sin is actually worse. But because he's a man and she's a woman, he can still be considered a holy man, while she's called a harlot.
Quote #7
There seemed [...] no woman [...] who had not seen her sister become part of the white man's great whorehouse, who had not, all too narrowly, escaped that house herself; [...] no man whose manhood had not been, at the root, sickened, whose loins had not been dishonored, whose seed had not been scattered into oblivion and worse than oblivion, into living shame and rage, and into endless battle. (2.2.288)
The oppression of black people in America, from Gabriel's perspective, hits them at their essential gender identities. The women are made into prostitutes, and the men lose their manhood. It is as though African Americans, during and after slavery, have been raped by white culture.
Quote #8
"I asked my God to forgive me," he said. "But I didn't want no harlot's son." "Esther weren't no harlot," she said quietly. "She weren't my wife." (2.2.358-60)
There it is again, the h-word. Gabriel basically sees all women as being either harlots or saints. There's no in-between for him. And while he is a holy man and a husband (h-words everywhere), who can be forgiven for their sin, Esther, as an unmarried and unrepentant woman, is a harlot.
Quote #9
"Gabriel," she said, "I been praying all these years that the Lord would touch my body, and make me like them women, all them women, you used to go with all the time." She was very calm; her face was very bitter and patient. "Look like it weren't His will. Look like I couldn't nohow forget… how they done me way back there when I weren't nothing but a girl." (2.2.367)
Remember how Deborah lost the right to be considered a woman through her rape? Well, this is her first and only statement on that in the novel. She wishes that she weren't traumatized, that she had sexual desire. The way she sees it, if she were to desire Gabriel, sexually, she would be a real woman.
Quote #10
She found a job as chambermaid in the same hotel in which Richard worked as elevator boy. (2.3.72)
When Elizabeth and Richard head north, they find jobs together… but they are separated by gender. As a woman, she could never be an elevator boy, just as he couldn't be a chambermaid. This division of labor (keeping the women cleaning, and allowing the men to interact with the public) is an example of gender inequality.