How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Their first night in the Schloss he pulled off her robe, threw her across the bed and applied a dog whip to her buttocks and the backs of her thighs. [...] She cried and whimpered all night. In the morning Harry returned to her room, this time with a razor strop. (4.3)
Harry's repression, and his frustration with Evelyn's affair with Stanford White, leads him to take out his frustration and repression on Evelyn, continuing even when it's obvious he's causing her great pain. He can't express himself to her, so he sexually abuses her.
Quote #2
…to most of the public he appeared as some kind of German sexologist, an exponent of free love who used big words to talk about dirty things. At least a decade would have to pass before Freud would have his revenge and see his ideas begin to destroy sex in America forever. (5.9)
This is an interesting passage, because you get the feeling that the narrator is trying to tell us that a little bit of repression is maybe a good thing... that maybe in some ways we were better off when sex had a little more mystery to it.
Quote #3
At this moment a hoarse unearthly cry issued from the walls, the closet door flew open and Mother's Younger Brother fell into the room, his face twisted in a paroxysm of saintly mortification. He was clutching in his hands, as if trying to choke it, a rampant penis which, scornful of his intentions, whipped him about the floor... (8.9)
Alright, this is one funny scene. But notice the words Doctorow uses: Younger Brother is mortified as if he was a saint, and he's trying to choke his own penis, which is ignoring him. If this guy isn't repressed, then nobody is.
Quote #4
One day Father came upon a couple and was shocked to see the wife thrusting her hips upwards to the thrusts of her husband. An uncanny animal song came from her throat. [...] He thought of Mother's fastidiousness, her grooming and her intelligence, and found himself resenting this woman's claim to the gender. (10.2)
Women shouldn't actually participate in sex, or enjoy it... at least this is how Father thinks. Though it might seem shocking that he's shocked by the woman's enjoyment, the point here is that Father's thinking wasn't so unusual at the turn of the century.
Quote #5
He was shocked by the outlines of his body, the ribs and clavicle, white-skinned and vulnerable, the bony pelvis, the organ hanging there redder than anything else. (14.1)
Poor Father. This is a simple sentence, but one which shows very clearly a Victorian male's shame at his body... even his "organ" is red with embarrassment.
Quote #6
Waiting for Peary to return to the Roosevelt he had heard the wind howl at night and had clasped with love and gratitude the foul body, like a stinking fish, of an Esquimo woman. He had put his body into the stinking fish. (14.1)
Remember when Father was so fascinated by the Esquimo women having sex? Though he acted disgusted by it, he has sex with one of the women himself, and is so ashamed he can't even think of her as a woman—but as a foul-smelling body. Where's your repression now, Father?
Quote #7
At times he would grab himself as if to pull his sex out by the roots. [...] He wanted to pack his heart with gunpowder and blow it up. (14.5)
Oops. There goes Mother's Younger Brother again, tortured with memories of Evelyn and his own shame. It's no coincidence that when he masturbates he wants to either strangle his penis or blow up his heart.
Quote #8
He would take a woman to his hotel room and then sit in a chair with one shoe in his hand and completely forget about her. Or he would not attempt to make love but only inspect her intimate places. (22.2)
Younger Brother's shame regarding sex has now reached a strange impasse, where he desires the company of women but, when he finally attains it, he does not have sex. Instead he seeks to shame them also by making the time with them clinical, inspecting them as if he were a doctor.
Quote #9
Mother's bathing costume was modest but she required several days to feel comfortable in it. [...] She insisted that they separate themselves by several hundred yards from the nearest bathers. [...] Father wore a horizontal striped blue and white sleeveless one piece bathing suit that made cylinders of his thighs. Mother found it distasteful to see the outlines of his maleness in that costume when he emerged from the water. (33.3)
Even though Mother is getting more in touch with her sexuality in the bedroom, this scene shows how much she is still fearful of being sexual or displaying her body (or her husband's body) in public. Bikinis were still a long ways off.
Quote #10
He used wet sand and shaped it in exaggerated projections of her form. [...] Her knees grew round, her thighs were dunes and on her chest he constructed large nippled bosoms. As he worked, her dark eyes never left his face. (34.4)
This is a beautiful scene where Doctorow shows the absence of shame and repression in two children simply burying each other with sand. Their bodies are not something to be ashamed of, which is why they can look each other in the face while they do it.