How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
When the entire house was asleep he came to her room in the darkness. He was solemn and attentive as befitted the occasion. Mother shut her eyes and held her hands over her ears. Sweat from Father's chin fell on her breasts. She started. She thought: Yet I know these are the happy years. (2.1)
There is a shame attached to sex at the beginning of the novel that both Mother and Father suffer through. These might be the happy years, but she is anything but happy, instead performing what she thinks is an unfortunate duty of every wife.
Quote #2
She became accustomed to the hands of her employer. One day with two weeks' rent due she let the man have his way on a cutting table. He kissed her face and tasted the salt of her tears. (3.4)
The powerlessness of a woman in Mameh's position is what Doctorow shows here. If she refuses, she'll be fired. And when she does sleep with her employer, she loses her family. For women like Mameh, there weren't many good options.
Quote #3
Once he demanded proof of her devotion and it turned out nothing else would do but fellatio. [...] Afterwards he brushed the sawdust from the front of her skirt and gave her some bills from his money clip. (4.4)
This is foreshadowing for the later conversation between Evelyn and Emma Goldman, where she compares marriage to prostitution. Evelyn might feel humiliated, but she dries her tears with the idea of getting $200,000 for testifying at her husband's trial.
Quote #4
The truth is, Goldman went on quickly, women may not vote, they may not love whom they want, they may not develop their minds and their spirits, they may not commit their lives to the spiritual adventure of life, comrades, they may not. And why? Is our genius only in our wombs? (8.2)
Doctorow has a talent for finding characters to state the truth of a situation, and Emma Goldman is perfect here for defining a woman's role at the beginning of the 20th century, when women were thought by many men to be good for raising babies and not much more.
Quote #5
After all, Goldman went on, you're nothing but a clever prostitute. You accepted the conditions in which you found yourself and you triumphed. But what kind of victory has it been? [...] I have never taken a man to bed without loving him, without taking him in love as a free human being, his equal... (8.5)
Goldman is talking about equality here, the fact that when marriage is an exchange of money for servitude it's no different than being a prostitute. It is more important to her to be free—and equal.
Quote #6
Goldman stood and turned her around slowly for inspection, a frown on her face. Look at that, it's amazing you have any circulation at all. Marks of the stays ran vertically like welts around Nesbit's waist. the evidence of garters could be seen in the red lines running around the tops her thighs. Women kill themselves, Goldman said. (8.10)
In a man's world, women dressed to please men and accentuate their figure. Goldman herself wears free flowing clothes, and in this scene berates Evelyn for the corset and other undergarments she wears. Funny how in some ways things haven't changed. Or have you ever walked a mile in high heels?
Quote #7
Goldman sent off a letter to Evelyn: I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them. Carrying his newspaper with your picture the laborer goes home to his wife, an exhausted workhorse with veins standing out in her legs, and he dreams not of justice but of being rich. (11.3)
This is Goldman understanding the role of women like Evelyn Nesbit, and how she foretells the existence of women like Marilyn Monroe and supermodels and their use in advertising. Capitalism holds up women like this as trophies for men, so that men will work to become rich and attain them.
Quote #8
He realized that every night since he'd returned home they had slept in the same bed. She was in some way not as vigorously modest as she'd been. She took his gaze. She came to bed with her hair unbraided. Her hand one night brushed down his chest and came to rest below his nightshirt. [...] With a groan he turned to her and found her ready. Her hands pulling his face to hers did not feel the tears. (14.1)
This is the not the same woman who closes her eyes and covers her ears during sex at the beginning of the novel. This is a bolder woman, and Father doesn't know what to make of it.
Quote #9
She thought about Father a good deal. The events since his return from the Arctic, his responses to them, had broken her faith in him. [...] During his absence when she had made certain decisions regarding the business, all its mysterious potency was dissipated and she saw if for the dreary unimaginative thing it was. (33.3)
With the discovery of her own potential, Mother realizes Father is kind of... well, dull. She might still love him and honor her marriage, but she is no longer in love with him. She realizes she deserves better. Here Doctorow shows us how many women of that time probably lived in stagnant marriages, kept down by a lack of awareness caused by only having the role of wife and mother available to them.
Quote #10
... Mother's white dress and underclothes lay against her so that ellipses of flesh pressed through. She looked so young with her hair down on her shoulders and matted around her head. Her skirts stuck to her limbs and every few moments she would bend to pluck them away from her body and the wind would blow them back against her. (34.8)
This is not the Mother we meet at the beginning of the book, a woman who is prim and proper and asexual. This is a woman walking in the rain who's increasingly in touch with her sensuality, and beautiful because of it. She's come full circle, and Doctorow will give her the happy ending of eventually marrying Tateh and living in California.