How we cite our quotes: (Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[…] even the Negro women who still take in white people's washing after the old custom, fetch and deliver it in automobiles.
But fifteen years ago, on Monday morning the quiet, dusty, shady streets would be full of Negro women with, balanced on their steady, turbaned heads, bundles of clothes tied up in sheets, almost as large as cotton bales, carried so without touch of hand. (1.1-2)
The adult Quentin, recalling his hometown at the start of the story, finds nothing unusual about the sharp racial divide of labor. He soon switches to his nine-year-old perspective to tell a story in which the power differences between white people and black people are very clear. Critics debate if Quentin learns anything about race by the end of the story, but it's fairly clear that, at least here at the start, he doesn't find it necessary to remark on Jefferson's super freaking racist division of labor.
Quote #2
"When you going to pay me, white man? When you going to pay me, white man? It's been three times now since you paid me a cent—" Mr. Stovall knocked her down, but she kept on saying, "When you going to pay me, white man? It's been three times now since—" until Mr. Stovall kicked her in the mouth with his heel and the marshal caught Mr. Stovall back, and Nancy lying in the street, laughing. She turned her head and spat out some blood and teeth and said, "It's been three times now since he paid me a cent." (1.12)
This incident illustrates the cruel power imbalance between white and black people in Jefferson. Nancy is a prostitute who can't even get paid by Mr. Stovall—a bank cashier, church deacon, and one of her customers—who attacks her pretty much with impunity when she brings up his debt. Grrr. This makes us so mad we can't see straight.
Quote #3
He said that it was cocaine and not whiskey, because no n***** would try to commit suicide unless he was full of cocaine, because a n***** full of cocaine wasn't a n***** any longer.
The jailer cut her down and revived her; then he beat her, whipped her. (1.13-14)
This is yet another illustration of the super messed up power imbalance between white and black people in Jefferson. A jailer, already a figure of power, is able to beat the suicidal Nancy and write off her troubles as drug-induced and irrational. Our faith in humanity is down to critical levels right now, ugh.
Quote #4
"I ain't nothing but a n*****," Nancy said. "It ain't none of my fault." (1.29)
The distraught Nancy identifies herself with a racial slur. She says there is nothing more to her, and that it is something of her destiny to have problems, even if she is blameless for them. In short, she feels as if she's been condemned from birth. We want to reach into this story and hand Nancy a one-way ticket out of Jefferson.
Quote #5
Nancy whispered something. It was oh or no, I don't know which. Like nobody had made it, like it came from nowhere and went nowhere, until it was like Nancy was not there at all; that I had looked so hard at her eyes on the stairs that they had gotten printed on my eyeballs, like the sun does when you have closed your eyes and there is no sun. (2.5)
Here Quentin conveys the sense that Nancy has been erased or disappeared from society. The characters are in the white home, and the troubled Nancy has effectively no foothold there; it's as if she's not present at all. She's nothing more than an after-image of the sun on closed eyelids, a false thing, not a real one. Of course, the last line also echoes the story's title, since an evening sun is one that's disappearing. See "What's Up With the Title?" for more.
Quote #6
"Jesus is a n*****," Jason said.
"I can feel him, Nancy said. "I can feel him laying yonder in the ditch."
"Tonight?" Dilsey said. "Is he there tonight?"
"Dilsey's a n***** too," Jason said.
"You try to et something," Dilsey said.
"I don't want nothing," Nancy said.
"I ain't a n*****," Jason said. [...]
"I ain't a n*****," Jason said. "Am I, Dilsey?"
"I reckon not," Dilsey said. She looked at Nancy. "I don't reckon so. What you going to do, then?" (2.17-3.7)
As the two black women try to find a solution to Nancy's plight, the five-year-old Jason is able to interrupt them with his insistent talk about who is and who isn't a "n*****." The young child is fascinated with the question, as might be expected, and he seems to take pride in his status as a white person. The conversation seems to suggest that even a white five-year-old can steamroll black adults, given the power divide in the community.
Quote #7
"She says he is there. She says she knows he is there tonight." "Yet we pay taxes," mother said. "I must wait here alone in this big house while you take a Negro woman home." (3.14-15)
Mr. Jason tells his wife that Nancy believes the dangerous Jesus is waiting for her. Mother, in her response, insinuates that the mother of a tax-paying white family deserves protection more than a black woman.
Quote #8
"Let's go down to my house and have some more fun," Nancy said. (3.24)
Nancy said earlier that no "n*****" would be able to stop the dangerous Jesus. Here she seems to believe that the mere presence of white children with her at her house will protect her from him.
Quote #9
"Hush," Nancy said. She was talking loud when we crossed the ditch and stooped through the fence where she used to stoop through with the clothes on her head. Then we came to her house. (3.49)
This passage marks the spot where the white children and Nancy pass from the white part of Jefferson to Nancy's black area. After this moment, the children and Nancy struggle for control of the night until Mr. Jason shows up.
Quote #10
But we could hear her, because she began just after we came up out of the ditch, the sound that was not singing and not unsinging. "Who will do our washing now, Father?" I said. (6.9)
Nancy is left wailing, and Quentin at last speaks up to ask who will do his family's washing now. Perhaps the adult Quentin narrating this story, by including this line, finally realizes just how much his family, and Jefferson at large, abandoned Nancy. For more, check out "What's Up With The Ending?"