How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The first man to set foot on Whileaway appeared in a field of turnips on North Continent. He was wearing a blue suit like a hiker's and a blue cap. The farm people had been notified. One, seeing the blip on the tractor's infrared scan, came to get him; the man in blue saw a flying machine with no wings but a skirt of dust and air. (1.5.1)
In a novel that shifts back and forth between multiple speakers and points of view, it's crucial to keep your eyes peeled for clues that will help to identify speakers' perspectives. Here, the narrator adopts the Whileawayan farmers' perspective when describing the man from Jeannine's Earth. Because they are unfamiliar with New York City society, they see a "blue suit like a hiker's," rather than a police officer's uniform.
Quote #2
Excuse me, perhaps I'm mistaking what you intend to say as this language we're speaking is only a hobby of mine, I am not as fluent as I would wish. What we speak is a pan-Russian even the Russians would not understand; it would be like Middle English to you, only vice-versa. (1.7.26)
The Female Man doesn't put a lot of emphasis on linguistic differences between the people of Whileaway and the people of Jeannine's, Janet's, and Jael's worlds, but we are occasionally reminded that English isn't Janet's mother tongue. In what ways does Janet's limited knowledge of English affect her experience in Joanna's world?
Quote #3
It seems odd to all of us, Miss Evason, that in venturing into such—well, such absolutely unknown territory—that you should have come unarmed with anything except a piece of string. Did you expect us to be peaceful? (2.7.1)
When narratives emphasize foreignness as a major theme, they sometimes include sub-themes such as conflict, misunderstanding, culture-clash, and aggression as well. Two unspoken questions that run throughout the novel are: 1) Do the women of Whileaway pose a threat to Joanna's Earth? and 2) Do the men of Joanna's Earth pose a threat to Whileaway? (If you want to take this question further, you might think about the novel in relation to Joanna Russ's short story "When It Changed.")
Quote #4
Jeannine, out of place, puts her hands over her ears and shuts her eyes on a farm on Whileaway, sitting at the trestle-table under the trees where everybody is eating. I'm not here. I'm not here. Chilia Ysayeson's youngest has taken a fancy to the newcomer; Jeannine sees big eyes, big breasts, big shoulders, thick lips, all that grossness. (1.14.1)
When it comes to looks, Jeannine is a fairly shallow person, we know, but it's striking that one of the things that disturbs her most about Whileaway is its ethnic diversity.
Quote #5
I was housed with her for six and a half months in a hotel suite ordinarily used to entertain visiting diplomats. I put shoes on that woman's feet. I had fulfilled one of my dreams—to show Manhattan to a foreigner. (3.1.17)
While Janet is in her world, Joanna gets to play guide and host. Aside from showing Janet around the city, what does Joanna teach her about Earth?
Quote #6
"My child," she said gently, "you must understand. I'm far from home; I want to keep myself cheerful, eh? And about this men thing, you must remember that to me they are a particularly foreign species; one can make love with a dog, yes? But not with something so unfortunately close to oneself. You see how I can feel this way?" (3.1.31)
This moment is one of the novel's little jokes, but what's clear is that, to Janet, the men of Joanna's and Jeannine's worlds seem totally alien. At the same time, they also seem eerily familiar, and Janet finds this disturbing. If Sigmund Freud were around, he'd call this an example of the uncanny. Bottom line: dudes weird her out.
Quote #7
I see Janet Evason finally dressing herself, a study in purest awe as she holds up to the light, one after the other, semi-transparent garments of nylon and lace, fairy webs, rose-colored elastic puttees—"Oh, my," "Oh, my goodness," she says—and finally, completely stupefied, wraps one of them around her head. (3.1.36)
Cue the obligatory scene where the foreign visitor is confused by the natives' strange clothing! And hey, why does Joanna have pink elastic puttees?
Quote #8
I slept in the Belins' common room for three weeks, surrounded in my coming and going by people with names like Nofretari Ylayeson and Nguna Twason. (I translate freely; the names are Chinese, African, Russian, European. Also, Whileawayans love to use old names they find in dictionaries.) (5.11.1)
For Joanna, Whileaway holds none of the horror that it does for Jeannine. For her, ethnic hybridity is part of what makes Janet's world utopian. For Jeannine, it's part of what makes it so disturbingly foreign.
Quote #9
I have never been to Whileaway.
Whileawayans breed into themselves an immunity to ticks, mosquitoes, and other insect parasites. I have none. And the way into Whileaway is barred neither by time, distance, nor an angel with a flaming sword, but by a cloud or crowd of gnats.
Talking gnats. (5.17.1-3)
Joanna/the omniscient narrator has compared Whileaway to the Garden of Eden before, but this clinches it. This is one of the few passages in the novel where Whileaway is described explicitly as an ideal: a place that Joanna/the omniscient narrator can imagine, but to which she has never actually been. As such, it's both foreign and familiar, like the grown-up versions of ourselves we fantasize about as children.
Quote #10
She told us honestly that we couldn't be expected to believe anything we hadn't seen with our own eyes. There would be no films, no demonstrations, no statistics, unless we asked for them. We trundled out of the elevator into an armored car waiting in a barn, and across an unpaved, shell-pocked plain, a sort of no-man's-land, in the middle of the night. Is the grass growing? Is that a virus blight? Are the mutated strains taking over? Nothing but gravel, boulders, space, and stars. (8.7.1)
Jael and Joanna each get to act as tour guides in their worlds, but their ways of showing visitors around are very different. Hidden inside their quarantine suits, Janet, Jeannine, and Joanna are like flies on the wall in Jael's world. Like those of us reading, they're able to watch events unfold without being actively involved.